The Puppeteer | SkyLightRain

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.

My short story The Puppeteer has made it onto the pages of the tastily named Toasted Cheese lit mag’s September issue.

I am very excited about this! The Puppeteer is a rather sad but ultimately hopeful story that 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 suddenly the idea came to mind of a puppeteer who’d lost his family through his obsession for his craft. Thanks for the inspiration, Shirley!

Here is a paragraph from the tale:

He tried not to feel their bewilderment, not to hear their shrieks of fear, as the flames sent acrid, choking smoke into the night sky and made a dark scorched circle on the grass. Tears streamed down his sooty face, and he told himself he was committing some kind of sacred act; a magician’s trick to bring his wife and Pippa home to him, prove how little hold the puppets had over him, compared to his love for the two of them.

Read the full story here.

I’ll be teaching a workshop on writing from art at the Bristol studio of sculptor Carol Peace on Wednesday 12 November from 2-5pm. Find out more here.

Later this month, my poem Mermaid will be published by Streetcake magazine issue 37.

The poem explores ideas of old age, and begins with the lines

I used to hold it on my tongue, my lips, like salt from the sea,
his land language ready to be spoken at will.

It was prompted in part by my husband’s Dutch grandmother, who slowly lost her English as dementia took hold, and by my own father’s encroaching semantic dementia. In a way it seems to me that the world becomes an unfamiliar and less welcoming place as we age. This poem was my way of examining these thoughts and making them more manageable.

I’ve been following the work of Streetcake duo Nikki and Trini for many years, and am always impressed by the words they serve up in their “online magazine for innovative, experimental and visual writing”. They’re always on the lookout for intriguing, original work, so why not submit?

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Sky Light Rain – The Puppeteer

The Puppeteer published by Toasted Cheese