Virtual Book Tour: Arabesque by M G da Mota

 

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:

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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AUTHOR INTERVIEW

AR: Have you ever had an imaginary friend?

I’ve never had an imaginary friend as such but I have conversations with my characters all the time when I’m alone at home or at night if sleep eludes me.

AR: Do you have any phobias?

Yes. I’m afraid of spiders for no logical reason, and I wouldn’t say it’s a phobia but I don’t trust dogs. Some of them do scare me.

AR: Do you listen to music when you're writing?

I occasionally listen to music when I’m writing, especially when I’m having difficulty concentrating because there is something worrying me or I’m sad about something, however, generally I prefer silence.

AR: Do you ever read your stories out loud?

No, not really. Though I do whisper them when I’m revising them or going through the edits/suggestions of my editor.

AR: Tell us about your main character and who inspired him/her.

My main character in this novel (Arabesque) is a German classic ballet dancer, called Karsten von Stein, who is also a widower. He lost his wife two years earlier to cancer during the difficult times of the Covid pandemic. He has two young children who are a pair of twins. He lives in England and is a principal of the Royal Ballet in London. He juggles his personal life, the children, his family in Germany, with his demanding professional life as a ballet dancer and it is never easy. He goes through traumatic events when he loses his wife and also through difficult events related to his family in Germany with whom he maintains a good relationship. A new dancing colleague from Portugal comes into the Royal Ballet and into Karsten’s life. Their brilliant dancing partnership soon transforms into love. Karsten then begins rebuilding his life but there are complications, as there is a woman who is obsessed with him. 

The character and the story were inspired by the beautiful, exquisite and intriguing dancing of some of my favourite Royal Ballet principals but the novel is not about them. It is a love tribute (my personal love tribute) to ballet, its beauty, technical prowess and how it can bring joy to people’s lives.

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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.

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