RES MAGNVS PROXIMA

RES MAGNVS PROXIMA ‘BLOG HOP’

Having been put up for this by the devious and my suffering applauded by, K.T. Davies. Or from one set of mysterious first and middle initials to another…

What is the working title of your book?

Invisible City. 

Where did the idea for the book come from? 

From the feeling you get in certain great cities when traveling through them late at night, namely that the buildings themselves are in motion - obeying a secret plan and forming subtle new arrangements even as you walk past them. That behind their facades lurk aspects of a hidden city whose meaning and entry can only be arrived at by those who can decipher the layout of their stones as a type of code. 

But most of all, from the visual work of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, specifically his Carceri d'invenzione or Imaginary Prisons, but also his startling views of a crumbling and ancient Rome that never existed or perhaps did, depending on how you look upon Antiquity and its untrustworthy chroniclers.

What genre does your book fall under?

Speculative fiction, strange fantasy, horror, with an undercoating of weird tales and classical antiquity. Rat people and Euripides, gaslights, Romans, Phoenicians, mutant fruit bats and petroleum deities intermix freely inside it. 

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

All future movies will feature CGI superheroes endlessly replicating themselves amidst digitalized explosions and simulated laughter. No human actors will be used in the industry after 2017.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book? 

In the city of the lost who fill find the finder?

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? 

My book will crawl out of its underground sewer and devour all other works of fiction it finds on the surface which are too sluggish or inattentive to run away.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? 

Roughly a year. Editing and re-writing of the novel has at least tripled that figure. But it’s competing with five other book shaped projects that I’m working on simultaneously, and of course, I’m naturally lethargic.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? 

I like to consider it has its own charms, and its own flawed origins. In truth it owes very little to other contemporary fantasies, or at least I hope - and more to a feverish nightmare spawned by Apuleius, Procopius, Borges, and of course, Calvino. 

Who or what inspired you to write this book?  

All of the writers named above and many others. Most if not all of them safely dead.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? 

It will feature some lovely artwork on its cover and frontispiece. It will tell only the truth about entirely fictitious events. 

Nominate five people to roll this onto

Like Atlas and Heracles, I cast my eye about and find this p̶o̶o̶r̶ ̶s̶u̶c̶k̶e̶r̶, worthy author and writer,  R J Barker at http://wah-wahwriter.blogspot.co.uk/. It's been kindly agreed that he'll take this pillar off my hands while I nip next door to the communal latrine. I've promised to bring him back a 'golden apple.'