in Author Promotions, Comedic Writing, Promotion, Talent Spotter, Uncategorized 911 Words

Talent Spotter #6 Featuring Author Gerry McCullough.

I’m delighted to welcome Best-Selling Author Gerry McCullough. This is her first venture into the genre of Comedic writing. Fans will just love it! I know I do.

Talent Spotter #6 Gerry McCullough Book cover

Talent spotter blurb piccie

 

 A comic fantasy, set in the not too distant future.  (CS Lewis meets Terry Pratchett.)

Merc Swingly – a young, naive employee of one of the seven multi-national companies, which control the world through figurehead politicians – dreams that the world has come to an end.

He is instructed by a weird creature, who calls himself a ”Third Degree Representative’, to go back and prevent this happening.

Sometime in the future, who knows how far away, all the things which people have been dreading and issuing warnings about for years are beginning to happen.

The planet earth has finally become one political unit. Its capital city is now called Nexus Luxuria. Luxury, after all, is clearly the thing most people have been aiming for all their lives.

Life has developed in an almost exactly similar fashion to the threatened forecasts. The world has at last achieved all those marvellous things we’ve at present only started to acquire for ourselves – global warming; over-use and exhaustion of fossil fuels; a third world with slave labour factories; globalization of commerce until just seven multi-national companies are running the entire planet (under a titular World President with seven Vice Presidents – a Government with no real power, but considerable wealth and status); and a population kept happy by recreational drugs, which are no longer frowned on but instead encouraged. In fact, an other-earthly paradise – not.

Oh, and at a guess the future time when all this is happening is about a hundred years ahead of ours.

Or is it only fifty?


From the best-selling author of Belfast Girls

READ WHAT REVIEWERS ARE SAYING ABOUT NOT THE END OF THE WORLD!

 

5.0 out of 5 starsAn absorbing read about a possible future…hilariously and brilliantly written.


‘Wow…well what can I say! The book begins with a dream …and ends with a….fluffy kitten ( sort of)
I am not going to spoil the plot, so will just wish Merc,Seraphina,Kyra and the others the best of luck!

Seriously ( or not) this book had more than a little Terry Pratchett about it, especially in the characters and the humour. For me, it was a very humorous read. At times I found myself laughing out loud …but that’s my particular sense of the ridiculous!

The brilliance is in its ordinariness. It is a place we recognise, three dimensional characters we relate to, it is our world…just slightly off tilt. Merc tries to save the world, and also combat a ‘terrorist’ group. But everyone is popping pills and drinking alcohol. The world as we know it has become the world it possibly could be…but no one cares.
The book explores the humour in all tragedy. It is possible to converse with impossible people and beings, who appear to think sensibly, or at least use ‘normal’ language. It becomes a thriller plus a detective mystery which has clues and red herrings.

I found myself enthralled by the writing, and couldn’t put it down, staying awake very late to finish it.

I think Gerry McCullough could become the successor to Terry Pratchett, as she combines a fantasy world with the mores of the real one, using humour, great characterization, and truisms.

Underlying all her writing are messages to the reader about ‘what is really important’ just as the great TP used to do.
This is, however not ‘Disc World” but ‘This World’ with all its problems magnified into the ‘future’,
I hope to see Merc and the rest of the gang in more books, trying to help whoever needs them.
Excellent…highly recommended.’   Thea Hartley

‘Gerry McCullough combines a fierce and tight narrative drive with humour, imagination and lust. What more do you want?’   Malachi O’Doherty

‘Welcome to Luxuria, and Merc Swingly, young, naive employee of one of the seven multi-national companies in control of the planet, and possible saviour of Luxuria’s many wacky inhabitants.

In Not The End of The World, McCullough has created a fantastic cosmic fantasy world peopled with fabulous and outrageous bigger-than-life characters on a par with Terry Prachett’s hallucinogenic masterpiece, Discworld: Merc’s boss, Flacker Winterbotham; the non-human yuppie, Mr Brown; the harbinger with dire warnings, Third Degree Representative; spirited young orphan with a social conscience, Alexa Darnhurst; and, of course, Merc’s assistant, the extremely sexy, if somewhat lecherous, Hyacinth Duckworthy, to name a few on the must-read list of invited guests in Not The End of The World.

McCullough’s story-telling ability to keep all the plates spinning is impressive. Effortlessly, she takes your conscious mind out of your own world and guides you into the atmospheric surrealism of Luxuria, smoothly and expertly, with page-turning ease.  The story and writing proceed at a furious breath-taking pace, followed by a conclusion that has you screaming: Roll on the sequel!

I, for one, can’t wait to order my next flight ticket to Luxuria.’

Sam Millar, best-selling author, The Dark Place.

14 thoughts on “Talent Spotter #6 Featuring Author Gerry McCullough.”

  3. I so enjoyed this book. It was a bit of Douglas Adams and more. It had that very special Gerry McCullough touch! Highly recommended.

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