INTERVIEW! 2015

Ragtag giggagon: KATYA MILLS ON NEW BOOK DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS: AN INTERVIEW

Journal # 02.28.15

Saturday. I was made in a form. Crescent cut. You were of another, edgeless kinda moon. The difference between us is what made us. Together we elevated. The buttons popped off of my blouse. You touched me. The sky framed us. A puffy cloud walked through us. Left us dripping on star number seven. You counted to ten, I hid in a black hole. You turned to dark matter. I became breathless. You found me. Now I am yours. 

Journal # 02.27.15

Friday. Hope comes in funny forms. Losing the idea of a maid. Grabbing a broom and a mop. The mind fascinates when running or riding the bike. Oh the visions I have. The heart pumps harder, oxygen goes to the head. All ennui falls out the window. The sun, after a few days obscured, becomes a delight. The skin opens up its pores like a flower opens petals. Some rain in a drought may just do the same. And then the dreaded phone rings. And yes, the dreaded phone alerts. The dreaded alarm. Or the dreaded quiet, dark, descent into nightmares. No. Dear friend. This is not the end. Waking after a little hellish torment, is always so much brighter to be free. Take your bones for a walk and to dinner. Propose yourself a plan to make that dream come alive. Hold on to the blueprints, laminate them, plaster them on the walls of your mind. Then get to work. Keep the spirited sense of urgency! And when the fruits fall and are not anyone's delight? When the fruits fall and rot on the ground? There, there. This is not your concern. Keep taking sun and rain! Do not be sad for long. Let the fruits die. Another harvest is soon and sure to come! Keep giving yourself over to your passion. With urgency now, my dear, with urgency. I see you! You are a big part of this.

Journal # 02.26.15

Thursday. I did not have to work last night. I took some extra rest, and got up very early this morning. About 3am. Nice and quiet. Aching bones. The heater pushing warm air into the cold. I put some coffee on the stove. Cooked some spinach I left to defrost, with butter. Put collars on and let kittens out. Took my medications. I am a depressive. Right action comes out of conscious attention. I look for cues from my mind, my body, my spirit, and my emotional body. If I sense the depression coming on, I can pause before reacting. Right action is not reaction.

I stayed busy at my desk. A spotlight on a table. It's going to be the best day. I can make it. 

Journal # 02.25.15

Wednesday. Local sunrise and the global warming. Generic black tea. Thoughts of you hold me together.

I will not see you today. I will not touch you. I will only know you by the blue predawn, you cast upon my blood.

damn it feels good to be a monster

The monster was no longer under the bed. Or in the closet. The kid had invited it out to play, one day, and the monster cautiously approached, a bashful look on its face. They played cards and the monster excelled at Old Maid. The monster remembered its home in hell, where its parents used to play rummy and bridge at a small card table nestled in an eddy beside the Great River of Blood. The monster missed all the other monsters. He came from a large monster family. 

The kid looked straight at him and was not scared. He asked him all sorts of questions a kid might ask a monster, if he could stop screaming. A really nice kid for a human. Exceptional. Rare. The kid felt the same about the monster. The monster did not even have to change into a human or something less monstrous. He could show his true feelings and remain a monster. They could suck on bomb pops and jump off the garage into giant piles of leaves. He would teach the boy Scaring 101. Damn it felt good to be a monster.

Journal # 02.24.15

A chance. Lives are lost in confusion. A helpless feeling anticipates a real chance for a lot of happiness. Wouldn't you want to make someone smile if you could? Textbook.Very simple. Be kind and helpful and selfless.

 Life is never textbook. Quite the contrary. I once enjoyed the sensation of a man's eyes on me. I was younger. I wanted eyes on me. Life happened and I crossed over somewhere. But to see someone's eyes light up like that! In a dreary working existence, in a seaside working-class town? To know I had a part in it. The smile that followed suit. The expressions. The flowers and friendship, listening and sharing, the efforts to understand you. And a boundary line drawn clear. I drew it between you and me. You saw it. I made myself clear. I know I did. You made sure I knew how much you respected me for it. I thought we had a spectacular friendship. Textbook.

Life is never textbook. I gave freely something you said you needed. You surprised me. Some fantastic extraordinary attentiveness! You found the place where my story was bookmarked. Where I could not go on until an obstacle was removed from my path. You removed it! Often without telling me. Suddenly there's a bike light, so I can ride safely to an important destination. A key, so I can open a particular door. An opportunity. Out there in the wilderness you found a name, or address, or a phone number. A pen, so I could write it all down.

All was really well for a while. Sunshine giving the cool morning dew a chance to sublimate and fly.

But what when the morning was frost, and the sun hidden? What then? A hanging fog. The dew drops fall into the earth, and are swallowed by darkness. The sea at night becomes swollen and dark, and all the eyes in the world are shut tight, except yours. And yours, once so full of light, got avarice and grew a monster. A monster behind the eyes. Devoid of feeling. The eyes became a body and the body became intoxicated, and turned a friend into an enemy and took me...

Maybe that was the moment I crossed over. Maybe. Only I say maybe because nothing feels certain anymore. When you took me without asking. Much later, after great and poisonous bouts of ferocity and trembling, I discovered maybe I could still love. I don't know how, but thank God. Thank God I can still love maybe.

Journal # 02.23.15

Life goes it's own way. Not your way. Not my way.  The wind was blowing hard today. On the streets. In my ears. I met some new people into cycling, too, and it went pretty well. I came thrilled. But I would not leave feeling thrilled. Honestly I just felt tired. Rode out with them from a cafe at the base of a mountain, on my single speed Fuji, out into fields of growing corn and pear trees. The wind was blasting. I couldn't get enough air in my tires. Such is life. I did not have a map. Life. I just followed some people who hopefully knew where to go. We stopped at a fire station many miles away. Some supporters of the cause greeted us with smiles and water and granola. I met some more people. Friendly people. My mind started playing games with me. I didn't wanna play. One guy had beautiful blue silver eyes. He was very kind. I realize now I have forgotten all the names except a couple that stood out. Renee. Nicki. Dog. Slingshot. My friend was waiting for me back at the base of the mountain. He was reading a manuscript, before the wind blew it all out of his hands. He laughed as he told me how he tried to gather all the pages. But there were no page numbers, so it took a while to get it all back in order. Life. Makes you laugh, makes you cry. The cyclists were coming home. I put my bike in the hatchback. They wanted me to stay. To go have lunch with them.  I declined. My friend had been waiting for hours. I was tired. It's hard meeting a whole bunch of people at once. I find it exhausting. So what? I'm an introvert. A loner. Let's be real. Maybe next time. Divine energy fills me when I am alone, and I shout out to an empty room. I love my fucked up life. I really do.

Journal # 02.22.15

Sunday. I wake up and my heart wants to sing. I want to put the past to rest, behind me, and go on with my best effort in the world.

I live in a culture of fear. I have lived all of my 42 years in the United States of America. The culture of fear is not just outside of me; it permeates me. I have to make a concerted and conscious effort, each and every day, to overcome it. In silence and meditation, I feel the fear inside of me. It will stop the breath. It will stop the life. There is a healthy fear, yes. I call it caution. An organ in the body of wisdom. But it cannot run me, anymore.

My heart wants to sing.
My body, to stretch.
My spirit, to calm.

Journal # 02.21.15

Saturday. Listening to BBC news. The English accents cannot dampen the enthusiasm. Apparently the world is spinning on an axis. The axis is made of butterfly wings and licorice sticks, and needs to be placed under construction due to its "deteriorating core infrastructure". World leaders met at an undisclosed location, and, after taking a virtual tour to the center of the earth, agreed to impose tariffs on the world peoples, for the Global Axis Reconstruction Project, aka GARP. A Global propraganda effort is being confabulated for the benefit of all humankind. Animals and plants are thought to derive secondary and tertiary benefit by GARP, but a study would have to be launched to determine wherefore. Fundraising efforts for any study must be deemed essential and sanctioned by the overarching global congress, before bake sales may be held. Pancake raffles are prohibited. Baked goods must meet International Food & Drug Standards, with the exception of McDonald's apple pies. No one is worried about the roaches, except the roaches. The global marketing campaign will include photoshopped imagery of the earth, coming off its axis at a near-future determined date, to incite fear in all peoples toward opening of wallets and purses to save their own souls. This has been determined by the United Nations to be a "healthy global fear" and thus worth capitalization. The U.S. Department of Transportation, which has tasked the Federal Highway Administration for the maintenance of the Eisenhower Interstate System of Highways, and put hundreds of thousands of road construction workers' children through college, will be spearheading GARP, or the World According to GARP, and transposing its mission statement upon all the world's peoples. Thus, "to improve mobility on the nation's highways" shall be rewritten as "to improve mobility of the earth, upon its axis". It is not yet clear if the world's people will "buy in", but the antecedent studies conducted by the Global Church of < insert deity here > of human psychology are hopeful, as humans contain "vast and promising capacities for imagination". 

Journal # 02.20.15

Thursday. Judgment Day for the squatters, next door. The leasing agent was pissed. She woke me from my semi-caffeinated slumber around noon, yelling at a girl on the landing of the second-story apartment which has not yet been rented. Who are you? she shouted up from the yard, her platinum hair falling behind her. Her cobalt blue Scion was still running, in the alley.

"I live here," the girl lied.
Oh no you don't!
"I do!" she insisted.
You better get out. I'm calling the cops.
"The cops told me I could live here!"

The girl burrowed back into the house. They had tacked newspaper over all the windows, inside. This mess was gonna play out all morning. The cops wouldn't be here for an hour. The mp3 track was titled 'Leasing Agent's Lament'.  I could have used some more rest. Oh well. I went into the kitchen for another cup of coffee.

A friend of mine called. He was doing laundry down the street. He instant messaged me many times, and I got the feeling he could use some human contact, so I pulled on some jeans and a hoodie and stepped out for a little walk. I was daydreaming on the soft top of the kindle bestseller list, when my friend saw me by the laundromat and called out. Light like a spin cycle. He and the sunshine warmed my heart.

I gotta go, I said after a while.

Some guy had given us a strange look before stepping into his truck. This particular intersection was the kind of gentrifying line you don't wanna cross. I knew better than to stand there in a parking lot for very long, talking. The folks on the gentrified side were always armed with presuppositions. My friend looked enough like a drug dealer, anyway, and had been, long ago. Whatever a drug dealer looks like? And I once had a habit. In a past life.

Time to split, then. My friend, he gave me a a hug.

We could have stayed. It's not like we were breaking any law. The cops were pre-occupied down the street, placating the leasing agent. We could have hit the donut shop and interviewed the junkies. Then crossed over the imaginary line to the other side of the spinning cottons, to the fancy Italian delicatessen, and interrogated the special white mozzarella.

Journal # 02.19.15

Thursday. Water became very important to me. More essential than ink. I went after it. I brushed my teeth. Texted someone back. Nobody calls anymore. Then I drank a glass of filtered water. I looked toward the sun. More water. Called the tigers back home. Water. The tigers jumped up on the sink. They, too, wanted to get in on the craze. I opened the faucet, plugged the basin. Tigers drank water. I got another glass and drank water, watching the tigers drink water. The plants cried out. I watered those bitches. The sky selfishly held on to the drought. I ignored the sky. So it began to cry. The stems of the grasses and plants grew taut. A rainbow stole the thought. The water inside me,well, the moon tried to pull it away, but it struck upon my skull. Had nowhere to go. Condensation churned colors and feelings around my mind. I began to drip with excitement. I filled glass bottles full. All around the house. Phone calls. Water. Working at my desk. Water. Lying in my bed. Water. Sitting on my couch. Water. Making breakfast. Water. Like it was going out of style. Coffee. Water. Coffee... a change then came to pass. Coffee. Brewed with water. Coffee! Cannot get enough! Oh yes, water, I did not forget. I need you! (But only to make my coffee). Then after coffee, the diuretic effect kicks in and all the water goes away. I am sucked dry. Personal living drought. Gimme more coffee, please. NOW!

Journal # 02.18.15

Wednesday. I was listening to the radio. The media was reporting about some celebrity gossip, and how gossiping was distracting from the real story. The media was talking about the media in a critical way, as though the media was not itself media. The media was reporting how it was wrong for the media in this country to focus on gossip and not the real story. Whatever the real story was. I was interested in the real story. But instead, all I got was strange psychological gyration. The phenomenon of media detaching from media, with hate. Media condemning media for gossiping. Media, gossiping about media. Projecting. The real story cried in a corner. Neglected. I switched channels to hear the real story. White noise. 

Journal # 02.17.15

Tuesday. Today is Fat Tuesday. I will not be roaming the streets of New Orleans. There will be many an intoxicated human across the cityscape. They may wander into the dark alleys and never be seen again. Or they may find a friend and go for another drink. Or sit and listen to a jazz piano. Or find a girl on the street, and a room. Or wake up from a blackout, on an oil rig. Or in the ghetto, with one of their shoes floating in a mud puddle soaking their clothes. No. I will be drinking water today. Waiting for the rain. Dreaming big. Commencing my edits on Book 2 of the Daughter of Darkness. Praying to God.

Journal # 02.16.15

Monday. I almost had an anxiety attack after spending most of my night creating the first edition paperback for Daughter of Darkness. I had the surreal feeling that I was no longer on earth. The same feeling precedes vertigo. I went for a walk, to get away from the screen. I watched some comedy on adult swim, after the walk. Old episodes of Drinky Crow and Arrested Development. The walk and the laughter really helped.

9am. I completed the project. Immediate relief. I went and met a friend for coffee at Peet's. The barista there remembered my name and my order. A latte with almond milk on ice. I don't know how she does it, but she always makes my day. I think she was elected Northern California barista of the month last month. She wears a name tag, so I can address her by name, too. What a poor memory I have for names. Today my eyes were so screen-shot, I couldn't even catch her name. I asked if I could borrow her photographic memory for a day. She waitlisted me behind about forty others.

Here is how the description of my novella reads on the upcoming 'dust cover' (the back of the paperback)...

Ame always knew she was different. The voices in her head reminded her all the time. Anti-psychotics couldn't stop them. Her abduction from her home to the underworld was foretold. She enters the sordid heart of present day Oakland, California, a world misshapen by a culture of fear, and takes her place within a divergent tribe of people with extraordinary capabilities.

Her heart beats fast. Curiosity soon replaces suspicion and apprehension. Life has changed into something mysterious and wonderful. She no longer feels so alienated. She forms a bond with Freddy, the one tasked to kidnap her and bring her home. Through him she meets a tall and brazen American chick, and a sister, in Bless. Then finds companionship in a young blood with a skateboard and a serious ice cream sandwich habit.

Her new friends and associations nurture her, in fearless fashion, toward a purpose far greater than she could ever have imagined. Together they roam the streets, encountering humans and spirits, mercilessly exacting a toll only humans can pay. The alchemy is in her blood.


There is a free sample of my ebook offered here << GRAND THEFT LIFE... >>
(when you get to the page, click on the cover image and you can read the first two chapters).

Journal # 02.15.15

Sunday.

Squatters next door in the renovated house that has been on the market as a rental for almost a month. The leasing agency must be out of their minds. They want double the going rate for their apartments. I realized the man who exited the side door was not a tenant, when he had to stand on the trash bins to hoist himself up and over the wrought iron fence, just to get out of the backyard. Some girl who had been riding her bike up and down the alley, stopped and took him on as passenger. They weaved their way out to the street.

I made some smoothies in a blender, with a friend. We didn't have a banana, so it was slightly acidic with mostly oranges, apples, and pineapples. Earlier in the day, someone was talking to me about how we are all atoms and energy. A big smile came over his face. He said it all came down to love in the end.

facing the new moon

Thirteen of Friday
i got lucky
(all day)

Saturday
(of hearts)
beating away

Sunday
(the best)
a day of rest

Mardi Gras lived
behind masks we all wore!

like snow
facing New England
the Monday
before

Wednesday was ash
my knees hit the floor

Thursday
the new year
inscribed in Chinese

you made me your wife
singing marry me!
please


KatYa Mills © 2015

NOVELLA - EBOOK HAS ARRIVED!

Daughter of Darkness has arrived!
Available in ebook format!
Happy Friday the 13th!


CLICK HERE 4 BOOK ONE

DOD Cover Ebook

living off a lien

This one 
steady preaching 
weakening the
room

against my
desire

flattening life
down to matte finish
matinees

i tried to scream
it stole my breath

i was downcast
the entire day
overcast and
thrown

against my 
desire

i woke up 
in the middle of the night
pulled its guts out
 the wall

it tried to scream
i stole the breath 

imagine waking up
to calm

mammoth fronds 
blown off the palms 
gone with the wind

we survived fallin'
tree cartilage
for 24 hours 
or more

woke up
to quiet calm

the fire
inside me
inside you

the desire

it was
    not mine

living off a lien
in twenty
 fifteen

PUBLICATION 2015 UPDATE

Dear readers! I welcome your thoughts ...

Book One of my new project (WIP) Daughter of Darkness, is nearing completion. A literary fiction. I have been ironing the creases out. Here is a synopsis. My protagonist, Ame, is a young woman recently come of age, trying to find her way in an chaotic urban environment. Her father died in Vietnam. Her mother gave her up. She was raised in the mountains by her step parents. She hears voices in her head all her youth. But they are not hallucinations; the voices foretell her future.

One of her true kin, Freddy, finds her and abducts her to Oakland, California. Though at first resistant, Ame comes rather quickly into the fold. She learns about her people and her heritage. Freddy becomes like a father figure to her. She begins to believe. Her experience resonates with what the voices told her all along. She always felt different from the others.

She discovers her own latent preternatural capability, in this dark land. She makes friends with a girl whose experience parallels hers. Bless and Ame become sisters. She also finds a love interest in a young man of punk persuasion. An unusual spirit named Hendrix leads her to the dark art which is her birthright. She is conflicted, however, by the violence inherent in its practice. Bless and Freddy encourage her in becoming who she is naturally meant to be. Yet she cannot completely embrace her identity. What other choice does she have? If she hopes to survive this culture of fear.

- Katya

Author K by K 2015

toe touch

We talked serious about
light things

steampunk
anime
electronic cloud
formations 

you chose packets
i chose waves

you came over me like one
i carried you
to shore

you made me laugh
I broke many rules

building sandcastles
at low tide

we veered sideways
off the freeway
of great expectations

you answered a question
with a question

i will be your
valentine if
you will
be mine

you said
(playfully)
i said
(seriously)

after we touch
toes

be sure
and never
wash me off

dawn of a smile

She had this expression

I will never forget

A smile is not
the dawn of pleasure
when you smile
through pain

may
be the birth of true love

do you remember
the adrenaline rush
of a one night
stand?

do you remember
how he got dressed
and left without looking you
in the eye without
speaking?

defeated in
a

rocking chair
dishevelled hair
nobody care

oh
the lonely day
after 

humming the bars
of secession from
self

you wash your
warm cottons

get faded

search for a friend
to come and listen
and love you a little
braid your hair

an upper
level flat
got raided

when no one was home

hard lives made harder
spare moments

collective belief systems
ran through us like
a syndicate

sunrise palm springs

punishing us

she had this expression
i will never forget
cause it saved
me

the smile through pain
when i told her
my troubles

i saw my pain
in her eyes!
in her face!
on her lips!

through her braids
in my hair