Goddess Fish Promotions Book Tour – Arabesque by M G da Mota

GENRE: historical psychological drama

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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.

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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.

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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.

Website * Facebook * LinkedIn * Instagram

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Author Interview

Do you have any tattoos? Where? When did you get it/them? Where are they on your body?

I have no tattoos and never felt inclined to have one done. However, if (and that’s a big if) I would ever decide to have a tattoo it would be on my shoulder at the back, of a sunset over the ocean and a bird in silhouette flying against the red sinking sun.

Is your life anything like it was two years ago?

My life is generally similar to what it was two years ago but I always try to find something new to make it interesting like a new book project; travel to new countries and learn about them, their people and cultures; visits to performances and cultural events that I love; spend quality time with my family.

How long have you been writing?

I’ve started writing stories when I was 8 or 9 years old. At first because I was always ill with asthma and couldn’t go outside to play with the other children. So, to entertain myself, I read as much as I could and invented little stories that I put down on paper. I still have some of these. Later, as a teenager, I began writing stories for my brother (who is seven years younger than me) that I read aloud to him before he was able to read himself. So, I’ve been writing for a very long time.

What advice would you give to a new writer just starting out?

I don’t know of any advice apart from the obvious, meaning never give up and write about what you know and love. Other than that, every person is different. What works for me may not work for someone else. So, each person must find out what works for them.

Tell us something about your newest release that is NOT in the blurb.

A middle-aged detective inspector (an important character in the novel) deals with the skeleton found in a garden, realizing it is a cold case from many years ago and ultimately through intelligence and determination she uncovers the identity of the human remains thus solving a twenty-four year old mystery.