Are stories really artefacts - found objects that seem whole and intact, that a writer merely picks up?

I like the word "artefact" - my undergraduate degree was in archaeology, and I've always found myself intrigued by the physical traces of human behaviour. Sometimes I think I'm less comfortable engaging with actual characters than with the things they leave behind, the clues and evidence (probably why I like crime writing, too). I'm a visual thinker, and usually my story ideas are triggered by an interesting object, or a particular location (often a building) in which my characters play out their dilemmas. I'm excited by the interactions between inner and outer landscape. But that initial image is really the only part of a story that comes into my mind "fully-formed". The hard part - the part that feels like the real, rewarding labour of writing - is the teasing out of why that vivid picture is in some way disturbing or attractive to me. That process can go in any number of directions, and spawn countless stories. The difficulty is choosing just one.

Is it a myth that short stories don't sell? What is it that readers can't seem to find that they do find in novels?

It's mysterious: publishers claim that the story doesn't sell, but some booksellers report a good response to short-story collections, and people are always telling me they love to read them, so I don't know. Certainly it's hard to pitch a book of short stories in this economy, and I'm very grateful that my publisher, Umuzi, was willing to take a chance on a collection like this. A few local publishers are doing great things to support the short story form. I'm not sure why the novel is in the ascendance at the moment - it hasn't always been so. I could speculate that the long form offers a better opportunity for escapism. A novel can take the reader away and immerse them in an imaginary universe for an extended period of time, whereas the short story, with its spare, often stylised slice of experience, is perhaps not as good a vehicle for that kind of transport. Usually, I prefer to read books of stories by one writer, rather than collections of diverse voices - presented together, one writer's stories can present different facets of a particular vision, and give one a sense of the richly imagined, coherent universe that lies behind them.

How important is Cape Town for your writing? Is there some kind of geographical prompt?

The concept of "homing" - leaving and returning home, and also making a home - is a major theme of the collection, and so it's appropriate that Cape Town, my own home, is the centre around which the stories are arranged. It is a complex environment, both very old and rapidly changing; its history is built into its structure. I'm interested in the intimate ways in which the changing city alters, and is altered by, its inhabitants. I'm also intrigued by the margins of the city, the zones where the parts of the city that are designed for human use come up against those parts that are not. As an imaginative space I find it very rich. You could say that about any city, but this is my home town, so of course it is full of potent, secret associations for me.

Were any real people harmed in the making of these stories?

Most of the protagonists are me, really. Manifestations of different parts of myself, at different ages. Of course every character is based on bits and pieces of people I've known, but I try not to use people too close to me in that way. Not that that stops people seeing themselves in the stories, of course.

Were you tempted to rewrite rather than merely revisit the stories in the editing process? In general, are you easy to edit?

All of the previously published stories have been re-edited for this collection, some more severely than others. One of the motivations for putting this collection together, I suppose, was to "fix" these stories in something like a final form, so I could put them aside at last. But of course it doesn't work like that. The title story, for example, is going to be reprinted in an American literary magazine, AGNI, later this year (in a Fall edition devoted to African literature which will include this story and work by Imraan Coovadia) and it's been tweaked for that. Revision is a never-ending process and I am never content. Everyone who worked on Homing has been wonderfully patient about my neurotic desire to rework things. I owe a great deal to its editor, Martha Evans. A rigorous, knowledgeable, sensitive editor is a rare and valuable creature - and frequently under-appreciated.

Which characters are your favourites? Do you see any of them having a life beyond the stories collected here?

At the moment I'm enjoying my male characters - it's a new thing for me, to have the courage to explore a male psyche. The earlier stories all have protagonists who resemble what I am or have been. In some of the later stories, I'm pushing those boundaries a bit, writing older people, and boys and men. I'm still learning how to do this, and I hope to continue this kind of tentative exploration in the future. The characters I can imagine living on beyond the stories are the young ones, on the brink of life - like the girl in Work in Progress and the boy in The Boulder. Particularly as it seems the incidents in these stories would propel them into a different phase of life: a little harder, a little wiser. I might never write those stories, but I'd hope the reader, at least, wonders what they go on to do with these new selves.

• Homing is published by Umuzi, R170

This book is available at Exclus1ves