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Terrifying Iterations Of Reality
The Platinum-Level Transluminal Vacation Package of Your Dreams follows a time travel salesman as he tries to make one last sale, unfortunately, time travel is tricky and he must make things right before the universe implodes. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?
It all started with an image of Heller selling adjacent timeline vacations. I figured such a practice would lead to insanely terrifying iterations of reality and wrote the “Don’t freak out” scene. The book just cut loose after that and practically wrote itself.
Heller is a great character, blunt, determined, and humorous. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?
This is a terrible answer, but I don’t know. If this were a movie, Heller would be played by actor Keith David (Nope, Greenleaf, NCIS) I swear the first time I saw him was when he walks up to the “screamer.” He was just there, fully formed and alive and he looks down with a smile and has that blue tip match in his teeth and I could barely type fast enough to get him.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Love. The book is about love. Almost every story is a love story: Heller and Octavia, Mooki and Sidd, Aldus and Mooki—it’s all about love. Of course, I did burn through a lot of time travel tropes, using them exclusively to have fun, like the scene where Thoth goes back to the Pleistocene era and stamps on a butterfly ON PURPOSE. I mean, I loved it.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
There’s a travel memoir, Fat in Paris, that I’m shopping and then another SciFi comedy. I don’t know, maybe 2023?
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook | Website
Too bad the secret science Heller uses to jump timelines is just whacky magic dreamed up by a bored deity. Heller doesn’t know it, but his company, his product-his entire career-is a divine prank. When all the tech explodes in a speed yoga accident, the whole shebang goes into ground-hog mode. The strain on reality threatens to turn Heller and the rest of the known galaxy into a scorched field of low-grade aquarium gravel if somebody doesn’t fix it, pronto.
Actually racing against time, Heller does everything in his power to stop the ground-hogging, reset reality, save the world, score that platinum vacation package, and maybe, against all odds, fall in love
(Please note: novel includes sentient phones, recursive reality T.V., vacuum-induced full-body fart scenes, Gerry Rafferty songs, transgressive blasphemy, spider dogs, naked old people, and endless cthulian dread.)
The Platinum-Level Transluminal Vacation Package of Your Dreams
The Platinum-Level Transluminal Vacation Package of Your Dreams by Bull Garlington features Heller, who is one sale away from earning a nice retirement package from Transluminal Vacations, Inc. As the characters call it, Heller is close to his “FYMT,” or his “F*** You Money Timeline,” where he would apparently be rich enough to not be concerned with those around him. Did I mention the company specializes in vacations to other universes? After an initial close call, he still needs one sale with one day left, and he has a trainee to bring with him. Needless to say, wild shenanigans ensue. Can Heller make the final sale and survive the universe jumping one last time?
The casual yet defined writing style employed by author Garlington is what provides the incredulous yet unsurprised tone. There are even footnotes that the narrator employs to talk about himself. The long tangents that pop up randomly yet elegantly are most entertaining, though. For example, an excellent paragraph about the phrase “pregnant silence” that the narrator decided to replace with “festering moment” was a favorite of mine. They’re not all hits, though; if one misses and goes on for too long, it can be a bit off-putting.
Also, some jokes target American politics with some not-so-subtle satire, so if you’re easily triggered by that sort of thing, be forewarned.
Still, this book is pure entertainment. This book is for you if you like a quick wit and quite a bit of eccentricity. I don’t know if I’d be interested in more of the zaniness of this particular story. Still, I can tell you that I appreciate this author’s writing style and the tone he can establish and utilize with such ease. I’ll be looking for more work from him, but maybe in a storyline that’s a little more grounded.
Pages: 361 | ASIN : B091X323YD
LITERARY TITAN 