Butterfly Assassins by Steve Walsh - Book Tour

Book Blurb

Sally Bennett was an orphan and an only child. Incomprehensibly, at the age of ten, both her parents died in quick succession. Proof that fate deals our cards blind. One can be dealt three buses in a row, a run of traffic lights on red, or a pair of deaths; it all depends on the shuffle. Destiny was playing its hand and having led with a heart, the face card of her mother, Sally had no other option but to follow suit.

When Wilson and Daisy play with the Tetris blocks of the future, problems soon stack up. Butterfly Assassins is the sequel to Wilson indeed and takes us back to Sally Bennett, the car accident, shared dreams, and a divine intervention outside Davenport train station.

 

Buying Links
Amazon UK - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Butterfly-Assassins-WiFi-Dreams-Book/dp/1916486126

Amazon US - https://www.amazon.com/Butterfly-Assassins-WiFi-Dreams-Book/dp/1916486126

Excerpt
Sally must have fallen asleep, because some time later her eyes once again blinked open to the sound of muted laughter and cupped hand to ear mutterings. This time the culprits seemed almost within touching distance, just a metre or so away, somewhere in the void of pitch-black space beyond the open cubicle door. The voices were definitely those of children and registered as an older boy and a younger girl. The whispering and giggling continued for a few seconds more and then abruptly stopped, suggesting a dare had been issued and the challenge accepted. Sally was acutely aware of her embarrassing situation. She suspected the unruly kids from earlier had entered the toilet block after she’d nodded off on the loo. They’d seen her sitting there, the light had gone out and now they were somewhere out in the darkness revelling in her predicament. Sally raised a foot to kick the cubicle door shut. In doing so, the movement detector once again reacted with a stuttering start and spat out a single strobe of light.

The older child was indeed a boy, aged about ten. He was scrawny and scruffy in ill-fitting school clothes. Short trousers, two sizes too big flared below his knees and the folds of a coarse cotton shirt were roughly tucked into the waistband. A belt of knotted cord pulled everything tight to his narrow waist like the drawstring on a rucksack. The scuffed shoes were clearly oversized hand-me-downs as were the baggy socks sagging around sparrow legs. The younger child was aged about five or six. She was wearing the pleated skirt and short-sleeved blouse of a summer term, school uniform. The tangle of corkscrew ringlets, the rag doll clamped firmly under her arm and the thumb stuck in her mouth all suggested she was missing the loving touch of her mother.

Though the image was captured in the time frame of a lightning burst, Sally would never forget the detail. How the boy’s face carried a look of shock with his mouth and eyes open wide. The girl’s face, frozen in the moment, was set with the defiant stare the young employ to mask vulnerability. It was as though a ‘special effect’ flash had been selected on a camera and in the instant of exposure, their presence had been embossed with incandescence. As if a sparkler in dexterous hands had sketched an outline of their essential features against a Bonfire Night sky.  The fleeting impression was consumed by light when a second pulse of photons chased the first away.

 

 

For twenty years Steve Walsh honed his skills in prose as an advertising copywriter; the ‘ideas’ man in a Manchester based marketing agency that carried his name.

In the late 1990’s he stumbled into the world of the dotcom entrepreneur and his claim to fame is as the creator of the hotel booking service, laterooms.com and the first car insurance comparison site, easycover.com. So, the birth of Meerkats, a Welsh opera singer and being confused.com might be considered as down to him, for which he apologises. 

He now uses his vivid imagination and gentle Mancunian wit to write visionary fantasy novels with bold concepts. Wilson indeed, the first book in his trilogy The WiFi of Dreams takes the reader on a richly imagined, fact meets fiction adventure story to which we can relate and feel we can touch. A whimsical interrogation of the inexplicable and fundamental tenets of our lives – the role and meaning of dreams, the nature of the hereafter, hard and soft science, a love story – what more can you want? 

Butterfly Assassins, the second book in the trilogy, will be published in Summer 2021.

In a recent survey, 85% of people said yes to the question: “Do you believe there are things out there that science can’t explain?”

If you’re one of those 85%, you’ll love The WiFi of Dreams series.

Born and bred in the north west of England, Steve Walsh has three children and likes to fly fish in his spare time.