GWB 1.13.2 a video book

perspective switching. writing process

As some of you may know from previous posts, I was enticed by the natural editing process (several drafts in, mind you) to switch perspectives between two main characters and sisters, Ame and Kell. I stepped in the arena and began doing exactly that, and found Kell's voice (previously unexplored) an easy thrill; writing from her perspective comes quite natural to me. I began threading the narrative this way, back and forth between Ame and Kell, for several pages in what has come to be a rather drawn out 'prologue' of the (unreleased) Book #3 of my fiction series.

Switching perspectives seem to inject the narrative with a juicy shot and a vaccination against monotony. Both voices are first person, and Book #2 left off with the sisters apart and now trying to communicate through the telepath. Ame is searching for Kell who has gone missing. These characters both have telepathic capacity, though the younger of them, Kell, has had hers stifled by her opiate addiction. In fact, she has been a junky for so long she doesn't even know her own power. She has not yet been convinced she is one of their tribe: Delux. A people very much like humans in all ways except for certain practices and preternatural gifts.

So I had yet to have anyone else read the latest draft with the perspective switching. I really only got it all together in form a couple weeks past. I shared my work with my beta readers through g. docs.  I shot the first 15,000 words out to my betas last week and got a great reaction. One of my readers actually read my mind completely (no joke!) and suggested to me to have this threading go on - past prologue - and into the main narrative, he so enjoyed the switch. Now this will likely postpone (and already has) my release, but it cannot be helped really if I am to follow these leads. Getting the comments from my reader was like the universe speaking to me, I swear to god.

The series has had some initial success in the market. I released Book One in late 2013, and Book Two late last 2015. Here is the link to the series on Amazon, where 17 combined reviews have garnered 4.9 out of 5 stars. Here is the link to the series on Goodreads, where as of this writing 43 readers' reviews have garnered 3.9 out of 5 stars. Totaling both platforms, that makes 60 reviews for 4 out of 5 stars. Just a drop in the ocean, but encouraging enough for me to wanna keep the series alive for you and me!

sun.15

 

Released from her obligation
the sun sank into the ocean and slept
until the dawn

k by k. 2016

GWB 1.13.1 - a video book

spark

the rains came

and i began sleeping

really sleeping

when i awoke 

the storm was not over

thankfully

does the storm ever
end and if it did would
we be happier
then

the soul is

a steady

 rain

GWB 1.12.3 a video book

Journal #

Think about life as a creative opportunity and you may get excited, I mean, work can become playful.

Taking on all you can and challenging yourself is healthy, owning your space in a way that suits you, making it over time a reflection, more and more, of who you are.

Sometimes we tell ourselves lies and believe them.

Write a story so simple there are no names. Not confused or overwhelmed by detail and bias. Then...

Place yourself inside it
Discover who you are

GWB 1.12.2 Video Book

on washing a cat

When i picked up my cat 'Mouse' and took him to the tub with the bucket for washing, the whole organism fought me from the musco-skeletal channel, buttressing into an indefensible arch. It started in the mind of the cat, triggered the moment we crossed the divide of hallway and washroom, and before any water even touched the body. Dogs at this point begin to paddle their wrists instinctively.

The cats are no stranger to my washing them, and always appear more content afterwards, when dry and clean, and sleep soundly without the pests. And yet the fight comes up again every time we go to wash.

See how we fight both the good and the bad? Someone wants to help us, they offer a way out of our problems, and our whole organism reacts against the change, almost as though we believe they would hurt us.  Takes a funny resolve sometimes to do that which will be good for the health.

random free thought

We are bodies we are animals and then dead. we are energy we are light we are darkness we are dead then alive. we are angry we are happy we are grazing star gazing and thinking we are free we are imprisoned we are special we are selfless we are powerful we are alone we are in love we are aging we are regressing progressing learning forgetting remembering. theres nothing to do but be what you are and then be what you aren't anymore and be something else and keep going? how can you not keep going? like its within our control to fast forward rewind control time place good bad whatever so you just do what you do and be who you be and thats it. i think so. sometimes i'm more optimistic sometimes despairing sometimes just okay with everything and nothing u know. i got laid last week and first time in a year or more and it was fantastic to be. he was a little inconsiderate but not on purpose and i got myself off after. a good friend of mine (not some stranger) and just happens to be uninvolved (don't ever fuck strangers anymore, it's no good!) i was a puzzle. now solved.  -- KatYa (this fragment was inspired by Chloe and Jay (Justin) H).

Journal # 07.22.16

I am alive. I am a lecturer after lecturing, I contemplate the yolk of an egg. Trying to hold it together. Grinding out theory in multi-colored peppercorn. I am a laughing hyena asleep on a snowbank, all by my lonesome and no one to laugh with. I am a crying hyena, animalistic. I am discontent, swollen with pride. I am chastised by my family without words, someone else pays the bill. I am the taste of salt water taffy on the tongue, I am content. I am the touch you touch after several years forced apart. Together we have a chance, my love, we have a chance.

KbyK. July'16

Review: Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party

Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party by George R. Stewart
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Stewart focuses on forming an accurate logistical picture of the travels and trials of 87 members of the Donner Party against a harsh environment, whose wagon train came together around July 1846 near the Great Salt Lake and headed to California over a newly inspired yet little tested route over a dangerously steep pass in the Sierra Nevadas, which the trusted and well-traveled Hastings recommended they try in order to save 300 miles had they taken the known (and therefore safer) emigration trail around the mountains. Unfortunately the going is rough in Utah and Nevada, and they are doomed to hunker down and camp beside what is now known as Donner Lake. This tale of tragedy and triumph ends in April 1847, after several relief parties (often comprised of family members of the original caravan) made successful rescues over the course of the long and brutal winter featuring several devastating storms packing snow 30+ feet in some parts. Amazingly, 42 of the 87 characters (many of whom are painted in thin brushstrokes by the author, but just enough to begin caring about them) make it out of the mountains and down to Sutter's Fort in Sacramento, a lush valley ripe for settling, and the promised land which was the basis for most of the families making the trip in the first place. Many, including the Donners, had been farmers in the midwest, and envisioned taking a grand adventure in a well-orchestrated way (books and goods and kitchen utensils and blankets all packed into wagons driven by teams of oxen with cattle and pack animals behind) providing comfort for the many women and children, some as young as one year old. The families were mainly of Irish and German and English descent, and we get a glimpse into the different and resourceful ways they survive, as the elements ultimately cause each family to fall back on itself for support. As a city dweller in the 21st century, I could only marvel at the kind of grit and determination displayed by these pioneering folk 200 years ago. As the winter progressed, the snowbanks rose far above the chimney tops of the cabins they built lakeside. Game was scarce. Only timber and religion were of endless supply to them. The ones who were snowed in at the camps had mostly to combat slow starvation and cramped conditions. They lived off of rawhide before resorting to cannibalism as a last resort on the well-preserved bodies of the dead in the snow. Some went mad. The ones who ventured out from time to time in last ditch efforts to cross the towering pass to the 100 mile or so stretch of canyons and valleys which lay on the other side to take them down to Sacramento, showed incredible tenacity and spirit. Others were selfish and cowardly, and abandoned all scruples in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Such was the kind of language the author used to recount the stories. A bit old-fashioned but powerful nevertheless, and kept me reading well past my bedtime!

Here are some vivid images circling my mind still, well portrayed by the author. A man wrapped in blankets propped up against a snowbank beside a campfire, smoking the last of tobacco after saying goodbye and courageously telling the hikers to go on without him, and left behind to die alone in the mountains. Five women who made it over the pass on snowshoes, coming into an Indian camp looking like skeletons on broken frostbitten feet and half-clothed, being taken into warming huts and given acorns to break the starvation. A father returning two months after leaving his children in the camp, on a relief mission funded by the rudimentary California-Mexican government, and finding his 8 year old daughter sitting on the edge of the roof of the cabin he built for them, her feet scraping the receding snowbanks. In the time he was absent, he had survived war, flood, fire, starvation, cold, and thirst. Unlike the others, his entire family would survive the ordeal and live to tell. Another image of a group of nine hikers, long starved, mostly young children, holding on for dear life in the midst of a snowstorm in the mountains, 30 feet down in a hollow made by a campfire which grew and ultimately sunk down into the snow by the heat, and made a space large enough for all of them to climb down into, to stay warm until days later when they were found. One who had died there had their liver and heart taken for boiling for sustenance of the remainder. Solitary men and women at Sutter's Fort, finally arrived, gazing back to the foothills every day, wishing and wondering whether their loved ones were still alive on the other side.

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itching for play (writing process)

my friends, confidence rises as the words fall into place and chapters materialize around central concepts and characters. the cover is itching for play as i write into the future of this series. not knowing where it is going, i understand myself better seeking who i am then being who i have found myself to be. i need not wear the booksellers cap right now. of course i crave readership and less do i thirst for sales. i am much more interested in communicating with my audience than banking off of them. how separate the marketing mind is from the actual making of a book. july has been very good. best month in months for WIP production. i have been back to shouting out from behind my desk, alone in my room but for cats! a very good sign. i don't holler much unless i'm onto something. like any project of any kind, the builder can see when things are falling into place (or not). with this book, not unlike the others preceding it, i found the process of setting the foundation to be painstaking, almost like the surface was some scraggled slippery rock on saturn. like bones on the mend, i had to literally break it up several times and reset it. there were days i could not even walk and meet the site,  the reminder of all the work needing done. the healing has begun. the foundation is in place and the structure rises up and takes form against the harsh landscape! though the inners must be fulfilled, it is a lovely and most tingly experience to walk around and above and look upon the book, the materialized form of it! (i mean in my mind, materialized as a vision) again, this work heals me and has little to do with the separate process of bookselling and building readership. it's a faith play. knowing that it's a fine house and someone will make it their home. the cool thing about a book or work of art, is that the builder shares the home with the reader and the world. i am unsure how large my fan base is, at this time, and it may be very small. but the author, the one who writes, is carefree! carried across the healing process, jettisoned into fresh space, wearing saturn's ring. saying what i needed to say, in an ordinary, heartfelt (ritualized and methodical) way. and the paint job? the cover, she awaits, ornamental, itching for play.

GWB 1.12.1 - a video book

Journal # 07.20.16

My new blanket, sea green, provides comfort against the squalls of the world. Wrapped in soft waves of blended cotton, I am hard to convince. Maybe it's the celebrity twitter fiascos and heat waves, the political conventions. Maybe it's the people who let me down. Maybe it's the many gods, the guns, exploitation and fear. Maybe it's my great expectations. Endorsements bought and traded and ringing in the ears, racial tensions expansive in the cities in the nights. How we go about reaching out for our implosives. Some of us are down on our luck. 

 I am up on my luck and not scared to get close to someone in need. Outside of car troubles, empty wallets, degradations, and syncope spells... loneliness awaits the life of living on couches in cars on corners. Nobody should ever feel left completely alone. If all I can offer is my company, kind words and home cooking, this is what I shall give. No one oughta feel no one cares. 

I pray that you will make it and come back to us like Spring.  For now I fall back to my routine, preservation of sanity, and settle down to read of the exploits of pioneers attempting to cross the Sierra Nevadas two hundred years ago to reach our sacred, sweet valley. Thank god for family and community, and cheap, blended cottons. I had just enough fight in me, in Walmart, to open mom's palette beyond earth tones. 

GWB 1:11:4 - story

love and murder

2016 © KatYa 

i was in love with her 

if i hadn't been

 i wouldn't have wanted

 to murder her 

that day 

i had a choice 

to break her neck 

to be a monster 

and go to prison for life 

(or a few weeks) 

depending upon 

my miserable 

gofund.me 

and how much i could raise 

to back my colorless 

innocence 

plea 

or take a public defender

 turn back time 

and hang 

by the neck 

until dead

terrorism sux

Paris is incredible. Incroyable. Very possibly the most treasured city in the world, though I hate to use superlatives. Have you been there? You will understand the origin of the café and people will talk back to you, tell you how they really feel, argue with you, almost fight with you before you all get down to the basic human show of kindness, and share some bread crusts and cheese, water and wine, coffee and conversation. And embrace one another, locating a point of arrival  - by point of departure. You gotta roll up sleeves and put forth the knuckles of convictions first, show them where you stand. Only then can you find common ground somewhere between, which often is the character behind the words and philosophies. Willingness to defend your cause and country. Loyalty. Spiritedness. Cohesion. Esprit de corps. This is the French term for the universal experience of morale. Uniting behind a common cause. And in these times of terrorism (under attack today in Nice) we need the glue only France can manufacture. Let our hearts go out to the lives lost and the lives living with the loss. We all can feel the loss and let those who we have lost inspire us to counter by coming together somehow to heal these differences because we all can agree, on ALL sides, terror and Terrorism suck.

love. recklessly

Love your life

recklessly

like a spire 

in the air

past some meddlin 

point of 

despair

like you 

don'even 

care

Love yourself 

in the morning

all scraggled your hair

yawnin before coffee

and meds

kickin in

Love your life

 at night 

when you 

can'even 

see

 in haystacks

    drunken alleys 

and trees

 wall to wall

rolling wheels 

of cheese

 second 

to loving

no'one else

   dreamin

haunted

up to no good 

at all

in mirrors

fancy clothes

long halls

in waders

rising up

jumpers

the fish

on your

 knees

Love your life

in cups

straight up 

with no chaser

bent stemming cherries

an shaken

an stirred

collapsed 

like umbrellas

When it rains outside

the mayhem 

behind locked doors

open but screened

walled up within

thirstin for light

dreamin of pinups

and ticker tape 

parades

pregnant with life

in floods and capris

glasses and ice flashes

in the sun

rooftop flashing

the sky for a 

sign

KatYa ©2016

go emo

"I missed her somethin terrible, Kell. She let me soak right through her skin, caught in the city, and live there protected, exceeding her lung capacity inhaling, then giving me her lips and taking in the deep river of air. Segue from there. And I began to cry when I first saw through her eyes, okay, the place had been blasted apart and made a clearing, my pupils pinning and dilating, pulsing as I really got into her, how uncommon the hopeful pain, starvation and loss for so long, god, Kell, where didya come from? Where did I come from? She was right here, beside me, pressed up against my ribs, our bellies greeting through our clothes, what hips we had trying to push around, and she started to catch the tears on a fingerprint, getting closer, cupping a hand to my face and though she let me in, she was not aware how deep I was gonna go, her fingertips she took to her lips and already salt. I would make her thirsty, all feeling her dying and coming back to life and knowing now the interior of addiction and then come clean. I took a simple breath just beyond my lung capacity, made dangerous, then kissed her a hit of my madness, and came back to myself with a gasping kind of whistle. She covered her mouth and laughed. There’s something funny in all of us. I had to crouch down to the floor so blown away by the difference in her and me, and really the influence she had on me, I mean her life, as it came to me in flashbacks, and she crouched down beside me wondering was I gonna be okay. Hiding the smile I gave her, of me. I fell on my knees on the floor and threw my arms around her. God, you are so awfully sweet. How can you be so wonderful? Looking into the green and wandering reflective marbles of her eyes. Like you saw the swamp and survived and it made ya an emerald by its burn, ya, butterflies flew you up and outta that sewer. Catfish gasping for air and feeling for the bottom. Goddam. A million particles of mulch. The rays of the sun as though caught under ice, bounce around until smothered by the anaerobic. The fish that thrive are all muscle and gray as a country mare. So rubbery they could make for playground balls if you stitched up their mouths. Slippery when dry. All you need to know. Not many survived the swamp, but she did. My Kell. Don’t cross her. I will fuck you up. We cut our teeth on the horns of bulls. Such is why she can go emo and the world will go with her, rainclouds forming and air churning, and a foggy sadness making clarity in your head. Well, someone had crossed her, and I was about to cross them out."  - Drafted from Book#3. Ame and the TE. by KatYa

americano

i went to visit my good friend in san francisco up in merced heights. the wind was several knots and the Pacific foaming at the beach. my friend had fallen back to sleep. something happened to his knee so he walks funny now.  he needs surgery cause he tore something and its inflammed. i remember when my whole life was swell. we went to lunch in daly city on a sunday when all the country's got politics and black lives matter on its mind. robots detonating bombs to take out snipers. honestly i wouldn't want to be black in this country, when simple traffic stops can turn deadly. racial tensions are growing again like they often do. our country is founded on tensions. you could argue tension is what makes the whole thing tick. i've known my friend for a decade and maybe half that time we were incommunicado. at the cafe by the beach and facing the wind, he told me he thinks we have agreed about 87% of the time. i thought about that number while i sipped on my iced americano. no cream. no sugar. just water and finely ground coffee. he's a banker and he's always calculating. 87%. i'm not gonna argue. he's probably somehow right. 88% of the time, he is.

GWB 1:11:3 story

Journal # 07.08.16

How I feel about 'world news' today...

Book #3 is coming along...

Gotta car wash today...

Trying to keep the faith

in troubled times!

a night like tonight (tales of a custodial engineer)

I have some math in my head, jamaican jerk chicken in my belly and some love in my heart tonight, still the goddam technology is orbiting around the head tryin to draw the attention. I am fighting the urge to escape to that flashy instant fix place where even death is kept alive. Hashtag rest in peace. The hemp coconut milk I drown my shredded wheats in tastes like some exotic curry on ice, but I drink it all down so I can have the energy to make it through my custodial engineering position several miles from home and half of them highway. The interns are turning over this month and the place is repositioned to provide for non-matching contributions. The fireworks are over but the fire's still burning inside. My self-discipline is plus or minus 300 milligrams of neurontin and several helpings of frozen vegetables. I am gonna write this damn book, okay, just give me a minute. There's nothing else I can fall in love with on a night like tonight.

no flowers but peaceful anyway

i met myrtle rhymes with turtle where the flowers got wiped out by the heat wave. my cats followed me there, several cracks in the pavement away from home. tomcat stayed home to guard the house. i always tell him 'guard the house' on my way out. he grunts. not sure he wants the job but he sure handles it and we've never had a break-in.

Sentry

world war two in color's no different from world war two in black in white or world war two with butter on toast. or world war two sandwiched between world war one and three. or world war two on skis. and there is footage! Russians blazing down the slopes of the Eastern Front. on skis. Germans surrender. on knees.

Tomcat on watch

myrtle is from North Dakota and im from New Hampshire and we know cruel winters. we just met and we get along fine. just after dawn and talkin up a storm, a storm of words. i wonder if everyone got out of their houses at dawn and followed the cracks aimlessly into one another...

Tomcat aka Rolly Polly

GWB 1:11:2 storytelling

MAZE! - the whole video book

GWB video book 1.11.1

Review: Tao Te Ching

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Basic
Instruxions
Before you
Leave the
Earth

so don't leave home
without it!

i keep a copy on my nightstand
and its all beat to hell!

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Journal # 07.02.16

There's no fuckin around anymore with my life, I mean, anytime I go sideways and let myself go even just a bit off, I suffer several hours later, usually in the hangtime before I have to get up for work, but also it can destroy my weekends, too. I don't know what I did or if it's just natural aging but it's right in my face and I'll tell you somethin else, well; I kinda like things better this way. Cause I used to fuck off all the time and I could fuck off for days and get away with it. Lots of polysubstance abuse, you know, back then before I got clean, even after I knew I was an addict and drugs were no good for me, devolving, I tended when disheartened to return to the familiar and break away from common decency and back to the tops of far off peaks of despair, looking over my life and sneaking and peaking and using and falling and crying and trying to get over myself again. That's no way to live, you know, but we do it anyway. But my margin of error has disappeared and I'm really thankful, really grateful in a way to feel the pain, now, the age or heaviness or whatever, and I don't do drugs going on 4 years, and I just get beat up by too much caffeine or sugar or too little water or too many carbs or too much sun and overexertion, wow, so I get back to work takin care of myself, right away cause I much desire a better more forthright life for myself, an adherent to a sound personal code and reasonable daily allowance of dreaming my way forward into a kindhearted reality. Whatever the hell that means... and I mean it. I cannot outlast anyone. All I can do is get ina sweet groove and try and stay there and work it awhile so we can be better off by me. I mean contribute my part, live good for someone else to see for themselves how to go about it, too. There's no fuckin around anymore and why would I want to? Seek the joy of being alive and that's it. Give and give some more. Show and don't show off. Accept who you are and love what you have so you can carry that and not need to escape nothin and then they will see the truth in you and it's not pretty or grandstandin or anything, it just is what it is and that's more than enough.

pause into super fun

What I love about life. The fireworks stands have risen like cardboard flowers and stand in church and pharmacy parking lots selling small explosives at small expense, so common people can contribute a bang and a kick out of stars into the dark night and anniversary of our independence not long from now.

Today is the 7th in our latest summer wave of heat. Almost everyone has a roof over their heads. Almost everyone has a freezer, an ice cube tray, water gets frozen and cracked, only to melt down the throat and pissed out steaming, flushed and back to the ground and up into the plants, or out into greater bodies of waters, then subject of the sun and burned into haze cooled into fog, condensed into air, risen into clouds, cooled again at night and dropped...

The opening eyes of children, the tall ones first, all the way down to the middle ones and then the littlest ones holding their hands looking up up and incredulous, just as you all strike the matches and ignite the sulfur with twine and flame made from fluid, the spark off the side of your thumbprint grinding alloy with the flint, rubbing your identity right into it, and your small stars shot into the night with all the others, aginst the rippling flags and melting pot of frozen sugars...

If we could only all see, only see, you and me, from above, all the breaking apart and coming together of material, the tension, the unity. Cries of joy, subsiding, crackling seconds of attention and paper particles confetti the air, then back to subdued tones and complaints and kids running and using legs like trees to hide behind and duck around. Then looking up again and the thunderous sound far above makes you realize how small you are, and the adults become kids all over again. Fifty years or more of this. Rocking chairs on porches and reports like gunfire but without the violence, only to be super fun times, and the kind-like voices over radio. Television flashes through the windows in the dark.

Headlights cast across the knees. Some are walking and others on bicycles, and many now driving away. Listen. Crickets and squeaky wheels. There will be no less struggle between me and myself, you and yourself, and ideally we can be our own best friends, i can be my own as i display the best of my abilities in plain view,  up against the best of yours and everyone else's. Perfectly on hold and iced until tommorrow. Four of swords. Pause into the super fun into the calm afterward.

The material of life. The mercury makes a difference, tomorrow more pressure and harder to breathe. My fair skin is nothing to the sun. The body is much on the mind, is nothing compared to the spirit. We will sleep and wake again into the beauty of the fullness of light and the breakfast table. If I am lucky I will continue to fight my own desires, my own ennui every day, blasting it to hell and confetti myself into paper. Being alone won't matter. Could be a great day coming and why the hell not.