Gomes are as old as time itself and ruled long before the dinosaurs. When the earth cooled, they went to sleep. It is only recently that humans have disturbed them, digging into the earth for treasures and tossing aside the Gomes like worthless rubble. Gomes only reveal themselves to selected humans, either befriend or scare them.  Because children have a better imagination and are more accepting of unusual things than most grown ups, children find it easier to recognize and interact with gomes.

Wullie has lived for thousands of years and has met many amazing people along the way. Unlike most gomes who eat rocks, Wullie eats a big variety of types of metal and uses their properties to help him. If someone grabs him by surprise, whether he is in his living state or his petrified rock state, he can sting them to get away. He also carries a lizard skin backpack with him, which holds cool and helpful things. What sort of things you ask? Well, you’ll have to read and find out!

When you first meet Wullie it seems like he is just a delightful addition to our heroes’ own comfortable world.  Sure, he is rude and grumpy, but he is also witty, kind-hearted, and has so much energy that he gets mixed up in our regular human world in hilarious and unexpected ways.  But, the more you hang around Wullie, the more you realize that he will take you on fantastical adventures to unfathomable places.

Hugh McDougall first met Wullie when he was just a wee lad of eight. Although Hugh didn’t take Wullie for granted, he wasn’t as astonished as you might think.  Growing up in the Scottish countryside the idea of running into a magical creature on any given day was not all that surprising. Wullie would often travel with Hugh, so Hugh got introduced to an amazing variety of other gomes around the world.  Hugh kept the “gomish” part of his adult life secret because most grownups don’t believe in magical creatures like gomes.

Margaret and Eleanor Crabtree’s life got started in an unusual way.  They are African twins who were left in a basket inside St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh.  Their mother left a note of apology saying that she wanted the girls to have a better life that she could give them.  The girls were fostered and then adopted by Alan and Elizabeth Crabtree, a middle-class Scottish couple who work at Edinburgh University.  Elizabeth is a physician with an interest in tropical medicine.  Alan is a professor of Scottish history.

At the start of the Wullie stories Finnley James Murray McDougall is eleven-years-old. Finn is friendly, kind, and is a bit of a dreamer. Finn lives a pretty typical boring schoolboy life… until his eccentric Great Uncle Hugh arrives from Scotland and gives Finn a most unusual gift – a smelly rock that Hugh tells him is a “very special Scottish paperweight.”  When this comes alive it becomes a scruffy, rude, bad-tempered rock creature called Wullie who brings danger and disaster with him wherever he goes.

Hadley Kobayashi lives next door to Finn in a quiet neighborhood in Seattle called Magnolia.  At the start of Blackhope Scar she is eleven-years old and, like Finn, in sixth grade at the Magnolia Academy of Arts and Science. Hadley is really smart and is interested in science and spy-stuff. She is pretty, but is not into “girly clothes” or school gossip.  She is teased by the “popular crowd” at school. Her dad is the CEO of a company that makes all sorts of cool gadgets, and her mother is. . . a bit flaky.

Marie-Claire Blancmange grew up in Provence in the South of France where her father owned a boat-building company. She quickly learned that France was the greatest country in the world and that she should look down on anything and anyone who was not French. She also learned from her father that you could make a lot more money if you, shall we say, bent the rules.

When a meddling Scottish auditor found some so-called illegal transactions and fraudulent business practices in her father’s (and later her own) business, her father was forced to resign and her brother was arrested.  Marie-Claire still quivers with anger at the insolence of the Scots to thwart her family’s plans.  They will pay for this… oh, how they will pay!

Bluebeard-Of-Muirkirk is the leader of the Pit-Bing-Gomes. He is Wullie’s archenemy.  He is about three times as tall as Wullie and at least twice as broad.  In his petrified state he just looks like a sooty big lump of coal but when he comes to life, he has two fierce red eyes and below that, a snarling mouth that drools oily spittle.  Bluebeard gets his name from the bright streaks of cobalt blue metal in his beard.  He also has a broad streak of yellow luminous paint running down his back.  He didn’t always have that, of course.  Wullie was responsible for giving him his yellow streak.  He hates all humans, although he will work with crooks if he thinks it will help him get revenge against Wullie.

David Kennedy McCulloch is the author of the Wullie-the-Mahaar-Gome fantasy fiction series. These are scruffy, rude, bad-tempered mystery adventures for the young at heart. They are strongly based in Scottish folklore but will take you into places all over the world and into your imagination. The main character, Wullie (Scottish for William or Willie or Bill or…) is a grumpy rock creature, or gome (not gnome! Wullie is likely to throw something at you if you call him a gnome) who becomes entangled in the lives of humans in the most delightful, scary, hilarious, dangerous ways. David grew up in a quiet rural backwater of Scotland where his dad was the village schoolteacher. He got marooned on an island in the wild, wet, wonderful Pacific Northwest where his writing is interrupted by visits from his kids and grandkids. Most of the time he is not scruffy, rude, bad-tempered or mysterious. But sometimes he is.

Maggie and Eleanor Crabtree love to annoy stuffy grownups with their quick wit and reckless behavior. But when the girls get kidnapped and imprisoned in their own family mansion on the rugged west coast of Scotland life becomes a lot less fun. This gang of international art thieves will make their lives miserable until their father, a famous art historian, gives the crooks a priceless collection of goblets, brooches and swords.

Surrounded by evil, mean humans and a slobbering guard dog they have no way to escape… unless a scruffy, rude, bad-tempered rock creature can help them come up with a plan involving secret codes, frozen pizza, a tape recorder, stinking sausage meat, a rusty paint can and a chamber pot full of poop.

Finnley McDougall’s boring schoolboy life in Seattle gets turned upside down when Great Uncle Hugh gives him a most unusual gift – a scruffy, rude, bad-tempered Scottish rock creature called Wullie who brings danger and disaster with him wherever he goes.From French snobs in fancy hotels, rusting barges on the Seattle waterfront, abandoned coalmines and flooded quarries in the Scottish hillsides filled with bullies, gangsters, slobbering dogs and weird food Finn is drawn into an evil plot that threatens to destroy everything he loves… including Edinburgh Castle.The only person who thinks that Finn is smart enough or brave enough to survive all this is his best friend and next door neighbor, Hadley Kobayashi, a girl who is wiser and tougher than Finn.

A beloved sculpture is stolen by an acid-spitting rock creature in Barcelona. A smart, brave thirteen year-old girl deals with her father’s ditzy girlfriends in Seattle. A doleful sandstone gome battles wolf hounds and guard geese at Cragganbogle Castle on the Western Isles of Scotland. When Finnley and Hadley’s Seventh Grade class is invited to spend a vacation in Spain these unlikely events are drawn together into an adventure filled with more danger, weird food, snooty popular girls, underground cave cities and evil bog witches than they could have hoped for. Can they survive the Rock Pit of Torture and Justice, attacks by a cloud of midges and divebombing bonxies, and the embarrassment of Hadley’s mother’s naked Druid dance under the Midsummer moonlight? Only if their scruffy, rude, bad-tempered companion, Wullie, can do the impossible.

Finnley McDougall’s best friend Hadley is dying of gomebane poison. The secret cure was lost five hundred years ago when the Inca Empire collapsed. And unless he can control his emotions Finn will stiffen up and turn to stone. Dealing with school bullies and obnoxious popular girls was a lot easier than this. And to make things even worse, Wullie, his scruffy, rude, bad-tempered friend and protector is being hunted by the most evil gomes in Europe.Can Finn trust Varry Doo, the bog witch of Calanais, to help? Will he survive getting slathered with alpaca grease and soot, eating freeze-dried llama meat, and getting covered in condor vomit? If so he may need to crawl through the snow past decomposing sheep carcasses and an army of angry gomes to try to save the day. It won’t be as easy as it sounds.

A scruffy, rude, bad-tempered mystery adventure! Public buildings and monuments are collapsing around the world… and no one knows why! A reclusive multinational corporation claims to have found the answer. Finnley McDougall and his best friend Hadley are growing apart from each other as things at school become weirder and weirder. Tessa of the Golden Star remains stuck in the wrong place and time. Wullie-The-Mahaar-Gome, their scruffy, rude, bad-tempered protector seems unable to help. Despite the victory in the Battle of Tårsjo Plain life on the planet does not seem safer. Power in the gome world is shifting to a city in Central America ruled by a cruel tyrant who uses slaves to build up his empire and protects his city by a volcano below and a lake up above filled with murderous bull sharks. Can anything restore balance between the worlds of gomes and humans? The answer may lie in an inaccessible canyon on the Navajo Reservation on the Colorado Plateau that is drawing in the attention of the world.