Author Archives: Judy

‘The Tree Inside’ – highly commended by The Laurie Lee Prize

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Laurie Lee Prize judges

I’m delighted to share the news that an excerpt from my hybrid nature memoir ‘The Tree Inside’ has been highly commended by judges of The Laurie Lee Prize.

All shortlisted entrants were invited to a fabulous awards night as part of Stroud Book Festival. Amidst readings and the beauty of a version of Laurie Lee’s poem ‘April Rise’ set to music by Jonathan Trim and performed by the Every Other Monday Choir, judge Adam Horovitz announced my excerpt as a highly commended entry.

It felt very fitting as the memoir celebrates my dad, who introduced me to Laurie Lee’s wonderful writing, as well as the wonder of nature and the nature of wonder.

Congratulations to the winner Laura Kinnear, and thank you to all the judges: Katie Fforde (chair, pictured), Jessy Lee (Laurie Lee’s daughter!), Norah Perkins (Laurie Lee’s literary agent) Jamila Gavin (pictured), Adam Horovitz (pictured) and Jane Bailey (pictured) for commending my tale.

Thank you, especially, to Jane for telling me how it moved you. I know so many people lose loved ones to dementia, and that for every individual it is both unfathomable and extraordinary.

On your marks… NaNoWriMo!

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Dove Holes to Whaley Bridge gap in wall by Judy DarleyWednesday 1st November marks the start of NaNoWriMo 2023. Are you taking part? I love the concept of this word-packed month, with ardent writers across the world hunched over laptops sweating out every last drop of inspiration.

New to the concept? It’s pretty simple really. As they state on the NaNoWriMo website: “On November 1, participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 PM on November 30.”

I know plenty of writers this enforced period of productivity really suits. For some folks it seems to be the ideal way to stoke up ideas and get them to catch alight on the page.

For me, the beginning stages of novel-writing are all about thinking ahead, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t do some speedy planning even as you begin to write. After all, what else are you going to do when waiting for buses, in post office queues and doing the washing up?

Here are my top five preparation tips to ensure you make the most of this exceptional month.

1. Form a vision of the story you’re aiming to tell, with the beginning already shaped in your mind. If possible, do the same for the ending. Having an idea of the finale you’re working towards will mean you’re far less likely to veer off track!

2. Spend some time considering your characters – get to know who they are, how they think, what their goals are, and how they might help or hinder each other.

3. Know your setting. It really helps if you can really picture the place where your characters are spending time. Base it on somewhere you know, use maps or, for an imagined place, doodle your map! This is one of my favourites, particularly if it offers a valid excuse to meander in a much loved wilderness or similar.

4. Pick out a few dramatic moments your plot will cover and brainstorm them, then set them aside. Whenever your enthusiasm wanes over the intensive NaNoWriMo period, treat yourself by delving into one of those to reinvigorate your writing energy.

5. Finally, make sure you have plenty of sustenance to hand. For me, the essentials are coffee and chocolate. What are yours?

If you’re not a long-form junkie, why not take part in the flash version? Launched by the inimitable Nancy Stohlman in 2012, Flash Nano urges you to pledge to write 30 mini stories in 30 days. In 2023, more than 3,000 people took part. Even if not all turn out to be sparkling examples, you should end up with some that make your heart zing!

Book review – Clearly Defined Clouds by Jude Higgins

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Clearly Defined Clouds book cover_Jude Higgins

In this collection overflowing with awarding-winning and highly commended flash fictions and micro tales, author Jude Higgins creates a world where goddesses stroll through the eons to discover Zoom while humans lament decreasing biodiversity and discover the simplicity of love beyond semaphore. Even at its most playful, this is a collection with big messages at its heart.

As I read, my mind filled with images – colour is a vital ingredient of Jude’s fiction. not least in ‘Pink’, where it paints a beautiful scene against a story of loss again “the blush of that single rose growing by the door, you said was a winter miracle, still alive, trembling in the frost.”

Overall, the colour-saturation of the writing is an impression enhanced by Jeanette Sheppard’s wonderfully evocative cover image.

Love stories are unconventional in Jude’s hands, even when they draw on familiar sources. In ‘Jack and Jill’ we discover how Jack really came to fall down the hill, and all that was lost because of it.

Familiar nursery rhyme and characters crop up throughout, from an ageing Gretel rewriting the past to a sparky, empowered Rapunzel.

Other tales experiment with form to devastating effect. ‘Dark Horses’ is particularly deft, telling Alf’s story by listing the horses he has known and loved. This is also one of the flashes accompanied by an image – adding another layer of storytelling I appreciated.

Family relationships are examined with a gentle, dreamlike magic realism in ‘Manna’ and ‘Wash it All Away.’ In each of these, and so many of her other stories, Jude shares her understanding of and empathy for human nature.

In the title story, ‘Clearly Defined Cloud’, an ending offers the promise of quiet contentment you’ll want to savour by reading more than once, while ‘The Icing’ clings to hope as precarious as petals and button eyes. Jude’s skilful touch and painterly imagery allows hefty topics to land lightly, sneaking in emotions below scenes of nostalgia and deceptive calm.

One of my favourite’s in the collection is ‘How to Collect Water From a Well When There is Only an Office Chair to Hand.’ In this dystopian tale, three thirsty women who’ve lost everything to men team up to solve the title’s puzzle and see off a growing number of salacious frogs. Some lines hint at a darkness that draw to mind Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale with the women taking turns to have spins on the chair “to remind me when I could go out and work in an office.”

This is a collection of sweeping variety, with each flash offering fresh viewpoints on the people we are, the hopes we hold close and the experiences that impact us along the way.

This book was given to me in exchange for a fair review.

Clearly Defined Clouds by Jude Higgins is published by AdHoc Books. Buy your copy.

The Great Festival Flash Off, online, hosted by Jude Higgins, is on Saturday 26th October 2024

At this online session, I’ll be teaching a one-hour version of my ‘Writing on Water’ workshop, inviting flash writers to explore different ways of using water to dive deeper into themes in their writing, with generative exercises, examples from a variety of writers, and time to write.

The full day (11am to 6.30pm) only costs £30, with two hour-long workshops and one 90min workshop, plus readings, breakout rooms for chats, yoga for writers and a competition each time.

In addition to ‘Writing on Water’, the 26th October edition of the Great Festival Flash Off includes workshops with Ingrid Jendzrejewski and a discussion/reading/Q&A with Karen Jones and Diane Simmons.

Book for The Great Festival Flash Off here.

Upcoming literary events & activities

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Celebration of the Book bannerI’m looking forward to a few weekends jam-packed with literary hi-jinks.

Saturday 26th October 2024 The Great Festival Flash Off, online

At this online session, I’ll be teaching a one-hour version of my ‘Writing on Water’ workshop, inviting flash writers to explore different ways of using water to inspire or shine up themes in their writing, with generative exercises, examples from a variety of writers, and time to write.

The full day (11.00am to 6.30pm) only costs £30, with two hour-long workshops and one 90min workshop, plus readings, breakout rooms for chats, yoga for writers and a competition each time.

In addition to ‘Writing on Water’, the 26th October edition of the Great Festival Flash Off includes workshops with Ingrid Jendzrejewski and a discussion/reading/Q&A with Karen Jones and Diane Simmons.

Book for The Great Festival Flash Off here.

Friday 1st November, Clevedon LitFest Writing Competitions prize-giving
Jubilee Lounge, Clevedon Community Centre, aka Princes Hall, BS21 7SZ, from 7.30pm

CompAwards showing KatLyon, bristol poet 2024, on orange and blue backgroundTo announce the winners Clevedon LitFest Writing Competitions, there’ll be an inspiring evening of celebrations and performances. As one of the judges for the short story entries, I can’t wait to meet the writers of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd award-winning stories, and the writer of the highly commended story.

With a performance from the current Bristol City Poet Kat Lyons. it’s going to be a very special night indeed.

There’s no need to book for this free event – just turn up. See you there?

Saturday 2nd November, Celebration of the Book
Clevedon Community Centre, aka Princes Hall, BS21 7SZ, from 10am

Clevedon LitFest’s Celebration of the Book returns as a one-day convention of books and book arts.

A day-pass for all talks, discussions and readings costs just £15, with workshops costing extra.

Find full details for Celebration of the Book and book here.

I’ll be helping out with talks and panels throughout the day, and sharing a story or two of my own from 5.30pm as part of ‘Exploring the Edges: Literary fiction readings.’

Sunday 10th November, The Laurie Lee Prize for Writing 2024
Lansdown, Stroud, Gloucestershire GL5 1BB, from 5.30pm

As one of the shortlisted authors, I’ll be there to celebrate being part of the legacy of one of my long-time favourite authors and hear readings from the winning entries and those “which most captivated our judges” as part of Stroud Book Festival 2024.

The event will feature a performance of ‘April Rise’, a poem by Laurie Lee, set to music by Jonathan Trim and performed by Every Other Monday Choir, which sounds wonderful!

Book your free tickets for The Laurie Lee Prize for Writing 2024.

Saturday 30th November, The Festival of Stories
SPARKS (the old M&S), 78 Broadmead, Bristol, from 10am

The celebration of storytelling is a free day bringing together an “eclectic mix of seasoned storytellers, emerging voices and passionate listeners for a day filled with tales that span generations, cultures, and experiences.”

I’m part of the ‘stories for grown ups’ line-up and can’t wait to discover what else is going on.

Book review – Hereafter by Sarah Freligh

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Hereafter coverWhen our world has been shattered by loss, how do we carry on? Author Sarah Freligh asks this question, and countless others, in the stormy pages of her novella-in-flash.

Protagonist Pattylee is so real that her revelations read like memoir, with a searing honesty that captures not only her devastation at losing her son Petey, but the complex, wonderful minutiae that made him the imperfect, glorious human she raised as far as she could before brain cancer claimed him.

Some passages are delicious steams of consciousness, as in the opening flash: “What She Remembers: His First Year”, a beautifully smeared blur in which she tells her son “I found you at the end of the rainbow after it stopped raining.”

Petey’s own imagination paints scenery around them, as he tells his mother he was hatched from an egg and had fought at Normandy.

From the explosive narrative of ‘Metaphors for a Tumor’ to the hush of ‘Hospice: Quiet’ where a nurse comments “We die between breaths”, the contrasts in this collection only make the words shine brighter.

Sarah is unflinching as she invites us into scenes where the bereaved Pattylee drinks to dull the pain so she can “stumble on through the night, skid into a new morning.”

The challenges of single parenthood also stand out on the page, especially in ‘Two Days Arter Your Kid Dies, You Go To Work’, garnishing sentences with “a twist of lemon”, “a ghost of vermouth”, and “plastic swords of oranges and cherries the color of fresh blood red”, providing the impression of stinging sharpness as Pattylee soldiers on (to borrow one of the book’s other recurrent metaphors)  “Because you need money to buy the casket you’re paying for in instalments.”

You can taste each devastating page at the back of your throat, while shimmering colours Sarah evokes suggest the rush of life even as it drains away.

The shortness of each flash (some only a paragraph long), heightens the sense of time dashing by through Petey’s brief, vivid life and the ‘Hereafter’ of the book’s title. Throughout, with spaceships, meteor showers and Petey described as mist and glitter, there’s a sense of Petey taking flight.

Gradually, there comes a hint of healing as Pattylee finds her new version of hereafter beyond “the days and days of gray.” There’s something achingly rational about the birthday cake she bakes on what would have been Petey’s sixteenth birthday: “chocolate because she likes it, though Petey never did.”

As a portrait of parenthood, grief and humanity, this book sings, slaps and comforts by turns. The writing is clear, unfussy and distinctly unsentimental, making Pattylee’s emotional voyage utterly believable. From beginning to end, Hereafter is a story that feels necessary, relatable and real.

Hereafter by Sarah Freligh is published by Ad Hoc Fiction. Buy your copy.

This book was given to me in exchange for a fair review.

Enter the Bath Children’s Novel Award

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Roman Baths by Judy DarleyThe Bath Children’s Novel Award invites submissions of books for children or teenagers from unaccented, and unpublished or self-published authors worldwide.

Deadline: 30th November 2024
Prize: £5,000, plus the coveted Minerva trophy, based on the famous sculpture in Bath’s Roman Baths.
Entry fee: £29.99 per manuscript with sponsored places available for low income writers.

Initial submissions are up to the first 5,000 words plus one page synopsis of novel or chapter book manuscripts for children, novels for teens, or up to three entire picture book texts with summaries.

Longlisted submissions are whittled down to a shortlist chosen by Junior Judges aged seven to seventeen years. 2024’s winning manuscript will be judged by literary agent Enrichetta Frezzato of Curtis Brown.

Shortlisted authors receive a compilation of Junior Judges’ comments on their full manuscript. All shortlisted authors win feedback worth £180 on their opening pages from an editorial director at Cornerstones Literary Consultancy.

The writer of the most promising longlisted novel will  win a place worth £1,980 on the 18-week virtual course Edit Your Novel the Professional Way from Cornerstones Literary Consultancy and the Professional Writing Academy.

The winner will be announced in February 2025.

Previous winners include Struan Murray for the manuscript of Orphans of the Tide (published by Puffin in 2020), Lucy Van Smit for The Hurting (Chickenhouse, 2018) and Matthew Fox for The Sky Over Rebecca (Hachette, 2022).

Find full details and enter here: https://bathnovelaward.co.uk/childrens-novel-award/ 

Got an event, challenge, competition or call for submissions you’d like to draw attention to? Send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud (dot) com.

Poetry review – Battery Rocks by Katrina Naomi

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Battery-Rocks-book coverIn this impressively immersive collection, the sea is a force to be reckoned with like a tempestuous lover who will as soon cradle you in her arms as dash you against the closest rocks. Poet Katrina Naomi sets this theme from the first line of Fickle Lover: “Ours is not a relationship of equals.” and later: “You are always on display.” Not only a lover, then, but an unpredictable, narcissistic lover who will always, always put their own needs before yours, because yours barely surface in their awareness, if at all.

And yet, in Naomi’s language, this is not only acceptable, but alluring.

Plaiting in Cornish terms such as ‘An mor’ – the sea – and ‘byrla’ – embrace – Naomi Makes us revel in the otherworldliness of this element that brings us deadly hydrozans as gifts and washes us in “her shouty body.”

In I know you as, she asks the sea “Tell me/ what is your safe word?/ You never listen to mine.”

The beauty of feeling at home in the water, even as it threatens our steadiness, is palpable, not least in Thoughts Over Hot Chocolate: “some say we were once all fish/ beyond the land a sense of belonging”.

Throughout the visceral poems, the sea has personality and moods that pay into her unpredictability, with the poet alternatively being caressed by calm silky water and battling with waves. Human variance that shows up on the lines is far darker, however, in the poems i.m. of Sarah Everard (“With each stroke I strike the water / thankful for my strength that night”) and Tattoo: for Kim Moore.

Several of the poems play with form, jostling in landscape rather than portrait format to take up the length of the page and cajoling you to turn the book on its side. It’s a practical move that jolts you out of passive reading and requires you to act, while bringing to mind tipping and spilling.

The poem The Sea Speaks, written from the viewpoint of the sea, is utterly entrancing. This is the ocean as colluder, but only in the sense a cat welcomes belly rubs, until the moment it bores of attention and bites.

But the true threats, Katrina suggests, are those on land where we feel safe and therefore less guarded. In Cormorant, the poet mentions risks taken and luck that prevailed – a train crossing where “I moseyed across/ the metal lines” and narrowly missed becoming mincemeat, “the drink I left on the bar, (…) the knife my attacker forgot to carry.”

The whole world, she warns, is full of danger – at least the sea is honest.

Even in these dire musings, Katrina reminds us of beauty, telling us of the cormorant’s “dark whoosh of feathers” and how “The fleet of its wings has me shiver”.

There’s humour in the collection too, as in Mordrik (a gorgeous Cornish word meaning low tide), where “Starfish strand/ before/ dangling/ from a gull’s beak/ a late breakfast/ of legs.”

This poem’s stanzas are scattered across the page in a visual representation of a sea-shorn shore.

Morning, Far West is a prose poem worth murmuring aloud to yourself to bolster yourself full of promise and hope.

Naomi chooses not to use full stops in her more traditional poems, as though reminding us no thought can ever be complete, while we breathe.

In all, this collection is a marvel and a solace, bearing memories of sea and evocations of the sense of peace that comes with embracing the wild. It’s a wonder to dip into daily and savour before setting aside, still licking the salt from your lips.

This book was given to me in exchange for a fair review.

Battery Rocks by Katrina Naomi is published by Seren Books and available to buy here.

Enter Clevedon LitFest’s Short Story Competition today

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Gulls over Clevedon Pier_Photo by Judy DarleyDo you live in North Somerset and write fiction? If so, I urge you to enter Clevedon LitFest’s Short Fiction Competition.

Open to North Somerset postcode residents only, age 19 years or above.

Prizes

  • 1st Prize is £100
  • 2nd is £75
  • 3rd is £50

One short story no longer than 500 words can be submitted.

Closing date = 12th August 2024 at 11.59pm BST.

Entry fee £5 (when paying please give the same email address as that used to submit your entry).

Your entry can only be submitted by email, as an attachment, using the email
address given when you paid your entry fee.

Find the rules and full details here.

Pay your entry fee here.

Julie Davies won the inaugural Clevedon Literary Festival short story competition with her story Remembrance in 2023. She says: “Winning the Clevedon LitFest Short Story Competition was a huge boost to my confidence as a writer. It’s a badge of validation I wear with pride. Also, it funded a whole new stack of books for my reading pile, thanks to the generous prize money!”

Your judges

Jackie Hales head shot cropJackie Hales moved to Clevedon in 2022 and is thoroughly enjoying being involved with local writing, reading, singing and walking groups. Before retiring, she taught Creative Writing modules, and back in the 1990s, she was a Poetry Guild national semi-finalist.

Jackie’s Her début novel was published in 2022, with her second due for release in August 2024. She has also had published memoir, short stories, microfiction and poetry, both online and in print.

She has annually marked a writing competition in Yorkshire, and she enthusiastically judged Clevedon Literary Festival short story competition last year, so she is looking forward to reading this year’s entries.

What Jackie is looking for in Competition entries:

“I’m looking for writing that draws me into its world through originality, impact and engaging characterisation, making me want to read to the end. Language use and structure  will be carefully crafted for maximum effect on the reader.”

Judy Darley photo credit Jo Mary Bulter Photography_cropJudy Darley is an award-winning writer, editor and creative workshop leader who relocated to Clevedon in December 2023. She is the author of short fiction collections The Stairs Are a Snowcapped Mountain (Reflex Press), Sky Light Rain (Valley Press) and Remember Me To The Bees (Tangent Books).

She previously judged competitions for National Flash Fiction Day UK and Oxford Flash Fiction Prize, among others. She won first prize in the New Writers UK Winter Story competition 2024 with her micro-tale A Bright Day.

In her other life, Judy is a Community Manager and helps to run conferences about financial wellbeing.

What Judy is looking for in Competition entries:

“I want to be moved by what I read. Although 500 words is no longer than a flash fiction, that’s enough space to create a story arc. There should be some sense of change in the story, if only in the protagonist. I want to read stories that ignite my imagination and capture my heart!”

Good luck!

Pure Slush invites music-inspired prose

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Heart leaf by Judy DarleyIndie publisher Pure Slush is currently inviting submissions for The Absent Bassoonist, the 4th and final anthology in Pure Slush’s Music series.

Submissions close on 30th September 2024.

Here is the set-up for the anthology …

The Quonsettville Community Orchestra is set to open the newly-rebuilt LaChute Cultural Center with a sparkling concert.

The concert on Saturday 18th June 2023, was set to include the first public performance in 68 years of Dudley Donegal O’Day’s magnificent (and very underrated) Triple Bassoon Concerto (transcribed for two bassoons).

But on the night of the concert, First Bassoonist Solomon Schweitzer never arrives.

Why?

The Pure Slush team want to know what Solomon is doing instead of showing up to perform.

What do you believe happened to Solomon?

This is an unusually specific brief, but luckily the team have supplied from clear pointers, starting with the story An Empty Chair by Matt Potter (click here to read).

You can also read some information on Solomon here, and explore a map of Quonsettville, where the action in The Absent Bassoonist is set, here.

Pure Slush publishes print anthologies of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.

When asked what Pure Slush is ‘about’, founding editor Matt Potter said: “Fun, humour, attention, absurdity, humanity, love, sex, more fun and more humour and more absurd humanity.”

But what do the folks at Pure Slush like?

“Here are just a few pointers (and some editing tips): “Send a story about knitting that’s funny … and we’ll probably like it.

Send a story with arty, complex imagery … and we probably won’t like it.

Send an honest story about love or a funny story about sex … and we’ll probably like it.

Send a story that’s stylish but empty … and we’ll probably ask you to rewrite it.

Send a story about human foibles that’s real but has no feeling … and we’ll probably ask you to give it more emotion.

Send a story that’s 1000 words long but only in one or two paragraphs … and we’ll ask you to divide it further.

Or send us a story that is all reported (or indirect) speech – She said (that) she couldn’t keep her breakfast down – and we’ll ask you to make it direct (or quoted) speech – She said, “I couldn’t keep my breakfast down.” (What is this fashion for stories entirely made of reported speech? Direct speech is always more immediate and takes you there now!)

Send a story where you want us to love every single word and space … and not suggest changes … and, um, you will probably be disappointed and / or angry with the response. We enjoy working with writers who want to make their story better: writers married to every word can be tiresome.”

There are a lot more tips on the website. Take a look before you submit.

Find full details of how to submit your story here: https://pureslush.com.

Got an event, challenge, competition, opportunity or call for submissions you’d like to draw attention to? Send me an email at JudyDarley (@) iCloud (dot) com.

Writing prompt – still

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Sea stillness, Bristol Channel seen from Clevedon Pier by Judy DarleyWhat does it mean when the sea is so still it mirrors each cloud? With no waves to break, and no wind to gust is the sea in fact still the sea?

What if the sea falls silent?

Can you use this prompt to spur on an exploration of identity? What aspect of yourself is intrinsic to who you are? Would other people agree? Could you imagine that detail evaporating and being surprised by the sense of yourself that remains, or that supersedes what you thought you knew about yourself?

Alternatively, why not write an ecological tale about what happens when the waves stop waving and the sea grows still? How long before we feel that impact from the shore?

If you write or create something prompted by this idea, please let me know by emailing judydarley (at) iCloud.com. I’d love to know the creative direction you choose.