The New York Times seeks your tiny love stories

Posted on November 23, 2020 by Judy

What kind of love story can you share in two tweets, an Instagram caption or a Facebook post? The New York Times invites you to tell them a love story from your own life — happy or sad, capturing a moment or a lifetime — in no more than 100 words.

They say: “Include a picture taken by you that complements your narrative, whether a selfie, screenshot or snapshot. We seek to publish the funniest and heart-wrenching entries we receive. They must be true and unpublished.”

As days shorten and lockdowns tighten, love may be all you need (other than food, fluids, shelter, Netflix, and a decent broadband connection, oh, and books…), but can you condense it down to 100 words that capture the quirks of a love you know intimately?

They add: “Love may be universal, but individual experiences can differ immensely, informed by factors such as race, socio-economic status, gender, disability status, nationality, sexuality, age, religion and culture. As in the main Modern Love column, we are committed to publishing a range of experiences and perspectives in Tiny Love Stories. We especially encourage Black and Indigenous people and other people of color to submit, as well as writers outside of the United States and those who identify as members of L.G.B.T.Q. communities.”

I highly recommend you read some earlier examples of Tiny Love Stories at nytimes.com/modernlove.

Click here for submission terms, and bear in mind that “accepted stories will be edited for clarity and content in consultation with the writer.”

Find full details and submit here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/style/modern-love-tiny-love-stories.html

Sky Light Rain – Invertebrates

Posted on November 19, 2020 by Judy

I don’t know about you, but I adore catching a ‘behind-the-scenes’ glimpse into stories, music and theatrical productions. It’s part of the reason why I launched this series of posts offering insights into the inspiration behind the flash fiction and short stories that make up my Valley Press collection Sky Light Rain.

The twenty-second story is ‘Invertebrates’. It bubbled up in my mind when I was strolling in Arnos Vale Cemetery, a grand Victorian amphitheatre cemetery which recent provided an area for woodland graves.

When I saw this rustic place of mourning, my intrigue and imagination were piqued. The profusion of flowers scattered on the bare earth made this seem an ultimately tender gesture. I pictured the people who might have laid someone to rest here, amid the trees and insects, I couldn’t help thinking of the brutality and beauty of many fairytales.

The resulting story, ‘Invertebrates’, serves as a sequel to a familiar fairytale.

It was originally published in Door Is A Jar Magazine.

The story begins:

We dug her up each solstice; each time she was a little lighter, her joints a little more unhinged. I worried she might come apart entirely, sinew and bones giving way as we propped her in the place of honour.

My brother and I allowed the invertebrates that had made her their home to attend our celebrations too. Sometimes centipedes fell from her eye-sockets and throat cavity to roam among the feast. I watched beetles nestle into her breastbone, and recalled how comfortably my head once rested there.

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.

Writing prompt – hazard

Posted on November 18, 2020 by Judy

I spotted this punctured pink flamingo balloon at a local nature reserve. It’s such a vibrant, cheerful object – and what could be more innocent than a balloon?

Yet this escaped frippery is a hazard to wildlife, and one that could last longer that the trees it’s tangled among. Google ‘balloons’ and “dangers” and countless chilling tales bob up. And that’s without considering the implications for a planet already loaded with plastic.

More than a month after I first glimpsed it, the flamingo is wind-battered, storm-torn and looking far from its best, but it’s still there.

Your challenge this week is to take something designed for fun and weave it into a horror story that serves as a warning. See how dark you can make it.

Now take that story and edit it into a tale that lifts spirits and offers hope.

If you write or create something prompted by this, please send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I may publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

Book review – Don’t Tell The Bees by Mary-Jane Holmes

Posted on November 16, 2020 by Judy

In this powerfully layered and tightly stitched novella-in-flash, author Mary-Jane Holmes weaves a world where nature waits in corners and on the edge of hearing, barely out of sight.

Our protagonist, known as ‘No-more’ after the refrain her mother was rumoured to have repeated after her birth “over and over again”, is as spirited as the wild creatures who share the landscape she roams. The opening story deposits her in our lap as her mother leaves her “howling in twitch grass by the river” so that she survives only because her father finds her stumbles back to the loom, leaving her father Maurice to tie her to his back so that her waking moments are spent “in quarry and field” with his blood pulsing against her own.

Although rooted in “the marshlands from Damvix to Gruelle” in France, there’s a sensuous texture to the novella that evokes folk tales from all parts of the world where people are in rhythm with the land.

Holmes draw us ever deeper into a place where we can feel the cool mud under our feet, and when No-more’s beloved father is hooked by a tip of a weather-vane he is repairing, we fly with him, caught on the same breeze, so visceral is the writing.

Continue reading →

Sky Light Rain – Lodged

Posted on November 12, 2020 by Judy

The twenty-first story is ‘Lodged’, which is one of the first ghost stories I have had published. It tells of a couple who move into a house where a former tenant has left behind more than a creepy atmosphere. I was inspired to write it while living in a rental property where the cellar was filled with items belonging to the previous resident – everything from old pots and pans to gymkhana ribbons, asthma inhalers and old teddy bears. My brain began mulling over why anyone would abandon things that seem so necessary, and of such sentimental value?

The second spur for the story sprang from ‘The Yellow Wallpaper‘ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. This eerie story seeded in the idea of Charlie, my character named in honour of Charlotte, becoming increasingly obsessed with the former tenant, July. I began to wonder what had happened to make the person leave so abruptly that they didn’t take half their things with them, and then to wonder whether they’d truly left at all…

An earlier version of ‘Lodged’ was published by Origami Journal.

It begins:

It’s just after 5am when Graham comes to find me. I’m in the cellar, still in my pyjamas, one leg half over the old armchair that sits in the section where the landlord’s dumped the former tenant’s possessions. I pause when he comes in.

“Charlie, what are you doing?”

“Did I wake you?” I push my tangled hair out of my eyes with one hand. “Sorry. Couldn’t sleep.”

I’ve found all kinds of things: old paintings, teddy bears, dressmaking fabrics… I wave a blue gymkhana ribbon in the air, half amused, half aghast. “Why would anyone leave this stuff behind?”

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.

Writing prompt – never have I ever

Posted on November 11, 2020 by Judy

I’ve been feeling a bit nostalgic this week, celebrating the first birthday of my second collection Sky Light Rain, and remembering writing the tales in my first collection Remember Me To The Bees. The first story in that first collection is ‘Never Seen The Sea’, and is, as the title suggests, about a person’s first ever sighting of the sea.

It was a fun challenge to imagine never having seen something most of us take for granted. My parents took me to the seashore as a baby, so it has always been part of my landscape and understanding of the world.

I set you the challenge of writing a short story about someone experiencing something ordinary for the first time and finding it extraordinary. Perhaps its their first tree (how astonishingly tall!), thunderstorm (terrifying!), or music.

Whatever it is, write it from the point of view of the person seeing, feeling, tasting, hearing, smelling and tasting this first-in-their-lifetime event. Describe it using all the senses and try to capture the wonder for your readers to share.

If you write or create something prompted by this, please send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I may publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

Book review – The House on the Corner by Alison Woodhouse

Posted on November 6, 2020 by Judy

Bookended by the purchase and sale of a home, Alison Woodhouse’s debut novella in flash explores the bricks and mortar that form a family. Woodhouse mines the emotions grinding below the activities of everyday life – the small resentments, disappointments and unspoken dreams we pick up on without identifying, knowing only that we feel uneasy.

The unnamed estate agent has ambitions for the home she needs to sell – “She hoped she’d found the right family to bring the house back to life.”

In less than four pages, Woodhouse introduces us to the individuals that make up the 1980s family tasked with this job: Martin, “who turned up in a smart suit, carrying a briefcase”, Helen, “flustered and fifteen minutes late”, plus the children, later named as Joe and Natalie, who “had climbed into the pink bath. They sat opposite each other, foreheads touching as they whispered.”

Continue reading →

Sky Light Rain – Little Blessings

Posted on November 5, 2020 by Judy

Ever wondered how a short story sparks into life? This series of posts offers insights into the inspiration behind the flash fiction and short stories that make up my Valley Press collection Sky Light Rain.

The twentieth story is ‘Little Blessings’. One scene in this story was plucked in its entirety from a moment when a man rushing to reach a train almost shoved me in front of it in his haste – I actually fell against the side of the train as it halted, but as I lost balance I had a strange instant when I was aware I was right in its path. The righteous anger that issued towards him by other commuters on my behalf was even more surreal. It was as though everyone had unknowingly been seeking an excuse to release some bile, and this hapless man ended up the recipient.

The story also features a box of mice that have been sitting in my subconscious since I glimpsed them on a bus while visiting my sister in France around twenty years ago, and a park bench where an abandonment occurs.

I wanted to use this tale to explore our weaknesses and the small, unexpected things that bring us solace.

It was originally published by a Canadian magazine called The Germ.

It begins:

My counsellor once told me to count my blessings, so I do.

I have my work. That’s a blessing. When the alarm clock shocks me out of sleep to the bleakest, rainiest mornings, it gives me a reason to uncurl myself, step outside, present my best side to the world.

I have my health. That’s a blessing. It equips me for the long, tedious walk to the train station. When my umbrella crumples, defeated, I stride onwards, strong.

And in its own way, the commute is a blessing too – a chance to travel faster than I can run without any discernible effort, an opportunity to people-watch, nose into the exterior layer of lives that are none of my business. A blessing of sorts even on a particularly frantic morning, when the trains are delayed and everyone is single-minded with one intent: get to work, and a man shoves me out of his way with such unexpected force I topple against the train that’s waiting. At least it wasn’t the moment before the locomotive arrived, at least I didn’t plummet down the chasm of the tracks, get gulped down by the train as it arrived. And to add to the celebratory sense of survival, success, at boarding the train in one complete piece, I have that odd, self-righteous enjoyment of being the wronged, of hearing other commuters berate my reckless shover. Of imagining his shame, quietly revelling in it till I almost feel I ought to apologise to him.

Almost, but not quite.

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.

Writing prompt – quarantine

Posted on November 4, 2020 by Judy

My husband has tested positive for COVID-19, which means we’re currently under house arrest. Happily his symptoms are mild, and we’re hoping they stay that way,

Imagine a character who isn’t allowed to leave their home for some reason, but happens to live somewhere unconventional. Make their location key to the story’s mood – perhaps they live in a treehouse, boat or lighthouse.

How secure do they feel? How might their emotional state be influenced by their surroundings? How could this impact on the people they’re trapped with?

If you write or create something prompted by this, please send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I may publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

Published stories – October 2020

Posted on November 2, 2020 by Judy

This photo by Mikhail Vasilyev on Unsplash illustrates my story ‘Kitten Heeled.’

While the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, including within my own home, October has seen a generous number of my short fictions published, which has offered some light in the fog.

Last week, two tales inspired by real life moments found homes. The second, ‘Calamities of Varied Weights‘, is now live at The Daily Drunk. It covers a real day out with my teenage niece and nephew back in February 2020, rainfall, grumpiness and all.

The first, ‘Kitten Heeled‘, has been published by The Art of Everyone. It captures a moment from my childhood. Adam at The Art used a royalty-free photo I supplied, shown at the top of this post.

Uh-Oh Books published their beautiful Wild and Green kids’ magazine featuring my children’s story ‘Grace Under Lockdown‘, about a grey seal coping with noisy, messy humans! Marine Conservation Society helped with insights.

On 5th October, Dream Journal published a teeny tiny pandemic flash fiction inspired by my middle nephew – ‘Ezra Can Stand on One Foot Forever.’

So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library

Earlier in October, wonderful book post arrived from Indianapolis – the ninth edition of So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library, containing my hopeful story ‘Reaching Branches‘, which is about a newcomer to a suburb seeking a way to forge a sense of community.

The folks at the journal say: “The journal has become well recognized in the writing and artistic community. This year, we received 267 entries for 65 slots, so the selection process was challenging. Here are a few stats: Of those selected: 41 men, 24 women, and 12 veterans. Fourteen of our contributors are from Indiana; 42 are from out of state; and 9 are international. The journal features 38 poems, 17 prose pieces, 10 photographs, and 9 works of art.”

Extraordinary to have my work selected out of 267 submissions, and as one of only 24 by women and nine from overseas!

To top it all off, today is the book birthday of my short story and flash fiction collection, Sky Light Rain. Happy first birthday, Book 2!