The year 2014 was a good one to be an Outlander fan. Not only did the Starz series premiere, but Diana Gabaldon released the eighth novel in the series, Written in My Own Heart's Blood. Since then, the book-reading portion of the fandom has been anxiously awaiting the ninth book, Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone. While the author provides updates online, here's what Gabaldon had to say about when Book 9 will be finished when we spoke at the end of 2020.

I would never go so far as to say that Outlander fans are greedy. (Passionate, devoted, insatiable, sure — not greedy.) Yet, even though Gabaldon has written two new novellas, two scripts for Outlander, and forewords for multiple Outlander-inspired books — as well as released more than 70 "Daily Lines" (excerpts) from Bees — since 2014, the fandom can be a bit impatient when it comes to the next installment of Jamie and Claire's story.

"I can't give you an exact date because it's never exact, as I always tell editors and so forth," Gabaldon tells me during our conversation late last year. "I can tell you my absolute best guess as to when I think I will finish. I am always wrong. I'm always wrong."

Fans that follow her on social media know what she means by that. In September, two months before I spoke to her, she tweeted that she'd be finished writing the book in a "few weeks." As of the writing of this article, she still wasn't finished. (To anyone who would criticize the author about that, I challenge you to write a thousand-page saga.) She tweeted she was "just finishing" the book on Dec. 29 and when a fan asked when she thinks Bees will be completed on Dec. 30, she replied, "When I think it's done."