I have published a few short stories about imaginary cities here. Pretty early on I realised that I liked the format, and would just press on to prepare a whole collection on imaginary cities. The format is basically around five hundred words on an imaginary city, ideally with some sort of twist or observation included. On writing them some themes have emerged, a few modern composers are named, a few real cities are alluded to, representation and reality feature. Quite a few are basically dreams that I have written out in story form.
I suppose the basic inspiration was Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, but equally the spoof academic tone of the early Peter Greenaway shorts, like A Walk Through H, has been an influence.
I have also provided some framing stories and incorporated some lines and ideas that I have been kicking about forever.
The collection is now largely complete, so I am at the final proofing stage. I have written the stories on Scrivener (for Mac), and that allows me to format for Kindle, but it is a bit tricky. Having said that, it is like doing a web page, have a go, check it on a few devices, have another go, and carry on till you arrive at something you are reasonably happy with. Scrivener will let me prepare a version for Kindle and then the Amazon Send to Kindle App lets me send it to my own Kindle. It is amazing to read your own work on a Kindle, with Scrivener you can add a cover and contents, etc, so it does have the potential to all look very professional.
There is also the usual proofing for typos and the like, not sure whether I will just print it all off and proof that, or proof on my Kindle, or a mixture of both. The whole collection comes in at under twenty thousand words, so it should not take too long.
Things are pretty busy at work, so it might be a wee while before I finally have it all uploaded to the Amazon store, but not far off now.
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