little satellite

There is a sadness in not wanting to know someone close to you, for they are close to you for a reason. There is a sadness in walking past the flowers reaching over and through the holes in the fence to greet you. When i have not eaten for some while i wanna stay there, to know this also, you see, otherwise i lose something. I lose a part of the world. the hunger and thirst of the world. You see how everything in our presence can move us? Even pain moves me and maybe away from myself. Undulations in the spirit. Unraveling of the controls. Spinning out of contact into space and disconnected. Stay there. Without notification. Without any sound except the sound of your own breathing. See how you can never be alone, little satellite? Breath is a tide and their are treasures in its wake, in the pools.

vapid

I forgot everything so I could remember. I forgot the world forgot what happened forgot my name just forgot. The dreams pushed my eyes across the oily undersides of my lids, the eye movement was rapid, the nightmares were vapid. No one could hurt me anymore and neither could I neither could I neither could I.

not a color exactly. a hue

I found myself in a color, in a hue. We were driving away from it all. I gave him the keys to my car. He knew a place far down the river where we could get close to the water and sit in the shade. The river looked blue from above, and green when you came close. But it was neither of those. I had been in a room with friends, earlier, on a sunday morning. I drank decaf coffee and listened and began to smile. Not everyone had a story to share. I find great comfort in a spacious meeting hall, where you can say what you need to say and nobody will talk over you. Where you can say nothing and still be seen. Faraway, sitting on a riverbank, was the same. I lost myself in a color, in a hue. I wouldn't call it green. I wouldn't call it blue.

MAZE -- THE PLAYERS

Here are the main characters in my book -- Maze


Hendrix   An apparition who blurs around the edges. He dresses like Jimi which is how he got his nickname. Nobody knows much about him, but he shows up rather mysteriously anywhere in Oakland, and Ame (the protagonist) has discovered that if she follows him he will lead her to human fear, which is the element she thirsts for. He has a cheshire cat smile and likes to walk backward. He is transparent so he can be hard to follow.

Bless   She is Ame's best friend. They wear each other's clothes and do each other's hair. They hang around Freddy and he protects them on the streets. All three are not exactly human. She has a crush on Ame which becomes more pronounced when her boyfriend dies. She is not happy when Ame begins dating Maze. She is practiced in the dark ways and could not care less for human kind. She gave an amulet to Ame for protection, a scarab of nephrite, in Book One after her first kill.

Everett   Not a good man, Everett is Bless' boyfriend. He was killed in Book One by his friend Freddy because he was physically abusive toward Bless and Ame. He was a junkie and out of control. He does not appear in Book Two. Freddy's loyalty toward Ame and Bless was proven by doing away with his close friend.

Maze   The title character and Ame's love interest.. he appears briefly in Book One, in a fight which goes down at Uma's apartment when one of the escorts suggests he was inappropriate with her. Ame gets hurt pulling an escort off of him. Maze remembers this kindness when he sees Ame at a burrito truck on Broadway, and shares his burrito with her. They hit it off right away and soon fall in love. He's a punk and a skateboarder, and loves ice cream sandwiches. They share the dark gift and hunt together. She stays with him in a boarding house just off of Telegraph Avenue.

Uma   An escort. Queen of the escorts, really. She is close to Freddy and mostly concerned with the business of finding men for her women. She has an apartment in West Oakland where Freddy goes sometimes to get the word on the street.

Kell   A young woman whom Ame meets inadvertently while hunting fear near Lake Merritt. She is a junkie. She has the dark gift which is inaccessible due to her addiction. She shows up in Book Two and Ame immediately takes to her, wants to help her get out from under. Bless and Freddy are living at the Imperial on Telegraph Ave, and Ame convinces them to make room for Kell, who was living in squalor in a tenement building.

Black   A malafide who features prominently in Book Two. He lives next to the boarding house where Ame and Maze take up residence. He sells drugs to anybody and everybody, and this is his front. However, it soon becomes apparent that those who get too close to him, disappear.

Freddy  A complicated character, Freddy figures to be at times violent and protective. Ame was abducted by Freddy in Book One and taken from the Green Mountains where she was raised by humans, and brought to Oakland, California to be with her people, Delux. She soon learns that Freddy is not out to harm her, and she can trust him with her life. He is a mechanic and he thrives on the streets. He can communicate with Bless and Ame telepathically. He is calm amidst chaos, like the eye of a hurricane.

Ame   Our protagonist and first person narrator. She has come of age and been introduced to her kind and the dark arts they practice. She is independent and likes to hunt alone. But she also loves to be with her friend Bless and Freddy, who is like a father to her. She is conflicted about humans. On one hand, they raised her and sheltered her as a child. But it is in her nature to thirst for human fear. In Book Two she finds herself falling in love with Maze.

Delux   Humans once tried to destroy her kind, Delux, hundreds of years ago on the continent. Fear drove them to hunt down the divergent kind, anyone not like themselves. But the Delux adapted quickly and learned how to extract human fear in order to save themselves. Alchemy. The same fear that would have destroyed them all, soon became their sustenance. They followed the humans in the great migration to America, and now live side by side in the underbelly of any city, blending in.

the moon is super

My dreams were full of life, i found myself resting when i got out of bed. i coulda done nothing and felt accomplished, i mean, much had happened in a few minutes of dreaming. i put on the radio and the drip on the coffee grounds. i brushed my hair then combed it. my medallion was hanging off of the bathroom light fixture, so i took it and dropped it over my head. it was warm on my neck from the heat of the bulb on the glass of the light fixture into the metal of the chain. in my sandals half-awake i sliced my toe on an old chest i am using for a coffee table. i watched the blood drip over my toe it was tomato red and made me feel good and healthy. i cleaned my toe and wrapped a bandaid around it, then fed and encouraged my tomcat out back. looking up i saw the brilliance of the almost full harvest moon. turn off your porch light. you won't need it tonight.

writing process -- random thoughts

In this video I am talking to you about my writing process and what it feels like to 'hit the button' as a self-published independent author. Some other topics include 'setting a deadline for yourself' and what it feels like to have 'character-driven' creations in our modern literary age of 'plot fiends' and plot snobbery...

Review: Catcher in the Rye

 I made a reading room out of my back room the other day. I put that big old chair that's been getting decimated by the weather these past two years inside, and a blanket over it, and a light over it, and the first book I read in there was Catcher in the Rye. The same copy with the 1985 cover, you know, the maroon one with the yellow title. I got it from my family and now the pages are yellow and the cover fell off a long time ago and I pinned it to my wall behind my desk. I like to think my dad gave it to me in a really gorgeous way, like he told me some kinda sentimental thing with his eyes gone watery. I know that's not really how it happened, though, because that's what he did with his copy of Nine Stories. I'd rather he gave me Catcher than Nine Stories. Even if I liked eight of them. I don't even know I still have Nine Stories, anyway, if you know what I mean. I think I may have just seen Catcher on his book shelf and just wanted it so bad I just took it. Stole it from my dad. Really madman. I feel so honored that Holden Caufield shared his thoughts with me, I would never go and kill anybody and blame it on the book. How come so many people did that? Way back before it was published,  JD Salinger went to New York and read his book to an editor there. Up in some skyscraper office. He got so upset when the guy told him Holden was really crazy and they could not publish a goddam book with a goddam crazy narrator. They say he ran out of the office and was crying. They say that's because Salinger was Holden. That's what they say. People have a funny way of saying things as though they were truth, when it's really guesswork... anyway, I know I'm talking about things you probably could care less about. You know what happens when I get to talking. I want you to know I thought of you today. Only for a little while, you know what can happen when I think for too long. I wanted all the thoughts to be good ones, but some of the not so good ones approached me too. I told them go away. They sorta edged up and stayed, and I realized I would be wrong to tell them go away when they had a right to be there, too. But I love you. I know it took me a long time to get there. But I got there, didn't I?

GOODREADS GIVEAWAY

Here's a link if you wish to enter the giveaway I am doing for a signed free paperback copy of my new book, on the Goodreads website...  https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/155331-maze

author on Harrison Street in Oakland. 2011

eyes were made for reading

My eyes have not been cooperating with me lately. The one on the right keeps getting lazy about the focus when I'm trying to read, and then does not wanna shut down when I'm trying to sleep. Then the other one likes to wander off with my thoughts sometimes, and I gotta tell my thoughts to stop wandering which is not a nice thing for a creative to have to tell their thoughts. When my left eye stays on course, he focuses really well and I can almost speed read again when I come across some boring stuff Marcel Proust had for breakfast or some lecture Dickens is giving me about child labor or the gruesome details Cormac McCarthy might serve up at anytime. I hate it when my eyes cannot keep up with my mind. But even worse is when my thoughts are lagging the sight, cause then I might see where I'm going but not be able to extricate myself from a clearly tenebrous proceeding.

'madman'

So what if I am disturbed. I cannot stop playing with my hair. My doctor saw me I was taking the ends and wrapping them about my fingers then sucking on the whole damn lot of them, and he said 'that's very strange' and then went on with the discussion of my health. I had not said anything to defend myself. I guess I thought it funny that he called me strange, even if it was only what I was doing. I did not say anything because you know how people are, so defensive and all. For sure he would have gone to great lengths to ruin it. He would have said something like he did not mean i was strange, only that what i was doing was strange. You know, separating out shame from guilt or some kinda stupid moral compass thing, which you would expect him to do, being your doctor and all, supposed to be professional. I really kinda liked that he thought I was strange. I had lots of broken ends, that's why I did it. I really was disturbed anyway. Everybody knew that.   - KatYa

a memory of winter in New England

 I remember a crisp winter day after the snow turned to rain and froze over. We broke through on the way to school. We wore those blonde workboots with the hard rubber heels and the laces like snakes crisscrossing their way up past your ankle. The trees were sparkling with frozen rain. Everything was still except the birds and the cars and the smoke coming out from the stacks. And the earth was moving but we couldn't tell. Not without any wind. And when the warming trend came to end, it got cold once again, and the radiators started hissing and clanking all through the night. You could see your breath and know for sure you were alive. Funny how that works. In the dying seasons.

believer

They cannot hold a candle to you.
This must mean that you are bright.
For who would hold a candle to the sun?

You stay in your room.
You are a strange one.
They do not understand.
How could they?

The seasons are going round again. The harvest.
No one sees it anymore.
Like you at your work.
If they saw, would they believe?

I will walk beside you.
The journey will be long.
We can make it and more tolerable
If we sing a song.

-KatYa

Maze - first reading

I recorded my first reading of an excerpt of my new book,
'Maze'. A literary fiction. Here is the video...

sky

I think I am coming back to life again, it happens many times each day, my mind tricks me down some rabbit hole but these days I got a skateboard and I put that puppy on wheels and roll my ass right on up out of the lowest low, you cannot hold me down there in that pit of hell, na na na! I think I am coming back up with a backscratcher flare as I fly off the rim and up on out of there, ya, cause I know despair and you cannot hold me down there, I don't care who you are or what your accusation, I will be redeemed into a new sensation. There's a risk to success. I might fall out from the sky. There's holes in my clothes but at least I try, man, at least I try.

jamming the transmissions

I could be accused of feeling my way through the world and it's not so bad. I would rather be a disheartened sentimentalist   than a computer or a religious fundamentalist. I guess I am still learning not to react, to check my feelings by my reason. I wouldn't shut them off. A world without feeling is a cold place, anyone who lives there could show and tell you. Most supposedly even-tempered people, are they really smooth around the edges? Don't most of them have a vestibule full of anger jamming their transmissions? Won't this pressure need to blow like an aortic aneurysm, and soon? And the people closest to them will naturally get the blowback. The residue at the bottom of a pot left on the stove to boil dry. I return to my seat in the auditorium. The giant screen. The sentimental film. And have a good cry.

i (you) turn into your (my) arms

Chance set up the constellations
 through which we
astral traveled
legs tangled
deep kissing
hair tangled up
i (you) turn into your (my) arms

i wish you knew how much you always meant and still mean to me
im feeling real bad like part of me died or is lost

 im just gonna be sad and depressed about it all
 and without any closure
 you were i was the only one
 for me for you

 i wish that i could be given a pass
 and i (you) could see you (me) and we could embrace
 and watch the drama go by and smile
 together. again

 its really over
its never ever
 never again

will we never
 work through this?
 why?

 i can understand
 but only if you (i) tell me (you)
 but if you cannot tell me
i can understand that
 too

 i want to thank you. you
enriched my life almost
 every day and
 im sorry we had to go and fuck
 it up with our terrible fighting
tears are coming out my eyes
 right now as i write
 i miss you so bad
 but what do we have?

 eternal
 gratitude for our smiles and the
 kinda monotonous days we
 spent together walking around
 arguing and laughing and holding
 hands. playing the scratchers.
coffee. pastries. chinatown.
 sharing music and rearranging
 all the fucking furniture at 2am
 almost every day. my god.
 the rose garden. the echo glen.
 the walk between Annes house
 and Moss. all the amazing gifts
 we found on the sidewalks! the
 clothes the toasters the microwaves
and printers and tvs and copiers and
 nightstands

 the times we had our place so
setup and clean and we just fell into
 eachother on some secondhand
 mattress somewheres.
 and all the tea. i will
 always remember how you had tea
 for me all the fucking time. wow
 thank you

i love you so much for
 that. and for all the times you felt my
 six pulses or whatever and diagnosed
 me in the eastern style. took your time
 to explain it to me. the wind. the
 dampness. the cupping. the kidney and liver
imbalances you would help me to
 address. acupuncture

the way you (i) cared 
for me (you)

 reading and writing together
 watching tv. whatever
 im sorry
fuck
 what can i say?
 have a nice rest of
 our lives... i mean

your life
my life

- KatYa  based off a letter i wrote in 2012

agnostic

I am agnostic because though I believe in gods, all is a mystery and I remain questioning. I don't care what you could unearth somewhere in the mid-East. I don't care whose item of clothing or imprint you wave like a flag in front of my face. I don't care how high your temple rises. I don't care how far back your scrolls recount. I don't care how long your flowing robes, nor who testifies upon your word. No one has witnessed the coming of faith into my heart. No one was there in my time of dying,  except god. And my god wears no colors of any world religion, my god is not gang-affiliated. I am agnostic for I am regaled in the mysteries of creation.

you have the universal human right to move on

I am sad to have to say goodbye to old friends, but there is nothing to be done anymore to salvage a friendship sometimes, and though my friends may not wanna accept my walking away, walk away I will 'cause there is nothing there anymore, just pain. I am very sad to have to say goodbye and mean it. And then they reach out again to see if they can word something just right to cause me enough trouble grasping what they are suggesting, this old friend takes the pin and buries it subcutaneous and deeper towards my heart, hoping to touch me again in that dreadful yet stale way, to force me back into the dead patterns of negative thought and feeling and relating. And I resist as best I can. For what will it matter how I respond or how vehemently I disagree with what they are suggesting has happened, or some way they think I am responsible for the troubles in their lives? For sure I am equally flawed and in my life have brought storms and darkness upon my own world. I am no better than anybody, though I have my talents and gifts. I am trying not to waste them anymore. I am busy writing books, can you not see? I am busy hoping and dreaming and living in new light. I believe I must move on. I have the right to do so. There is no marriage, there are no vows to hold me here in this heart of mutual misery. I ask that anyone who once called themselves a friend, or still considers themselves a friend of someone who has expressed an interest in freedom to move on and be left alone, ought to consider this: THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS    and regain your composure and consciousness and self-respect by ceasing all activities contrary to the basic principles, stop phoning, stop texting, stop emailing, stop cramming your commentary and opinions under the door! Cease and desist in all communications and not limited to the five basic senses by which we perceive one another in this world! Unfortunately you have lost your right to my ever expansive circle of light, and so much as I know, I have lost my right to yours. I can light a candle for you, for sure, and wish you the very best (and get well soon). I have tried and tried for so long to restore a pathway between our hearts, like the one we first knew, but the conditions are no longer safe and the bridge has been devastated and fallen and sunk to the bottom of our sea of tears. I am sorry to see you go, sorry for the loss of a once great friendship. Now I must move on without you.

MAZE (an urban fantasy) Available Now for Pre-Orders!

"Her abduction to the underworld was foretold. Ame, a heroine of an unusual (and by all appearances human) kind, now roams the city streets and feeds off of human fear to survive. Conflicted by the violent practices of her people, she has become nevertheless intoxicated by their ways. In this the second book of Katya Mills' urban fantasy, Daughter of Darkness, Ame has fallen in love with a young man who shares the dark gift, while her best friend Bless vies for her attention. A death dealer of a different kind prowls around the apartment building where Ame and her boyfriend live. Hendrix, a bloodhound for tracking fear, inadvertently leads Ame to Kell, a kindred spirit in the grips of a terrible addiction. Just as Ame seems to be settling into her new life, a secret alliance is exposed which threatens to uproot her, once again." http://www.amazon.com/Maze-Darkness-2-Daughter-ebook/dp/B015CVIMXS

nine twelve. twenty fifteen.

'NINE TWELVE'

I was stranded by my spirit in this body on the earth. Then I met you. Your ways. 

I could not concentrate anymore on a chalkboard. The teacher showed me the door. 

You saw me outside on a swing by myself.

Nobody but you knew what I knew 

I knew you and me knew what we knew 

what we knew. you knew me. I knew you knew me too. 

You saw me outside but I was not myself 

on a swing by myself after we met I was not alone when you saw me 

by myself holding chains in the spirit your ways like waves like rays of sun

had restored.

- KatYa

  nine eleven. twenty fifteen

Inspiration for the piece...

I wrote this piece while lying in bed on nine eleven, fourteen years after the world trade towers got struck by airliners and caught fire and burned for an eternity and went down after the ones who had held hands and jumped. All day I had been trying to avoid any media coverage or images related to the disaster, unsuccessfully. Sometimes i just wish we could move on. Without the fear of forgetting. We could move on and still remember, couldn't we? Anyways I guess I thought I had moved on and maybe I hadn't completely processed it all. 

The day it went down I woke up in Chicago next to my housemate who had recently shared with me her love of the Sonic Youth and we had something in common besides getting high and going to thrifts. It was a bright and sunny day and long past dawn. I was hungover and lit a joint. She was still asleep. I turned on the tv which I had recently fished out of one of the closets and put in an awkward place on the hardwood floor with the rabbit ears by the door to the bedroom. I never was big on tv. Anyway, I had taken the first few drags on the pinner and had to blink many times, because the smoke was in my eyes, and then the smoke i saw billowing out the sides of the mammoth building in the heart of the beating heart of the USA, New York City. The first plane had struck, the second was yet to come, and for many minutes with the coverage the way it was I only saw a burning building and presumed some jackass had played ding dong ditch on their boss with a wastebasket full of shred. Then the phone on a cord in the hallway rang and knocked me out of the wide awake nightmare. I raced to get it, stoned. Feeling immortal. Feeling immaculate. I was all of 28, and in a year and two months I would be kicking dope in rehab, in California. I was a young blood and my head was hard as the rocks. When I told my mom I figured it was only a matter of time, she called me a Communist and hung up the phone like the good baby boomer she was. I shrugged and went back to the tv. She had been calling me a Communist since the day I brought home the Soviet red bible with its candy red cover, the Marx-Engels reader. I woke up my girlfriend and we watched in awe as the second airliner slammed into the second tower. And the tears began to fall. 

Fourteen years later I am different and still the same. I wrote this piece on nine eleven. On the surface it has nothing to do with nine eleven. But the feeling that inspired this piece was a feeling of finally moving on from a tragedy. The tragedy of the country. The tragedy of my life back then. The trade towers were not the only thing burning. I was. 

you could be compromised

I knew I could be compromised and I am, I am compromised, I would be a fool to think otherwise. My system. My physiology. My psychology. Compromised all the time. I do not mean the kind of arrangement like when I allow my neighbor's pomegranate tree to grow into my yard in return for being allowed to harvest the pomegranates. This is a choice. I am talking about events beyond our control. Solar flares from the sun creating electromagnetic chaos in our atmosphere. Medications which we must take for our medical conditions, which may compromise our systems which have to process them. Our livers have been crossed one too many times, perhaps our kidneys are overtaxed. We are compromised. I cannot just stop breathing the air, yet this morning when I step outside my apartment I can smell and taste the woodsmoke from one of two fires burning multiple thousands of acres just north of where I live. There are thousands of people north of here whose homes and very lives may be altered. We may all be forced into migratory patterns. Compromised. This is why I care.  Because what happens right here, or way over there in a faraway land, may be comparable, systemically, to a solar flare. We all feel it somehow. Maybe not now, maybe later. Do not ever think yourself too exceptional to be compromised, you could be compromised. If you look closely, you may realize - you already are.

saturdays in september (3 takes)

In september a saturday in the USA might be full of surprises, you see, the kids wake up to no school and that makes them especially happy, the husbands of wives sometimes are the same, excited for the long-awaited football game, and the mothers may be busy in the kitchen all morning, of course i am talking in a very conventional sense of roles... what i ask makes it so uncomfortable these days to speak of convention like so? i would hit the delete key and hold that puppy down and gone all the words they would go. 

In september a saturday for vitamin K in the USA ... work, coffee, weekend begins after dawn, feeling quite free, friends, rest, river, cooking, reading, bicycling, sun in the backyard watching cats and birds and squirrels, running, cycling, walking, writing, reading, thinking, resting, coffee, meds, phone calls, making videos, listening to jazz or classical or am radio, highlights of the scores of the games going on, netflix, cooking, thinking, writing, walking to the store, driving somewhere, meditating, anywhere, reading aloud to a friend. 

In september a saturday in the USA might be just another day, you have to go to work because you need to get paid, the kids must be tracked down by someone, where are they? they did not come home last night, their bedroom and clothes smell of marijuana you suppose, and your partner lays in bed doing nothing... i guess you can microwave some oatmeal, let's see, everything so cleverly processed, everything so rainbow, so LGBT. You can take a handful of vitamins or norcos on coffee, anything to find some relief from the tension of trying to make the ends meet. 

ghost train. revisited

Oh ghost train
what terrors do you hold
as you launch across the landscape
burning in the cold

Oh scarecrow
what terrors have you seen
hung up in a corn field
where the murders been

Oh October
harvest and the moon
colors of the
dying

now I light a candle
remembering the lost

so when they come
to call

in the dark hours
in the frost

see
 them by
their shadows
      playing

in the hall

silently carried by water. (a creative nonfiction)

I suck up air and float down the river on my back. I cannot hear anything cause the water is over my ears and I like it, I cannot see anything with the sun in my eyes and fish gather beneath me for shade. A feather floats by, and another. A long time ago she was my age, my mother, now I am hers and I have no children at all, almost six feet tall. The snowy egret is fishing on the far shore and soon it will be fall and the salmon will swim the other way, the friends will stop on their way to Lake Tahoe. From Lake Tahoe. We will have coffee cause that's what you do without kids, drink coffee and talk about something; life may not pull you along so you push it. Push it into passages push it into song. Give it to anyone else to find meaning... to make meaning... and then? That's your children, there. You give them to the world or they go out alone, people see you in them, they see you; they reflect you and you, you are proud of them; very sad if they fail, god forbid if they die. I suck up air so I can float down the river on my back with the feathers. We are soft, we are moving, absorbing all that we can, trying to stay on the surface, yet always we fall deep... to find meaning... to make meaning. Push into song and pulled into words into narrative. Drinking coffee cause that's what you do, not six feet tall, no children, none at all nearing fall. Snowy egrets and passage of time. Fish in the shade, sun in the eyes... silently carried by water.

An excerpt from MAZE

The world will get in between, it will, and only true love will survive it. The world will make these moments harder to obtain, push us all apart, make us write the letters, give us only voices, leave us only Kodak frames; time will take the final blow - we will not eat when food cannot sustain us any longer. Love would come around the corner and look at me and smile, it would, and I would have to smile right back or else love would be gone, put up or shut up for a while and the clouds would fulfill all the sky on another rainy day, when nothing was expected, while looking for glimpses of the sun, rubbing the fog of my breath off the glass, love would show and again disappear. There in the park watching me with my head in my hands trying to sort it all out, and a squirrel would come by and I would not pay attention, and a child would come over and I would avert my eyes or hang my head deeper between my elbows, hiding, and when I finally got to looking up with all of it sorted out, love would be gone. I was waiting in line for it, too, tapping my foot or fidgeting around, trying to look cool or at least interesting, wearing my sunglasses indoors, waiting for my number to be called. All that waiting and love was right there beside me, waiting, too, and when I wondered much later why I had not had a chance at it, I would worry myself about it and wonder what was possibly so wrong with me,  not even realize it was right there waiting for me and with me again! And so I might even get so lost in a feeling, lost in my thinking, so lost in the doing, the weave deeper into a rooted sadness with all the laughter and sunshine around me; identifying, identifying with sadness which stayed with me when it might have passed by - but not now! The kids that came to play would demand I play with them, and stomp on my feet if necessary, talk my thinking right out of my head, hold my hand and pull me away from myself; like love forcing itself upon me, attacking me, and I could either fight for my sadness or put up! And heaven is a place on earth when the change comes along and you let it. Earth is a place on earth and a good place when you get with it. Mess yourself up in the dirt. Work really hard and get tired. Like you mean it and then you realize you do, you do mean it, and then it's like a spring or source of fullness inside, out, and it is bright. And you remember it from a long time ago; you might be singing, dancing, or crying with friends or without, inside or out, rain or sunshine, happiness or pain, whatever your condition don't matter anymore, cause love got ahold of you and it's nothing like it ever was before except relentless and freeing.

MAZE - pre-release!

Dear readers,

Thank you so much for your interest in my work. For those who are interested, I am planning to pre-release Book #2 in my urban fantasy series - Daughter of Darkness - very soon! I will alert you when this happens.You will then be able to pre-order a copy of the book on Amazon.com. I am holding rock steady to my plan for publication on or by Halloween.

One of the notable changes you will see in Book Two...

I am eradicating the use of quotations (well, I am in process of doing so) in favor of italics and dashes and any other means of conveying speech without quotes. I did accomplish this in parts of my novel Girl Without Borders. This should allow for a more seamless reading experience (an item on the wishlist of some readers of the first book). My hope is that it will help accentuate the natural rhythms of language in the narrative. You will also see a departure from the choppiness in Grand Theft Life (short breaking sentences), in favor of longer flowing passages.

-KatYa

beleaguered in the cold

Cell phone go to sleep I do not wish to hear you chirp, you are not the bird in the walnut tree singing the lovely song, no, you are not soft of down and sweet, no, you can be taken apart and reconstituted - you lack the mysterious quality. You are priced, bought and sold! Is this not true? You cannot live, you cannot die, you cannot fly. Cell phone be quiet, please, I have exhausted all your peculiar tonalities and wish only to be left alone. A parcel of time I have allotted to address any and all of those concerns of which you lobby. My associates, collaborateurs, family and friends, all shall have their due, I need not hear it from you. Silence! my dear, for out of silence shall come a storm of swirling letters into words amount to the tale which lies concealed, beleaguered in the cold, and must be lifted up from certain death to be told!      -- KatYa --

live a better life!

I made a video yesterday in which I talk in an optimistic way about one of my favorite topics, personal empowerment, including: how to locate your choices and make them, how to 'survive yourself', personal responsibility, 'Radical Acceptance' concept (a term i borrowed from my study of DBT or Dialectical Behavior Therapy, a modality developed by Marsha Linehan to treat Borderline Personality Disorder), writing practice, socioeconomics, and mindfulness.

murder by memory - part iii

The way you remembered it was not the way I remembered it, and everyone else had already forgotten.  The NRA was not a weak lobby in DC. Many financiers and real estate magnates and movie stars and pro athletes and paranoids and phobics wanted to keep a .44 in their glove compartment,  and worked the legal system hard to find the highest caliber argument. But soon there would be no head to put a gun to. Only a heart which held the lantern of truth up to an establishment which held stake in a lesser truth, perhaps an eco-friendly low watt lightbulb. This was no revolution but there were two sides and both believing they were bonafide fighting the forces of darkness. Everyone else was confused as hell or too busy to bother. What were we trying to accomplish? The way you remembered it was not the way I remembered it, and everyone else had already forgotten. But collective forgetfulness tended to take the creases out of faces erasing lines had been drawn, like twilight, like darkness; so long as you could not see them the crashing waves were not so frightful, and might even lull you to sleep.

i wrote

books dissolved into
passages dissolved into
words dissolved into
letters dissolved into
tears

- KatYa

meditation

I thought about the origins of a feeling of unloved
How many generations one must go back
How long it had been passed down
And how could this weed ever
be uprooted

Or would you always
forever feel unloved
no matter if all the world gave you its heartbeat
the sky and the earth
the birds and the trees
the honey and sugar
the radio the tv

the winter spring
summer and fall
the lonely ghost faraway down the hall

little belly

the light
long left
 the sky

strange music on the radio
this room she is soft now
she is softness
she is soft

it's been years feels like years
since i fell since i fell
since i fell

down on my bare feet
light in my head in the kitchen
for the coffee for my meds

first i heat some oats for my soft
my little for my soft some oats for my soft
my little belly

down on my down on my
down on my luck maybe
so maybe so

there's a kitten
there's a cell phone keeping warm
beneath my little circle of a warm a little
lovely

where's my other lovely?
the orange one

i have to hold onto something
i have to hold on for my chance to
come my chance to come

waiting. walking through the sunset of a memory
the orange one where oh where are you?

feels like years since i awoke
it's been months since i got myself up
on my own

across the way i see
a single flower in a bowl in a window
a still life on a window sill
life it looks peaceful

then fire trucks sudden sound their way
a fire in the city. you can really hear
the engines when you open your door the engines roar

I get a change of clothes
fold them over my arm
carry them to the shower

i gotta go to work
no matter what

I am thinking of you
and how i loved you
and how you betrayed me

too dam bad
oh well. i gotta go to work
no matter what you do you did
me wrong

The water cool then hot the steam
I pull the elastic out my hair you called me plastic
you don't care. too dam bad oh well
i got work to do and i give a dam
i really do i really cared about you
dam you

My hair is full of water full of steam
I look down and see look down
and see my belly

I don't always like my belly
but tonight I do

I love you little belly
won't go away
no matter how hard i try
won't go away
running and stretching
won't go away
working you sweating you out you
won't go away
will you?


I love you
little soapy belly
I always will you
never said nothing you
never did nothing
to hurt me

murder by memory - part ii

A cultural analysis - or defrag - of the perceived madness and its development in the mind from inception on... The designated criminal who judged a fellow sentient for a difference on any continuum (ie sexuality, race, gender, education, age, ethnicity, body image, fanciful morality plays) would be taken to a room without furniture to stand upon an intelligent floor which assessed the sensitive points of any criminal scanning the foot with footprint technology, then, when any thought, feeling or behavior indicated a relapse into poor or judgmental bias, such would be confronted and corrected with a paralyzing shot of vibrational frequency dissonant to the criminal, and the corresponding organ would temporarily be shut down or limited of function for up to 24 hours. If the kidney got tapped, the subject would begin to experience blood toxicity and jaundice, and feel the attitude and judgment fall away as all energy became devoted to trying to locate and sweep out the source of infinite pain. An eradication of hate campaign was underway.

murder by memory  - part i

Will he come back to me? The silence in the house might break her delicate wrists in two, toss her on the woodpile, long nights, to keep warm. Abbreviated days. All of her memory of him coming home. The squeaking of the belt under the hood of his Jeep, where he parked beneath the sycamore tree. One of the kittens would bound out to meet him. Fatigue had not undone him. She would quickly get up and wrap a sweater around her, step into the sandals by their bed on the mahogany floors, and take the 45 steps down to the kitchen, the backs of her thongs clicking into her heels. She would grab a nice glazed ceramic bowl out of the cabinet, pour some oats and some water without measuring, into a pot on the stove. Oatmeal was his favorite. Then she would hop back up onto the landing, and click down to the front door to swing it open for him. The feeling of him pressing into her. The cool kiss on the neck. These were the memories.

i write books

The past was in the past and there was no changing it, I had come to accept some of the terrible ways that I was, at a time when i knew neither how to love nor take care of myself, love affairs that got hot and then got colder than ice, and died on a silver platter served up to the gods because we could no longer manage our own broken human entanglements. The gods were angry at us for sure. We were like selfish children fighting and pulling each other's hair but neither of us was more dangerous than we were to ourselves. The only solution I saw was to surrender up my lifestyle and admit personal defeat on all levels, and I did. The year was 2012. The ones who loved me all a while from a great distance and many years of silence, loved me still and showed me some light. I was ready to end it all and start from scratch, and I did. The following years would be painstaking, with nightmares and memories nobody would want to claim as their own, anxiety and depression stirring up and weighing down the bones, feelings of loneliness and shame, sadness in seeing what I had done to myself and how I hurt the ones who loved me. Yet as I worked hard to forge a new and enduring lifestyle, the gods began to smile upon me again and gave me a little more light every day. I raised kittens from six weeks old, Boo and Mouse. I wrote books and made some new friends. The ones who loved me all a while from a great distance and many years of silence began to come a little closer. Soon we would strike the heart of the matter, and my basic faith would be restored. I tried to reach out and heal the wounds of the past - not everyone wanted me back - the point is I tried and would keep trying hard. I was honest and accountable for all the worst parts of my nature; the lies and deceptions and attempts to manipulate situations to my favor, out of fear, out of avarice, out of selfish desire, an endless burning inside of me. A fire I channel now into something worth giving, to make up for the sad way in which I was living for so long, the addiction clouding my vision back then, when I was lost and alone subjected to contempt and derision. Life works itself out you know, and over and over I had to acquiesce, dropping to my knees in a helpless and hopeless emotional state. I wrote books. The ones who loved me all a while from a great distance and many years of silence gave me a chance and I took it, and - look at me now - I have come a long way and doing my best, out of the clouds and feeling refreshed, coffee my drug and fuck all the rest! The haters still trying sometimes to get into my peace and into my head and sometimes succeeding for a moment - like last night - but when the emotions stirred up and I cannot breathe anymore, feeling the pain they wanna inflict, all I have to do is stop absorbing it and don't fight back and remember I am only left with myself and my gods and what we know to be true, the pain can subside in the rain. I wrote books and I wrote them for me and for you. In the darkest of nights like tonight we will find, the true design, the judgment of others wash away down the grate to their fate, and the time people spend knocking us reflects more on their character, for what would they want? an apology? something more? why they are pressing to hurt my old feelings is not my affair or concern anymore. Impoverishment of the spirit is a dead end you see, I have given it up for life. I want only the best out of anyone I meet, whether it be at home, online, in the coffeehouses, on the street. They can hunt me down to hurt me with their jealousy and rage, bringing up the past which has already been played. I won't give in to hypocrisy and lies. I won't have my character assaulted or assassinated anymore. I write books. I work hard and am cleansed by my craft. I dedicate my life to this cause, fait accompli. If you have not already seen in me the life and the love - pay close attention - you will see.

touch

These days
these nights

these scars
which map
the skin

these highways
these hairstyles
these thoughts
all lead to dead
ends

the tax dollars
we spend to connect and
reconnect us

overpasses
underpasses
mobile phones

your family
your clothes
your hair your age has
changed

these trees
rooted in the yard

the paint
once fresh
chips off
into the grass

the asphalt cracks
like laughter

the anger
like lightning
the tears

there is no wind
there is no rain
no thunder nor
darkness

can dilute
this lonely
feeling

but when
 i hold
your hand...

using your keyboard like a piano (video)

About the ways in which I find the keyboard to be similar to a musical instrument, and useful to setup rhythms which are beneficial to the creative process and writing specifically. 

 Hope this is helpful      xxx     KatYa