Win a $25 GC: Arabesque by M.G. da Mota

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. One randomly chosen winner via rafflecopter will win a $25 Amazon/BN.com gift card. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

If you could have one paranormal ability, what would it be?

I don’t believe in the paranormal or the supernatural so the honest answer is none.

What is one thing your readers would be most surprised to learn about you?

Probably that I worked as a TV presenter in my late twenties and that I learned to fly helicopters several years ago.

When writing descriptions of your hero/ine, what feature do you start with?

That depends on the perspective. If it’s another character describing their feelings, it will be their impression so I imagine the first impression when looking at someone. I start with eyes and smile because that is usually what anyone notices first when meeting someone for the first time. If I am just introducing the hero/ine as part of the narrative I will start with what will be most important for the story and that could be physical attributes, personality features or artistic talent.

Are you a plotter or a pantser?

I’m a bit of both, really. It depends on what I’m writing. Especially for novels with a lot of historical and/or music facts I need to plot due to the need for research and accuracy but I also let the narrative and the characters flow (almost) freely and watch them take shape. Family relationships and family trees also need to be carefully plotted. What I never do is a big, detailed plan with everything that the novel will entail. That just doesn’t work for me and I find that it never turns up the way I originally planned.

Did you learn anything from writing this book? If so, what?

In addition to what I already knew because I studied languages, literature and history, and I was living in West Germany at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I learned more details about life in East Germany before the collapse of communism, about the existence of the secret police and informants with code names in all professions who denounced colleagues to this secret police. I also learned new details about ballet, how a company works and rehearsal details of the principal roles by the principal dancers.

If you could apologize to someone in your past, who would it be?

I can’t think of anyone I needed to apologise and didn’t in my past. I have no regrets and always had a good, open relationship with the people I cared about.

If you could keep a mythical/ paranormal creature as a pet, what would you have?

As I’ve mentioned when answering a similar question before, I don’t believe in the paranormal or the supernatural. So I can’t say. I don’t read books that deal with those things or watch films/documentaries about it, so I don’t know the creatures. Again the honest answer to your question is none.

How do you keep your writing different from all the others that write in this particular genre?

First of all, I don’t have a genre as such. Most of my novels have elements of various genres such as: historical, mystery, suspense, romance, contemporary, etc. I have written two psychological thrillers and I believe what makes them different to others in the same genre is that the characters are different (people with careers in the arts and performing arts, for example). They tend to be international, intelligent, well-travelled people. Also the locations where the stories take place do not appear in most novels in the English language. I don’t use just the UK (where I live), I always base part or most of the stories in Germany and Portugal because they are countries I know well. I often mention other places I’ve visited and my characters tend to be open-minded, liberal people, often strong females in less common professional situations.

What are the best and worst pieces of writing advice you ever received?
The best was definitely to write about what I know and what I like to read. The worst was that a novel has to obey a strict plan and structure and be aimed commercially at a certain section of the market. I can’t write like that. It may well be great advice for some people but it doesn’t work for me. I need to write what I feel and what is inside my head.

Are the experiences in this book based on someone you know, or events in your own life?

No, they are not. The story was inspired by ballet and some of the dancers I admire but it is not based on their lives and it is not about them. Having said that, there are always things that relate to my personal life since I am the one writing the story, particularly in situations of loss, meaning when a character loses a loved one and is bereaved. I describe such feelings in the way I felt them myself when people I loved dearly passed away.

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.

Enjoy an 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.

About the Author:

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 Buy the book at Amazon.

a Rafflecopter giveaway