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.

Unstill Life With Plums – a new publication

Posted on March 30, 2021 by Judy

I’m delighted to have received issue 1 of The Pomegranate, a beautiful new #litmag devoted to stories, poem & essays about art & artists. It contains my flash fiction ‘Unstill Life With Plums’. The tale is under 200 words, and begins:

Our neighbour leaves them on the doorstep, paper-bagged against the sun. We peek inside and inhale their faint, wine-sweet smell. You mix the colour in the lid of your paintbox – red and blue blended with a whisper of green. I check my thigh and admire your skill – the paint’s the exact hue of yesterday’s deep-pinched bruise.

Issue 1 of The Pomegranate also features a 2-page interview with me (which happens to be many times longer than ‘Unstill Life With Plums’). In it I chat with the journal’s founder Zerlina Mastin about my writing habits, obsession with human fallibilities, passion for art, and my upcoming adventures with Reflex Press.

You can buy your copy of issue 1 here: thepomegranatelondon.com/what-we-publish

The front cover is by American artist Shelton Walsmith, who describes his work as lyrical abstraction. I think a lot of my stories could be described the same way!

Sky Light Rain – What Rises

Posted on March 18, 2021 by Judy

The thirty-fifth story is ‘What Rises’. The story was inspired by the Welsh myth of the Lady of Llyn y Fan Fach. In the original myth, she has three sons who became great healers. I began to wonder about the fact these children weren’t one thing or the other, not land dwellers, nor water. In my mind, one sibling, Eillian, changed shape in ways that explored the restrictions of gender too.

I was also intrigued by the aspect of the myth that the lady of the lake left her children after her husband struck her for the third time. I questioned why he hit the woman he worshipped, and examined the violence in love through Eillian’s experiences, which in my tale echo their mother’s.

‘What Rises’ was published as ‘The People of the Soil’ by Enchanted Conversation magazine.

The story begins:

I stirred as I heard the river move beneath the crops, its murmurs rejoicing. My brothers lay intertwined beside me.

“Fam’s leaving,” I whispered, and their eyes snapped open. We crept outside, leaving Dad asleep. We’d known this day would come, even before he struck her for the third time.

What rises from water can’t live on land forever.

Outside, our mother was already a distant glimmer, her milkwhite cattle streaming behind. We rushed after her, silenced by the dawn and the river and the intentness with which she strode.

At the lake’s edge she turned, her fist-blackened eyes like shadows.

“Fam!” cried the youngest of us, Brychan, unable to keep his fear inside. “Fam, take me too.”

He ran to her and we saw her place her water-cold fingers on his half-human cheeks.

“You stay here, son, you and your brothers. You stay here and tend to the people of the soil.”

My elder brother Mab and I took our sobbing sibling between us, each with an arm over his shoulder. We thought comfort into him, and strength, performing our first act of healing.

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 – Edge of the Sand

Posted on March 4, 2021 by Judy

Cornish shore cr Judy Darley 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-fourth story is ‘Edge of the Sand’. The story began to take shape when I visited a millinery shop in Bristol and learnt how feathers are used to create extraordinary hats. An image popped into my mind of a woman walking along the edge where sea meets sand and collecting seagull feathers. I wondered who she wanted to make a hat for, and why.

The answer took shape early as I imagined her brother preparing to get married, and what it would take for her agoraphobic mother to attend. The seagull feathers felt like the perfect representation of taking a leap into freedom, even if that feels like trusting your weight to be carried by the wind buffeting a cliff edge.

The story begins:

The tide has just begun to turn. Arianne walks along the edge of the sand, collecting seagull feathers one by one.

They’re white, the feathers, and dappled with grey, mirroring the clouds overhead.

Her meandering route carries her to the narrow stairs that lead to her childhood home. Deepening shadows cast a chill over clumps of delicate purple flowers that sprout from the cracks between rocks. Her dad would have known what they were named. He always knew details like that – it was he who first got her interested in insects and other invertebrates when she was barely more than a dot herself.

The back door is sticky, its wood swollen by spring rain. She forces it open and steps into the stillness and stands motionless for a moment, feeling the thrum of her heart.

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.

The Stairs Are a Snowcapped Mountain – a new collection

Posted on February 25, 2021 by Judy

I’m excited to share the happy news that Reflex Press will be publishing my third short fiction collection in 2022. The title is ‘The Stairs Are a Snowcapped Mountain’, taken from one of the shortest stories in the collection in which a house encompasses the whole world…

I included the following introduction in my submission to Reflex Press. If you’re planning to submit a collection to a publisher, I highly recommend you create something similar to ease them in. This is the second time I’ve done this, and both times it’s culminated in a publishing contract. It also provides them with some copy to share with the announcement and whet readers’ appetites.

The stories in this collection speak of togetherness and separation: how we strive to connect with that one person who could save us, how we attempt to save the people who matter to us and how we sometimes (often) get things wrong.

Consider the things we slowly come to understand, and then can’t grasp how we didn’t know sooner. Not all is as it first appears. Genders and time frames may skew; perceptions warp. What seems to be unreal may be real, or vice versa. Magic may uncurl in the most commonplace corners. Everyday concerns shuttle past minor miracles.

Discover the lost, the self-conscious, the reckless. Learn how to milk an alpaca. Encounter a river with one thing on its mind. Touch on moments of isolation amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Find out how a ghost-tree could bring a community together. Witness the moment when friendship sparks into something more. Consume a life in one mouthful. Meet the lovers, the families and the undefinable others who make up these worlds and sweep us along.

It’s so good to have something positive to look forward to!

Sky Light Rain – Milk and Other Lies

Posted on February 18, 2021 by Judy

Kaunas, Lithuania, River2. By Judy Darley 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-third story is ‘Milk and Other Lies’. This fable is just 208 words long and tells of a seemingly magical river in a time of famine. I wanted to test ideas around how we see what we want to see, and fear and desperation can prompt us to swallow our own lies. In the story, not everything is as it seems.

The story began with me examining how intense hunger can pervade your every waking thought. The title, ‘Milk and Other Lies,’ refers to the travesty of multinational milk companies convincing women that bottle-feeding their babies was better than breastfeeding, which led to infants dying in poor communities, especially in third world countries. My story aims to examine how something that appears to be enticing can in fact be a treacherous and dangerous illusion.

The story began life as a poem, which is probably why it’s so distilled. I often write in one mode and then change to another to tease out more depth, hopefully without losing the power of the original form. I like the fact that extreme brevity invites the reader to be fully engaged, as they’re required to fill in the gaps between words.

Fiction is often a good route into examining stark truths. We’re all somewhat jaded from relentless bad news, which can mean we close our eyes and ears to what’s actually going on. When we read fiction, our frame of mind is usually more receptive. Fiction helps us get our heads around vast, unpalatable truths.

‘Milk and Other Lies’ was originally published by SmokeLong Quarterly.

The story begins:

One day the river runs with milk. I watch as holloweyed mothers bring infants to the shallows. They pour the clouded liquid, scooped palm by palm, into their babies’ gaping mouths.

The next day I wake to the sound of children’s laughter. I step outside, smelling a cloying sweetness in the air. The river has been gilded overnight, shining with butterscotch. Children hurtle in, barefoot – hungry for its sweet promises.

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 – Merrow Cave

Posted on February 4, 2021 by Judy

The thirty-second story is ‘Merrow Cave’. It tells the story of a young boy, Callum, who is sent to live with his aunt and granddad on a remote island when his mum is unwell, and discovers a rather fishy family secret.

The story grew from someone telling me how their ageing grandma was forgetting her English and reverting to her mother tongue, which his granddad had never learnt, so that it was as though the grandma was being cast adrift with no one to understand her.

The route I took to explore this sorry situation wove in marine folklore, in particular Irish tales of mermaids, or the merrow. Imagine if your relative came from a world more alien than simply being from another country? How could those differences reemerge as they aged and grew frail?

Introducing Callum as the protagonist gave me an opportunity to examine the scene with an outsider’s eyes. Relocating him from his inland home to the windswept isle makes him feels as out of place as his grandma is becoming.

‘Merrow Cave’ was one of those rare tales that seemed to almost write itself, as though carried by a tide I had little control over.

‘Merrow Cave’ was originally published by Querty Magazine, the literary journal of University of New Brunswick Department of English in Canada.

The story begins:

It’s carved into the side of the rock – a face tilted to one side, hair streaming behind. The jaw is angular and strong, the whole thing larger than life.

Running his hands over the smooth stone of the cheeks and nose, Callum senses it again, that feeling of someone behind him, watching. He lets his arms drop to his sides and turns, slowly, gazing into the darkness at the rear of the cave. The shadows are so deep he feels blind for a moment, but then there’s something, a movement of some sort, and the thin light crawling in from the entrance snags on something back there.

“Hello?” he calls, and his voice bleeds back to him, causing him to shudder with self-consciousness. He wants to run outside into the sunshine, but as the last echoes ebb away, he hears something very like a cough being stifled. Whatever it is in the darkness, it sounds unwell.

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 – Blossoming Almond Tree

Posted on January 28, 2021 by Judy

The thirty-first story is ‘Blossoming Almond Tree’. An extract from a longer work in progress, it’s a story of canals, art, and secrets between siblings. The title is a reference to one of Vincent Van Gogh’s most hopeful paintings, ‘Almond Blossoms’, which he completed as a gift for his brother Theo and sister-in-law Jo to celebrate the birth of their son. Just months later, Van Gogh took his own life.

It creates parallels with my character Elise’s concerns about her brother, Davey, and the dark holes that might be appearing beneath his surface.

The pendant pictured above features in the tale.

The story begins:

We travelled to Amsterdam as a celebration the year you turned eighteen. Mam wasn’t thrilled but I promised her we’d visit too many museums to keep straight in our brains, and that I’d make sure you did nothing more than look at the other options on offer.

I planned to keep at least half that promise.

You’d been quieter than usual in the run up to your exams, only your wordless humming occasionally breaking the silence of several days.

I knew Mam was worried about you. I dug into that anxiety and assured her that seeing a bit of culture would do you good, especially with me, your big sister, to watch over you. She couldn’t argue with that.

The journey to Bristol airport took longer and cost more than the flight to Schiphol.

Somehow, we managed to hit a heat wave that slowed the city to a gentle saunter. We strolled around gawping at the canal houses with their gabled façades, and then went and sat on the National Monument in Dam Square eating cones of chips strung with mayonnaise.

I was intrigued by the smoothness of the travertine stone riddled with tiny cavities – like the marks left by miniature artillery fire.

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 – Underwire

Posted on January 14, 2021 by Judy

Have you ever created a fictional character who gained traits and powers you didn’t expect? You may have noticed that for a while now I’ve been offering ‘behind-the-scenes’ insights into the inspiration that prompted the flash fiction and short stories that make up my Valley Press collection Sky Light Rain.

A few weeks ago, entirely unintentionally, I completely skipped over my story ‘Underwire’. This tale is the twenty-seventh in the collection, and should have appeared in this series of posts between ‘The Sculptor‘ and ‘Breathing Water‘.

This most curious thing about this omission is that ‘Underwire’ tells the tale of a woman who chooses to disappear.

It originally washed up in issue 67 (Winter/Spring 2018) of Tears In The Fence.

The image above shows where the story ends. It begins:

The pebbles of the beach are cold lumps beneath my soles. A January wind whistles in from the sea, but I ignore the goosebumps sprigging my flesh and with effort I think the core of me into heat. That’s a trick, imagining an inferno lit at the centre of my gut, flames licking the ropes of intestines and keeping me warm.

The whole world is dressed in shades of bruises today – bluish pebbles, the greenish sea, a sky like slabs of ice above.

I glance up the beach; see the violet trim of my sneakers where I kicked them off a few steps back. Nearby, my socks lounge untidily like patches of lichen or moss.

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 – Fin

Posted on January 7, 2021 by Judy

The thirtieth story is ‘Fin’. It surfaced in my mind one rainy January when I was certain our cellar (the same cellar that brimmed with uncanny encounters in my story ‘Lodged‘) was filling with water.

The idea merged with a whale watching trip I’d taken the year before, when I’d seen and fallen in love with the majesty of fin whales.

The story is about an ending, so the title works on two levels.

The story begins:

It began after their trip to the Azores. Toby had booked it as a celebration of their years together, complete with a voyage to look out for whales. Rachel glued on a smile and let Toby take her hand when he reached for it. She didn’t know how to tell him it was over, but something in the skitter of his glance made her wonder if he’d already guessed. It was as though he no longer dared to fully see her, in case he mistakenly found himself staring at a truth he’d rather not face.

Of the numerous species those Atlantic waters attracted, it was the fin whales that deigned to make an appearance. While other tourists, including Toby, stood and snapped photos, lens to eye, Rachel sat back in her seat and drank the sight in. The slap of fin against the waves, the slide of an immense, narrow body swooning up then over and down into the depths.

“Second largest mammal after the Blue Whale,” their biologist tour guide commented. “These ones are behaving strangely. Normally they come up for air only, but these ones have risen, what, three, four times?”

Each time the pair rose, they came a little closer, and each time, Rachel felt herself singled out by their deep-set, knotted gaze.

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

Sky Light Rain – Carry the Sky

Unstill Life With Plums – a new publication

Sky Light Rain – What Rises

Sky Light Rain – Edge of the Sand

The Stairs Are a Snowcapped Mountain – a new collection

Sky Light Rain – Milk and Other Lies

Sky Light Rain – Merrow Cave

Sky Light Rain – Blossoming Almond Tree

Sky Light Rain – Underwire

Sky Light Rain – Fin