Virtual Book Tour + #Giveaway: ARABESQUE by M G da Mota @GoddessFish

ARABESQUE

M G da Mota

GENRE: Historical Psychological Drama

BLURB:

A woman living alone in a coastal Sussex town in 1998 plants a copper beech sapling at 3 a.m. on a dark, cold night. Why?

A ballet dancer in 1960s East Germany is oppressed, longs for escaping with his little daughter but not his wife. Why? Will he make it?

In 2022 Karsten von Stein, widower and principal of the Royal Ballet, with two young children, meets Ivone Benjamim, a Portuguese, newly-arrived principal dancer. They discover a magical chemistry when dancing and soon it transfers to their private lives.

Against the background of ballet and its dancers, a woman called Grace tells her story from a rehab centre. Obsessive, delusional she begins believing Ivone robbed her of the man of her dreams—Karsten. And then a skeleton is found in a garden...What connects all these people and their stories?

You’ll be the audience facing the stage of this balletic novel.

Excerpt:

Prologue

Southeast England, late November 1998

She looks out of the window. Dark night. Black but clear. Twinkling dots punctuate the raven velvet of the sky. Stars shimmer cold and icy. Their light slightly wavering. She knows it is the Earth’s atmosphere. But that’s neither here nor there. It doesn’t matter a jot. Not at this moment anyway.

Darkness is the important thing. No moon. New moon. Why do people refer to a new moon when there is no moon or when one cannot see the moon from our revolving, ever turning blue dot? The moon is still up there in the sky. It’s just that at some point during its orbit its farther side from us is facing the sun. So the side facing us is dark and we can’t see it. As simple as that.

Tonight is new moon. An ideal night. She opens the window quietly and glances at the houses to her right first, then to her left. Like hers they are all immersed in silent darkness. People sleep. She looks at the luminous hands of her alarm clock on the side table. The shorter hand points at the number three, or close to it, and the long hand at somewhere between ten and fifteen. Probably around 3:12 in the morning. Her house stands almost but not quite alone on top of the hill. To her right, looking from her bedroom window that faces the back garden, there are two houses. The one closest to hers is empty.

Interview with M G da Mota

What is your favorite ice cream flavor?

I’m sorry to disappoint most people but I don’t actually like ice cream, simply because I don’t like cream and I think, perhaps with the exception of dark chocolate, I can taste cream in all flavours.

Which mythological creature are you most like?

A phoenix because it always rises from the ashes.

First book you remember making an indelible impression on you.

There were two: The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas and Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I was a child, around 8 years old or so, and these books instilled in me a taste for seeking different places and experiences, adventure and travelling.

How do you develop your plot and characters?

That’s a question I always find very difficult to answer because it implies a method and I don’t have one. A plot and characters associated with it develop naturally in my mind after something inspired, impressed or shocked me. They just happen. I take notes so I don’t forget things like names, personalities, histories, family as well as key moments in the plot. I begin research if needed but when I think of something to write I have like an invisible thread in my head with a beginning, a middle and an end plus the main characters associated with it. As I start writing, things can change a bit, I add things and take others out but that thread and its associated characters are in my head. They just are and I always follow them. I don’t have a method to create or develop them. The process happens naturally to me. It gradually emerges in my mind and I must write it down or I won’t be able to sleep or concentrate on other things. In my personal case, it’s all there is to it.

Describe your writing space.

There isn’t anything special about my writing space, I don’t think. I write directly on my laptop though I often take notes on a normal paper notebook by hand. I have two places at home where I enjoy writing. One is in the spare room, which has a desk with a special place for my laptop (it used to be a desktop but I don’t have that anymore, as laptops are more practical and easier). This room has a sofa bed normally for my brother and his wife or friends when they come to visit. There are shelves with many books in this room and in the other room next door. Some are reference books on a wide variety of subjects, others are just books I read for entertainment, mostly before the event of e-books. I tend to read on my e-reader nowadays. I don’t really have space to store any more paper books. The other space where I like to write is the dining corner in the lounge. The table is close to the large windows that overlook my garden. It has a lot of light and I can listen to music or watch the birds outside. This implies that if I need a reference book I have to go upstairs and bring it down—but that’s actually good exercise.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

M G da Mota is Margarida Mota-Bull’s pen name for fiction. She is a Portuguese-British novelist with a love for classical music, ballet and opera. Under her real name she also writes reviews of live concerts, CDs, DVDs and books for two classical music magazines on the web: MusicWeb International and Seen and Heard International. She is a member of the UK Society of Authors, speaks four languages and lives in Sussex with her husband. Her website, called flowingprose.com, contains photos and information.

Connect with M G da Mota

Website ~ Facebook ~ LinkedIn ~ Instagram

Giveaway:

$25 Amazon/BN

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