emcgbooks — a collection of works

Footballing Greatness wanted Robbie Watts. Something else won.

***

Robbie Watts is 100% Bull Ant on the footy field, relentless & built to sting. Put on a collssion course with premiership glory, his lifeforce has other plans.

Footballing Greatness wanted Robbie Watts. Something else won.

One agent. Four writers and a book that takes on a life of its own.

***

A literary agent exiles three stalled writers to a crumbling regional homestead. A fourth arrives and the dynamic shifts dangerously until a story arrives and pulls them together yet brings with it a misfortune none saw coming.

One agent. Four writers and a book that takes on a life of its own.

They made a pact at twenty. At forty, someone's about to collect.

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Seven childhood friends confront the consequences of an insurance policy scheme hatched as reckless youths. When one is diagnosed terminally ill, greed enters the room.

They made a pact at twenty. At forty, someone's about to collect.

"No one was having the life we were. Poor bastards."

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My love letter to Sydney, stupidity and youth. A kaleidoscope of brilliant mistakes that only make sense years later.

"No one was having the life we were. Poor bastards."

“That so few dare be eccentric marks the chief danger of our times."

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Arthur Jenkins, a retired engineer, cracks the biomechanical code for extreme fast bowling. What the aged man goes on to create inside a disused WWII aerodrome will leave England’s cricket establishment, and the Ashes — forever changed.

“That so few dare be eccentric marks the chief danger of our times."

About the Author

BIO – ELLIOT McGARVA

While many suffer for their art, I neglected mine and like countless twenty- and thirty-somethings, I got in the way of my goal.

Completing my first manuscript at 38 I penned another four novels working abroad and in Sydney's IT industry before stepping away from full-time employment in 2026 to write my sixth.

A lifelong compulsion to say “Yes!” to every opportunity, hobby, and misadventure served me well and I have landed in 2026 with five books. All standalone titles, spanning four Commercial Fiction and a portrait of life in the late 1980s.

I write and reside on New South Wales' South Coast, yet detour regularly through regional NSW and Victoria in a 1984 Viscount Grand Tourer.

When not writing, I'm in Sydney with my family, planning motorbike trips, nursing a gym injury, or coaxing native plants into existence - all the while begging my art’s forgiveness ... and hoping it might take me back.

I’m glad to be a self-published author and encourage anyone sitting on a writing project to push on and see it through.

Elliot’s writing has a distinctive style, pairing stark realism with a quiet, lyrical sense of promise.

Elliot is a masterful storyteller. His keen emotional insight brings every page to life.

Creative and poetic. Elliot creates unforgettable characters and narratives that linger long after the final word.