Due to issues with the recording, Maria has provided a full transcript of the interview:
Hi, I am here to introduce myself and this book to you.
In order, to do it well, I am going to share my answers with you to the following questions:
WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DO YOU DO?
I am Maria de Fátima, born in Africa, brought up in Portugal. Portuguese is my mother tongue. I moved to Scotland for the first time in July 2007.
I fell in love with the English language and with the culture and the natural landscape of Scotland that offered me a seed to write this story. And this love persists to these days.
I received training and developed experience as a carer providing care to different groups of people.
The professional experience as a carer taught me so much about the human condition. At the same time, it gave me a source of inspiration and raw material to write about life with imagination. Because I do believe that real life, real people are always a source of inspiration for any kind of writing.
I’d like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the human richness and valuable professional experience providing care to people with learning disabilities. This experience opened my mind, my heart and my eyes to the value of treating anyone as a unique individual without preconceptions or judgements. We can transfer this skill for writing too.
And the second valuable professional experience was providing living in care. As a living in carer, I could travel to different locations in England and learn so much from such a diversity of stories and situations that I could witness. From that I could learn flexibility and resilience to deal with life. In my point of view, this is another valuable skill transferable for writing.
WHAT IS YOUR LATEST BOOK CALLED
Serendipity
WHAT INSPIRED YOUR STORY?
Scotland in the first place. Serendipity takes you to Helge’s Hole in Forres, the Hermitage Forest in Dunkeld and Glen Lyon in Perth.
These three real places in Scotland are the sceneries of this story. I visited and photographed these places and the illustrations in the book are inspired by the photos of these places in Scotland.
Love was also my source of inspiration. It is a story of a grandmother’s greater love for a granddaughter, a mother for a daughter and the boundless bounty of the natural realm for each one of us.
WHAT INSPIRED YOUR MAIN CHARACTERS?
Although it’s a fantasy story, in Serendipity the grandmother, Julia, telling a story to her granddaughter was inspired by the memory of my own grandmother telling a story to the little girl that I was.
The beginning of the story starts with a sky covered by a mantle of fog. I can read to you these sentences from the opening of the story: “It was a cloudy morning. There was no sun. The sky was covered by a mantle of fog.” This scenario was inspired by the increasing challenges of air pollution in urban and dense populated cities.
For this reason, the girl could not go out to school and to play outdoors with other children. The grandmother starts telling a story to alleviate the sadness of her granddaughter.
The heroine of this tale is the little traveller girl. To build the psychological profile of this character, I was inspired by the universal characteristics of curiosity, wonder, ingenuous and the gifts of believing and trusting that we associate to what is to be child.
WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT WRITING?
Writing allows us to re-create ourselves, to find our voice, to break loneliness and to reach others.
It’s a life-saving too. I do believe that Doctors should prescribe poems and books too. They will do good for health.
WHAT IS ONE PIECE OF ADVICE YOU'D GIVE TO ANYBODY WHO WANTS TO WRITE A BOOK?
Fernando Pessoa, a respected and admired Portuguese poet of the XX century has a quote that I love sharing to encourage other people to find and affirm their voice.
“There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist.”
My piece of advice is do not underestimate your inspiration and will to write - we know it takes blood, sweat and tears.
Never, never give up, in spite of the voices that may judge you or undermine your confidence. Keep moving forward!
And read, read, read books, look for affordable books, be curious.
When I went to the UK, I found great books in charity shops that were vital for me to fall in love by the English language.
WHERE CAN WE BUY YOUR BOOK?
Serendipity is available on the webpage of Palavro Publishing (an imprint of the Arkbound Foundation) on www.palavro.org
Finally, I would like to say a word about the Publisher. Palavro is an imprint of the Arkbound Foundation, a UK literature charity, based in Glasgow and Bristol that supports authors, like me, with a story to tell to have a voice.