Writing prompt – walkway

Posted on April 28, 2021 by Judy

My part of town seems to be overflowing with building works currently, with scaffolding and partial constructs glinting through every view.

Rounding a corner, I glimpsed a crane apparently leading directly to a cloud, and for a dreamy moment my brain accepted that as truth.

In that instant, I thought, ‘Oh look, a walkway from here to there.’ As though that made perfect sense.

If ‘here’ is the urban centre I’ve barely stirred from for more than a year, where might ‘there’ be?

What optical mis-step or misunderstanding could you weave into a magical tale or work of art?

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.

Poetry review – The Estate Agent’s Daughter by Rhian Edwards

Posted on April 27, 2021 by Judy

Opening her collection with the title poem, Rhian Edwards immediately sets the tone: wryly humorous, unabashed, yet slightly self-depreciating, as she describes herself in the terms of a property complete with a ”white dogleg staircase”. With lines such as “Her writing desk has been nudged to the brink/ of the bay” and “cable-knit cardigans draped across Ikea chairs come as standard”, I feel I’m gaining an instantly relatable image of the poet in Part One.

‘House Share’ is a clear demonstration of Edwards’ observational acuity as we find ourselves in the midst of an apartment that is “a dog-eared novel, laced in saliva” where a lethargic Labrador “pricks up/ her envelope flap of an ear” before collapsing “into a coil of herself.” It’s so vividly written that I feel I know this dozy dog and the affection both felt by and towards her.

Continue reading →

Writing prompt – communicate

Posted on April 21, 2021 by Judy

During the past year, we’ve all learnt new ways to communicate, and to show our affection without infringing social distancing requirements. Facebook even introduced a new heart-hugging emoji representing ‘care; to join the ranks of ‘like’, ‘love’, ‘haha’, ‘wow’, ‘sad’, and ‘angry’. (Still waiting for the ‘frankly confused’ option).

In the UK’s southwest, a local skywriter has been adding smiley faces to our views.

Imagine if your only option to communicate with distant loved ones was by skywriting! How might the public nature of these declarations influence what you choose to say? How might two people be implicated for their shout-out? And given how the image is altered by perspective, what confusions and misapprehensions could ensue?

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 Naming of Bones by Jan Kaneen

Posted on April 17, 2021 by Judy

The beauty of this book is dazzling. From the first page, I felt myself being drawn into a work of art where light catches on grains of sand and waves hush continually. There’s a quietness to the prose that’s deeply beguiling. It makes you want to listen harder, to breathe in every word and nuance.

Dreamscapes, memories and make-believe all play their role, climbing into each other’s arms and laps until you can’t be sure where real ends and made up begins.

We commence in the middle of the night with a sound of singing, “soft and faraway.”

Jan Kaneen‘s narrator is in bed, just woken and “straining to hear.” In the following pages, it seems that straining to hear could sum up all her efforts – to identify, to gain clarity of a surrounding resonance that hums always somewhere just beyond reach of full comprehension.

Our location is a shoreline where a beachcomber is seen each day, whatever the weather. It’s a wonderful, wind-swept setting, and one that feels shaped by the narrator’s sense of grief. Kaneen sums up the mood and our narrator’s mood in two lines: “I favour wilder weather and stormier skies, and I only go outside on rainy days. I prefer to watch people rather than be with them, and the rain keeps them away.”

Continue reading →

Writing prompt – calm

Posted on April 14, 2021 by Judy

I recently discovered a rural idyll just a half-hour stroll from our home in the hectic centre of Bristol. Brimming with spring-fresh greenery and duck playgrounds aka ponds, it’s a place to unwind and relax amid a natural soundtrack of birdsong and gently lapping water.

Of course, I instantly thought of the bodies that could be lurking in the murk, and the dubious deeds that could be committed here under the cover of starless nights.

Can you create a character who finds a sense of calm here, either through pure or nefarious means?

What does it prompt in your mind? Can you turn that into a tale or work of art?

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.

Sky Light Rain – Carry the Sky

Posted on April 10, 2021 by Judy

I can never resist a ‘behind-the-scenes’ glimpse into the workings of a creative endeavour. It’s 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 thirty-sixth and final story is ‘Carry the Sky’. The story sprang from a variety of sources, including me visiting a town in Italy built to re-home a community after their streets were intentionally flooded to create a leisure lake. The idea of that money-driven cruelty scandalised me! It provided a side-note in a story about a man caring for his eleven-year-old granddaughter in the aftermath of a family tragedy. I wanted to find a way for the pair to bond on the riverside, when the granddaughter would rather be “just about anywhere else when he’s charged with keeping an eye on her.”

‘Carry the Sky’ also reflects elements of ‘Untrue Blue’, the first story in my Sky Light Rain collection, creating a hint of symmetry, if not quite resolution.

‘Carry the Sky’ begins:

Not many folks are out this afternoon. All it takes is a fine dousing drizzle to keep the dog walkers, cyclists and joggers away, John thinks, half-pitying them, half-glad for the peace their absence affords. In front of him, the river dapples like a thing alive, reflecting fractured pieces of sky. Following the storms, large branches still drift through, faking at being creatures worth pointing out to Amy before sinking out of sight.

They’d seen an eel the afternoon before, dead and sliding with the current like an old piece of tubing. Amy had recoiled, face screwed up. John isn’t buying that though. He remembers when she was small, nudging frogspawn with curious fingers. That inquisitive child still has to be in there somewhere.

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 – leavings

Posted on April 7, 2021 by Judy

There’s a woodland I love to walk to where the trees are gloriously sculptural and a white egret once posed like a storm-blown umbrella, whiles dogs and children rampaged in the brook and remnants of old tin barrels hulked beneath the earth over the bridge. It’s a curious mix of bucolic and industrial histories, and there’s always some new wonder to see.

Recently, the treasure was a scrap of poetry affixed to a trunk. What a lovely glimpse from ted.poems

‘home for tea
with every step
the sound of the river’

It made me think of how we draw inspiration from nature while contributing to our surroundings. There’s a constant rhythm of ebb and flow, whether that’s the act of adding something meaningful or only a shower of litter.

What would you choose to leave behind? Can you use this thought to dream up a story or other creative work?

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.

Night Sky Press invites you to collaborate on a fictional planet

Posted on April 5, 2021 by Judy

Iceland cr Judy Darley. A winter sunrise over a snowy landscape where everything is white, silver, blue and black Night Sky Press is a brand-new, biannual, same-world anthology series. For every issue, Founders A’liya Spinner and Keith Nelson come up with a different unique and original world for you to root your stories on. The first issue’s focus is Orcanus: The Crystalline World, a brilliantly detailed creation designed to inspire your imagination and prompt a curated collaboration while pushing “same-world speculative fiction into an accessible, modern spotlight.”

Your submissions must, in some way, have this world as a setting or key factor in the story. “This is meant to inspire creativity, rather than constrain it, and we encourage authors to expand on the world’s provided skeleton in unique and visionary ways.”

Selected works will appear together in that planet’s anthology, reimagining collaboration to build a world from contributors’ shared vision.

Submissions are open until 30th April 2021.

The emphasis is on collaboration. “As an idea, it’s as expansive as the universe we wish to create,” A’liya Spinner and Keith Nelson say. “Night Sky Press was founded on the ideals of teamwork, creativity, and openness to ideas that haven’t garnered ‘mainstream’ attention. For now and forever, our vow is that every issue will be a new and incredible vision, every planet will be a playground for inventiveness, and every author will be as greatly valued as they deserve to be. (…) We have created the skeleton and the sky; you will create the stars.”

You are invited to send:

Flash fiction and short stories between 500 and 5,000 words. Longer stories accepted within reason. Poetry submissions are also accepted, so long as they relate to that issue’s world.
Stories about hope, discovery, mercy, love, and passion. “We love tales about the better half of humanity (or alien-ity!), but we won’t reject stories about struggle, turmoil, or conflict, either. We acknowledge that life, even in the interstellar age, isn’t all glory and tranquillity.”
The founders welcome works from authors of all backgrounds, and especially encourage works by and about LGBTQ+, BIPOC, disabled, and other traditionally marginalised writers and characters.
Unusual perspectives are welcomed. “Have you always wanted to write from the viewpoint of an android, alien lizard, or amorphous, sentient fog, but been unsure where to submit it? We love the creative, the strange, and the new.”
“Stories that take creative use of our setting, and expand, deepen, and enrich our world. Don’t be afraid to add your own flare, aliens, landmarks, and history within our provided framework.”

Along with the usual vetos on gore, sex and hate-writes, the founders comment: “Our anthology is open to all writers, of all experience levels, ages, and perspectives. Don’t doubt yourself or your work; we want to hear your voice!”

Find full details of how to submit here: https://nightskypress.wixsite.com/night-sky-press/submit

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.

Book review – Gaps in the Light by Iona Winter

Posted on April 3, 2021 by Judy

There’s a rare exhilaration that comes from beginning to read a book crammed with written works that you can’t hope to pigeonhole, and to choose instead to dive nose-first and headlong into, trusting the words to catch and anchor you where they will.

Poetry, memoir, flash fiction, sociological and psychological and anthropological study, myth, dream… In Gaps in the Light by Iona Winter, it all builds together into a tidal wave of impressions, sensations and emotions that you’d do well to surrender to and allow it to sweep you away.

Scattering in the Te reo Māori language, where water (wai) and song (waiata) are separated by three letters, and the word for ground is the same as the word for placenta (whenua), Winter ensures that divisions between who and where we are blend as well. The relationship between our bodies and nature are intertwined.

Likewise, the gap between fact and fiction are muddied in the most natural way, for fiction often provides the means to share our most honest emotional truths. If this thing didn’t happen to the author, that doesn’t mean it happened to no one, and the strata of feelings are undoubtedly authentic, regardless of what seeded them.

Continue reading →

SkyLightRain

For writers, daydreamers and innovators

Monthly Archives: April 2021

Writing prompt – walkway

Poetry review – The Estate Agent’s Daughter by Rhian Edwards

Writing prompt – communicate

Book review – The Naming of Bones by Jan Kaneen

Writing prompt – calm

Sky Light Rain – Carry the Sky

Writing prompt – leavings

Night Sky Press invites you to collaborate on a fictional planet

Submissions are open until 30th April 2021.

Book review – Gaps in the Light by Iona Winter