This Too – a short story and a prize!

Posted on October 6, 2020 by Judy

I was delighted when my short story This Too was selected for publication by The Great Margin, a project set up by Paper Nations. The selection included a chance to have my story edited by the splendid Michael Loveday, who pointed out a mixed metaphor, which led to me amending a single sentence. Other than that, the story went live exactly as it had been submitted.

The story began to bubble up in summer 2019, when our garden was parched and everything felt poised by the heat for something big to happen. In my story, the ‘something’ becomes a wait for a phone call following medical tests.

Roll forward to summer 2020, and we were all on tenterhooks thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. I found myself thinking about everyone who’d had to put immune suppressing treatment on hold, and about the strain that was causing them and their loved ones. The story gained a new dimension.

I brought in the ladybird plague of 1976 because it’s something so strange and dramatic, and yet as someone who wasn’t yet born it seems to be like the stuff of folklore. I wanted to imagine that one day the Covid-19 pandemic will seem that remote and strange thanks to the passage of time. This too will pass.

This week, I have cause to celebrate the story once more as the amazing folks at Paper Nations got in touch to let me know This Too has been chosen as story of the month. I won a book voucher for the marvellous Mr B’s Emporium. Even better, they published a piece explaining all the reason’s they love my story. Aww. *blushes*.

Sky Light Rain – Breaking Up With You Burns Like Fire

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Judy

Ever wondered how a short story takes its first breath and finds life? We’re now well over a third of the way through my series of posts offering insights into my writing process and sharing the inspiration behind the flash fiction and short stories that make up my Valley Press collection Sky Light Rain.

The fifteenth story is ‘Breaking Up With You Burns Like Fire.’ This longer than average title leads you into a drabble – a 100-word micro fiction – about a couple carrying out a ritual to mark the end of their relationship. It was originally published by the aptly named The Drabble.

If you have any 100-word tales knocking around, I highly recommend you send it their way. One of my writing passions is compressing whole lives, relationships and break-ups into less than half a page.

My drabble popped into my head when my man and I (still vey much together) decided to hide a pair of small stone gargoyles in a local woodland. One disappeared pretty promptly, but the other lurked in a mass of ivy for months.

The tale begins:

They dressed in the dark, fumbling over bootlaces and coal-black buttons. Lucinda picked up the ceramic gargoyle Crispin had given her early in their romance. He chose the straw doll Lucinda wove for their first anniversary.

Sky Light Rain is published by Valley Press and is available to purchase here.

Discover the inspiration behind my other Sky Light Rain stories by clicking on the story titles below.

If you’d like to request a review copy of Sky Light Rain or interview me about my writing, please send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud (dot) com.

Sky Light Rain – Far From the Farm

Posted on September 24, 2020 by Judy

We’re now well over a third of the way through my series of posts offering insights into my writing process and sharing the inspiration behind the flash fiction and short stories that make up my Valley Press collection Sky Light Rain.

The fourteenth story is ‘Far From The Farm,’ examines what roots us, and how displaced we can feel when removed from the scenery and people we associate with home. It invites us into the world of Eilidh, a young girl from Skye coping with a new life in urban England

‘Far From The Farm’ was originally published as ‘The Creak of Snow’ in a special Scottish-themed edition of Literary Orphans.

The tale begins:

If Eilidh leans close to the bedroom window and breathes out, she can make the world beyond grow cold and fog-filled. She dapples her fingertips against the glass, creating pools of light that shine sharp and ice-bright. The sky is yellow today, swollen with clouds heavy with something chillier than rain.

It won’t snow here. This southern city would grind to a halt if a few sparse flakes fell from the sky.

That’s what Franny says, anyways. It bothers Eilidh to think of her old gran managing the farm alone, without anyone to ride the tractor with. Who’ll bound out to drag the gate open, close it again once she’s through?

Sky Light Rain is published by Valley Press and is available to purchase here.

Discover the inspiration behind my other Sky Light Rain stories by clicking on the story titles below.

If you’d like to request a review copy of Sky Light Rain or interview me about my writing, please send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud (dot) com.

Sky Light Rain – The Moth Room

Posted on September 17, 2020 by Judy

Over the coming weeks, I’ll share a few insights into the stories that make up my collection Sky Light Rain. I’ll explore them in the order in which they appear in the book. The thirteenth story in the collection and also the first in ‘Part Two – Light’ is ‘The Moth Room’.

I wrote this flash fiction in response to a visit to the studio of artist Rose McLay, interwoven with strands of Cinderella together with a touch of moonlit iridescence. The story embraces ideas of the scant lines separating beauty and brutality.

‘The Moth Room’ was originally published in issue 21 of Gone Lawn, which describes itself as “a web journal of artistic and progressive literature.”

The tale only spans half a page and begins:

He follows her home from the ball, trailing in the pitch of her laughter. She’s taken off her shoes for dancing and runs barefoot through the ragged streets, giggles glinting in her wake.

The warehouse she leads him to is shuttered into rooms, each with its own door to unlock. Hers is labelled The Moth Room.

Sky Light Rain is published by Valley Press and is available to purchase here.

Discover the inspiration behind my other Sky Light Rain stories by clicking on the story titles below.

If you’d like to request a review copy of Sky Light Rain or interview me about my writing, please send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud (dot) com.

Sky Light Rain – Strawberry Thief

Posted on September 10, 2020 by Judy

Over the coming weeks, I’ll share a few insights into the stories that make up my collection Sky Light Rain. I’ll explore them in the order in which they appear in the book. The twelfth story in the collection and also the final in Part One – Sky is ‘Strawberry Thief’.

I wrote this story especially to perform at a local literary event, Novel Nights, which was about to host an evening at a bar called The Strawberry Thief. I love writing to prompts, and this was an excellent one. I thought about the sensory pleasure of picking strawberries, and how as a child I’d eat as many as would end up in my pot for weighing.

The drowsy summer days felt like the perfect backdrop to a first love based on shared secrets, thefts, lies and discoveries.

‘Strawberry Thief’ was originally published by the deliciously named Straylight Magazine, biannual literary magazine of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.

The tale begins:

The hide is empty but for herself and Jonathan. In the clearing beyond the structure, birds cavort – more species than she can name. Jonathan would know them all. He understood their code of feathers and colours in a way she’s never been able to grasp.

She reaches into the bag beside her and draws the thermos out.

The cup that sits neatly over its lid makes her pause, flooded with a memory. At the hospice, she’d crushed strawberries against its rim, fed the crimson pulp into his mouth with a teaspoon. He’d swallowed, then muttered, soft enough that she had to lean close:

“Wrong season for strawbs. Where’d you get ’em?”

Not wanting to name the shop she’d bought them from, where they nestled in the fridge alongside own-brand sausage rolls, she smiled back and said: “The pick-your-own. Remember?”

That lie had seemed worth it for the brief lessening of the pain she saw in his mud-brown eyes. She popped one of the berries into her own mouth, chewing fast. It was cold against her tongue, and lacked the burst of sweetness she craved, but its flavour connected her to the moment, to him.

Sky Light Rain is published by Valley Press and is available to purchase here.

Discover the inspiration behind my other Sky Light Rain stories by clicking on the story titles below.

If you’d like to request a review copy of Sky Light Rain or interview me about my writing, please send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud (dot) com.

Sky Light Rain – Paper Flowers

Posted on September 3, 2020 by Judy

Over the coming weeks, I’ll share a few insights into the stories that make up my collection Sky Light Rain. I’ll explore them in the order in which they appear in the book. The eleventh story in the collection is ‘Paper Flowers’.

As you may have noticed, I draw a lot of inspiration from my travels. This one sprang from a visit to Mount Isola, Lake Iseo, courtesy of Brescia Tourism. The traditional craft I describe in the tale, of making thousands of paper flowers for the Santa Croce festival that takes place every five years.

I wondered what it would be like to live there as an outsider, and dreamt up Julia, a woman who’d intended only to pass by on holiday, but fell in love with the setting and a man who later died. Now her daughters are almost grown, and she’s wondering what she can do to keep them with her in this place where time seems to hold its breath, or whether she even should.

An earlier version, published by The Island Review, I used the first person perspective, but at my Valley Press editor’s urging, I changed it to the third person.

The tale begins:

Julia hands the yellow felt-tip to Chiara, half watching as she adds a few dots of ochre-yellow to the heart of a paper lily: pollen that will never billow free.

“What’s wrong, ha?” Chiara asks, focused on her task. “You’ve been almost silent since you arrived.”

Julia shrugs, trying to smile, but Chiara re-caps the pen, flicks her eyes towards the younger woman, insistent.

“Bianca…” Julia admits, and she snorts.

“Of course, Bianca. What’s her trouble now?” Chiara’s own daughters are grown up, married off, safe. Julia’s eldest is fifteen, that most lethal of ages, when everything wants to devour her, and she seems hellbent on devouring everything.

“There’s a boy…”

Chiara hoots. “When isn’t there?” She snips the petals of a tulip a little more roughly than intended, tsks, and tidies the ragged crepe edges. “Who this time?”

“Not local,” Julia admits. This is what perturbs her most.

Sky Light Rain is published by Valley Press and is available to purchase here.

Discover the inspiration behind my other Sky Light Rain stories by clicking on the story titles below.

If you’d like to request a review copy of Sky Light Rain or interview me about my writing, please send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud (dot) com.

Sky Light Rain – A Blackbird’s Heart

Posted on August 27, 2020 by Judy

A Blackbird Heart

Over the coming weeks, I’ll share insights into the stories that make up my collection Sky Light Rain. I’ll explore them in the order in which they appear in the book. The tenth story in my collection is ‘A Blackbird’s Heart’.

Those of you who loved the multiple viewpoints of ‘Knotted Rope’ may be attracted to this story for similar reasons. It follows two entwined narratives, one by Bron, a young Welsh warrior whose culture include the use of animal hearts to communicate coded messages, and the other by Bronwyn, a foster child who is reading and obsessing over Bron’s dramatic tale.

Real life and fiction blur together for Bronwyn, until she’s driven to take drastic action.

I wrote Bron’s story first, but then Bronwyn popped into my head, poring over Bron’s story and avidly daydreaming herself into the adventure. It reminded me of how I yearned to find a world hidden at the back of my wardrobe, or battle the pirates of Neverland.

I drew parallels between Bron’s situation and Bronwyn’s, overlapping their lives as much as possible, but using Bronwyn’s imagination to make up any shortfalls. Through Bronwyn’s eyes, it’s easy for a tabby cat to become a monkey and for the young offenders institution where her brother Craig lives to mirror the castle dungeon where Bron’s brother Caio is imprisoned. Then I only had to decide how far Bronwyn’s fantasy might sweep her…

The tale begins:

Bron watches as Nan grasps her knife and slits the deer from throat to groin, easing the flesh apart until the glistening innards slide free.

She senses the monkey’s anxiety as it climbs from one of her shoulders to the other. “Hush, Caru, you’re safe.”

The smell of blood is sharp in her throat, not just the deer’s but that of her brother’s wife, Derlyn. The birth was difficult.

After his first caterwauls the baby has gone quiet, exhausted by his battle to enter the world. Eyeing the infant’s pink mottled flesh, Bron thinks he seems little different to the piglet that will represent him in the deer’s carcass.

Sky Light Rain is published by Valley Press and is available to purchase here.

Discover the inspiration behind my other Sky Light Rain stories by clicking on the story titles below.

If you’d like to request a review copy of Sky Light Rain or interview me about my writing, please send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud (dot) com.

Sky Light Rain – Fascinate

Posted on August 20, 2020 by Judy

9_Fascinate by Judy Darley

Over the coming weeks, I’ll share a few insights into the stories that make up my collection Sky Light Rain. I’ll explore them in the order in which they appear in the book. My ninth story in the collection is ‘Fascinate’.

‘Fascinate’ aired on Adam Crowther‘s BBC Upload radio show on Thursday 7th December at around eleven past seven. Adam describes it as being about “an unusual use for animals.”

It’s definitely is one of the shorter, stranger tales in the collection, despite being fully rooted in realism.

For me, fiction writing stems from just about everything my consciousness bumps against. Often these ideas combine and coalesce in barely recognisable forms. In this case, a childhood memory of seeing a hanging basket full of ducklings merged with a magazine feature I’d written about craftidermy.

I used these initial seeds to explore ideas of boundaries. Where do you draw the line? While many people are now vegetarian or vegan, countless others eat meat daily, but even those who do might baulk at eating animals that form part of the normal diet in other countries. If you’ll eat cow, why not horse? If you’ll eat chicken, why not cat…?

The story also explores ideas of different kinds of dominance, and how little we can know about the thoughts bubbling in another person’s head…

The story was originally published in the National Flash Fiction Day UK 2017 anthology Sleep Is A Beautiful Colour, and was later nominated for the Best Small Fictions award 2018.

The tale begins:

I still remember the April when we were small and found a nest of ducklings in a hanging basket. We climbed up on the kitchen roof and scooched close to stare at them.

“Ducklings are magic, Helen,” you told me. “They’re so fluffy they can survive a fall from any height.”

You reached out and scooped one into your palm before I could stop you. It sat there, the breeze weaving through its downy feathers. Then, grinning, you launched it with force into the air.

It splatted against the flagstones below with a squelch that rang through my head. You blinked at me, and giggled.

“Oops. Don’t tell, or I’ll blame it on you.” You slithered off the roof, kicking the tiny corpse beneath the rhododendron leaves where no one would see.

Sky Light Rain is published by Valley Press and is available to purchase here.

Discover the inspiration behind my other Sky Light Rain stories by clicking on the story titles below.

If you’d like to request a review copy of Sky Light Rain or interview me about my writing, please send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud (dot) com.

Sky Light Rain – The Puppeteer

Posted on August 13, 2020 by Judy

8_The Puppeteer by Judy Darley

Over the coming weeks, I’ll share a few insights into the stories that make up my collection Sky Light Rain. I’ll explore them in the order in which they appear in the book. My eighth story in the collection is ‘The Puppeteer’.

Shirley Sharp pic I’m often inspired by the narratives I see in artwork, and ‘The Puppeteer’ was initially prompted by this amazing painting by artist Shirley Sharp (published here with her permission).

The characters populating Shirley’s canvasses often have a somewhat melancholy air, which gave me the first seeds of my protagonist’s personality. Then I needed to make sense of the two creatures apparently sitting on his hands, and I dreamt up Tib, a puppeteer who has lost his family through his obsession for his craft.

In the end, a pair of socks offer Tib the courage he needs, but is it too little too late?

The story becomes something of a journey, as the sock puppets help Tib find his way through a fog of melancholy towards hope. The tale plays with time, as Tib is unsure how many months or years have passed. I also prod the question of how much of what’s happening is real, and how much is the product of Tib’s sorrowful mind.

An earlier version of this tale was published by Toasted Cheese Literary Journal.

The tale begins:

How long had it been now? Tib wasn’t certain. More than one year, less than two. God, how had so much time crept by? He thought he’d get them back before this many months. Once the numbness and confusion passed, he was certain he’d be able to win Nancy over, persuade her to bring Pippa home, but it had already been eighteen months, maybe twenty. Or more…

He’d only seen young Pippa once since they left him, and that had been in the most humiliating of circumstances.

Sky Light Rain is published by Valley Press and is available to purchase here.

Discover the inspiration behind my other Sky Light Rain stories by clicking on the story titles below.

If you’d like to request a review copy of Sky Light Rain or interview me about my writing, please send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud (dot) com.

Sky Light Rain – Apollo’s Offspring

Posted on August 6, 2020 by Judy

Apollos Offspring
Over the coming weeks, I’ll share a few insights into the stories that make up my collection Sky Light Rain. I’ll explore them in the order in which they appear in the book. My seventh story in the collection is ‘Apollo’s Offspring’.

I glimpsed the above scene at Bristol Botanic Garden, and got to wondering about the uncanny qualities of a crow who can seemingly walk on water.

Seeking out myths on the topic, I discovered masses about ravens, and decided to shift my corvid focus for purely artistic purposes. I then catapulted my characters into the present and made my protagonist a perfectly ordinary modern mother fretting over the inevitable guilts of farming out child-care.

Giving the children such old-fashioned names (Mabel and Stanley) reminded me of Ladybird books and their resolutely matter-of-fact prose. I get a lot of pleasure from mixing the mundane and otherworldly. Perhaps because of its utter oddness, this is one of my favourite tales in Sky Light Rain.

The tale begins:

Raven comes highly recommended, but despite this, something about him makes me nervous. That beak, those clawed feet, and his way of looking at Mabel and Stanley with one eye and then the other makes me deeply uneasy.

The children are delighted by their new au pair, however. I haven’t heard Mabel chatter like this since before their father left.

Sky Light Rain is published by Valley Press and is available to purchase here.

Discover the inspiration behind my other Sky Light Rain stories by clicking on the story titles below.

If you’d like to request a review copy of Sky Light Rain or interview me about my writing, please send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud (dot) com.

SkyLightRain

For writers, daydreamers and innovators

Category Archives: Judy’s writing

This Too – a short story and a prize!

Sky Light Rain – Breaking Up With You Burns Like Fire

Sky Light Rain – Far From the Farm

Sky Light Rain – The Moth Room

Sky Light Rain – Strawberry Thief

Sky Light Rain – Paper Flowers

Sky Light Rain – A Blackbird’s Heart

Sky Light Rain – Fascinate

Sky Light Rain – The Puppeteer

Sky Light Rain – Apollo’s Offspring