I G Armstrong

Slaughtering Butterflies: a Historical Time-travel Romance I G Armstrong

A Gothic Time-Travel Romance On the morning of his death, the day that it snows from a cloudless sky, the doomed Eduardo Rafael Valdez wanders into a ruined mansion house in search of some respite from feelings of drug-fuelled insanity, he tries to disentangle past and present, reality and delusion. Set in the present and in 1890s England, Slaughtering Butterflies is the story of a deeply troubled mind approaching a premature demise. A historical gothic-fantasy Romance, this is the tale of a life, of love, delusion and death; it is the story of the inhabitants of the infamous Victorian estate Hawkesbury Towers, a crumbling Gothic masterpiece haunted by memories of orgiastic parties, forbidden love, dark secrets and cruel murder. Here is the notorious Sir William Earl of Hawkesbury, debauched aristocrat, philosopher of corruption, Opium addict. Charles Puchet is an obsessed architectural genius and husband to Isabel, a woman out of time, fascinated by modernity and the future yet trapped by Victorian society and a love-less marriage. Here finally is Eduardo Rafael Valdez, traveller in time, lost in search of some meaning on the day of his death. Combining psychological drama, gothic magic realism, mystery and suspense, Slaughtering Butterflies is a love story and a meditation on the meaning of a life on the day that it ends. It is a literary page-turner, an intellectual suspense, a heart-breaking reflection on love and loss.