ARABESQUE

  

 

ARABESQUE

M G da Mota

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GENRE:  historical psychological drama

 

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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.

 

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Excerpt:

 

First Variation – Amadeus 

Berlin, East Germany, July 1965

 

Amadeus gazes at his wife. Margarete or Grete, as is her preference, sleeps, exhausted from the effort of birth. Her hair appears glued to her forehead, wet from perspiration. Next to her, in a plain white hospital baby cot, their daughter is also asleep. He touches the little girl’s head gently. The baby, a small bundle inside the clothes too large for her, stirs marginally but does not wake. He arranges the cover around her slight body to keep her warm. She was born with hair, if one could call the blonde fluff hair. His chest swells. He already loves that little person with all the force of his being. Swallowing a couple of emotional tears he realises he will do anything, anything, to protect her. He wants her to grow up in peace, in freedom, to be able to make her own choices. With a heavy heart he wonders whether such wishes will ever be possible in this German Democratic Republic where democratic is a word devoid of meaning.

 

East Germany may be a lot of things but democratic is not one of them. Will he be able to adequately protect this tiny being and give her all she deserves? His chest tightens. He may have to shelter her from her own mother. Feeling shivers down his spine he recalls how his fears, his suspicions were confirmed a few months earlier, just after Grete told him she was pregnant.

 

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Why you became a writer/your journey to publication

 

Writing is something I find impossible to not do. What I mean is that writing is something I am unable to live without. I need it as much as my eyesight, breathing, eating or drinking. It is essential for my life and for me to be happy. It is a passion, a compulsion and when, for some reason, I can’t write for a certain period of time, I become grumpy, sad and irritable.

I began writing as a child to entertain myself. I have suffered from asthma since I was two years old, which meant that more often than not I was ill, with shortness of breath, had to be taken to hospital to get oxygen and took countless amounts of cortisone tablets. My parents spent money they didn’t have in specialist doctors to see if there was something to improve my health. All this meant that I rarely could go out and play with other children. I couldn’t run or do anything physically stressful because I would get an immediate asthma attack and couldn’t breathe. So, I entertained myself by having stories read to me and inventing stories with my teddy bears and dolls. Once I started school and learned to read and write, I read anything I could get my hands on and I began writing down the little stories I imagined for fun. Later, as a teenager, I began writing longer stories and adventure stories not just for me but to read to my much younger brother. 

Gradually I realised I was good at writing. I won a couple of prizes at grammar school for the compositions I wrote and when eventually I went to University I chose to study Literature, Languages and History to perfect my writing and improve my research skills. I also contributed articles and stories to the Uni’s newspaper. I continued to write stories for myself. At that time and for many years, it was only my brother and my best friend who read them. Then he convinced me I should try and publish. It wasn’t easy. 

My first published novel was with a vanity publisher and things didn’t go well at all. I was rather naïve and thought the kind of thing they were offering me was normal. I learned through my own mistake. After that I had for a few years a rather nice small publisher in the United States. Sadly, due to family reasons, they were forced to close the business. It was then I decided to self-publish and I’ve been doing it ever since. I am happy with it and enjoy the fact that I have full control of my books and what I do with them. I may try submitting to publishers in the future but for the time being I don’t feel the need of doing so.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

Website: https://www.flowingprose.com/

 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/m.g.da.mota

 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margarida-mota-bull/

 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mgdamota/

 

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION 

 

One randomly chosen winner via rafflecopter will win a $25 Amazon/BN.com gift card.

 

Enter here:

 

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Follow the tour:

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