expect a miracle in may!

i realize the mind likes to drift and gravitates in the extremities of thought. my mind likes to dodge  the reality the rest of me is forced to face. my mind lives in fantasy and travels to places which do not exist. think up a dream or a nightmare. only when i wake up am i convinced i am not there! such is the power of the mind! sometimes we find ourselves in pain so deep, we are sure there is no way out of it. if only we could examine our thought process when we are in anguish, to see how our mind has trapped us in a nightmare with no apparent way out! then we can disbelieve the thoughts. distrust the mind. confound our own certainty. maybe april was a rotten month for you and you didn't catch any breaks. maybe you wanna give up. i invite you to turn your thought process around, and expect a miracle in may!

author. pensive

borrow of the world and give back

i lived here and made it my home. i accomplished many things, mostly writing, inside these walls. i recovered from a long illness of self-centered fear and faithless preoccupations. i am grateful to have made it out of the woods. i cared for my little tigers and gave them some freedom in a backyard. i formed community and a healthy relationship with my world. i prayed to god. i developed a routine which fostered creativity. i played guitar and shared my work online with friends around the world. i lived here. it all happened right here, in five years. i must leave now, and take what little i have with me. i am a borrower and can only pay my debt back, leaving as i came. i wish i could stay but i keep no regrets. life moves along like a river, and my spirit now touches into new territory.

archive # k

poison. the girls

Posted on July 15, 2014 by KatYa

might sound crazy but i was holdin on to a memory. of you and me. before all those things happened. ya.
might sound crazy but it was the first week we were together. we were in the old Impala with the flat tan finish. ya. we were gettin high.
you had a baseball cap on backwards like that tomboy from the bad news bears. the original. skinny acidwash jeans and long hair like axl rose circa 1987. Indiana.
i was all my tore up old self. like usual. a taller and possibly skinnier you. bad hair day. like always. no bra. ya. walgreens wool cap spinning around my middle finger.
there we were clear as day in my mind just now. scratchin’ bingo with my switchblade. gettin’ high. wow. must have been twenty ten. just look at us then.
i know it sounds crazy but even with the madness what with the sadness that followed and haunted us so…
god i must be crazy but i long to be back there again with you now. the way the love full of light filled our eyes. the way that you touched me and gave me the chills.
the weight of the eighty impala beneath us. reading our poems aloud and again. feeling the fortune of finding a friend.
oh why?
oh why
    did it all
have to
end?
katya mills © 2014
this is dedicated to k&k

nightmare #

I was alone in a dark house in the woods late at night, when all the doors and windows started rattling. I thought maybe it was the winds. I turned on a spotlight, some relic of old Hollywood, and opened the front door to see. The air was calm and still. I saw a small figure in the woods, dressed in red. She was picking her way through the brush, approaching the house. I was frightened of her, for she had power. She called out to me: who are you? Katya, I said, calling out into the night. I am Katya. When I said my name aloud, all my fear dispersed. I was given many times my strength.

eighth wonder of the world

getting up at four in the morning to write, with a head full of dreams, is like traveling to the eighth wonder of the world, finding it closed, then climbing over the fence. 

journal #

i have been posting every day on this website for several years now. probably not every post is a gem. but when you bundle them, all the writings make up a constellation of my life. so i like it. walk into the woods some night. find a clearing out beyond the artificial lights. look up into the sky. what do you see? not all the stars glow so brightly. each is different from the other. is the sky any less a wonder to behold? 

Ame and the Tangy Energetic

Kell offers me a smoke.

What the hell’s wrong with vagrancy? she asks, after a deep drag on a Parliament. I think it’s becoming. You can simmer in this cesspool and really begin to inhabit it.

She lights me up and raps her knuckles behind my ear.

Thanks for your thick skull. I knew it was good for somethin’.

The tobacco’s on fire and I am filling my lungs with the last thing lungs were intended to be filled with, and I don’t give a damn!

- Ame

Katya Mills, 2018

i hate screens

i spend up to 10 hours a day looking at screens. this can't be good for my eyes. 600 minutes. i will experience headaches from time to time, and even a bit of dizziness or trouble with equilibrium. this morning i was pulling up a sock while standing on one leg, and i almost fell. do i blame this on the screens? yes. do i have empirical evidence? no. could it be something worse? i hope not. i can only imagine typing up my books on my old Royal typewriter, what a dream! the down side to the dream is the editing process. what a nightmare.

blue truck by k

wip. run on

This weekend I read my last book Maze  to compare against my new book. I found longer sentences and less dialogue in the old book. I liked it. That's not to say my readership would. I'm a little bit out there. I even like the idea of an entire book which is a single run on sentence without punctuation! I would be the only one reading.

little fish in my neighborhood

pollen and faux vietnamese iced coffee

spring is incredible this year after a month of heavy rains. my hay fever is outta control but i don't care, i'm up and to the task. three of four americans are smoking. dabs and butter and wax. not me. we don't have a chance and i don't care. nuclear bombs are big but they won't make you greater. peace is not possible when you're a hater. i don't care. you have it in your heart or you don't. you write well or you don't. live your life or you won't. you were born. you will die. i don't care. show me what you got! that's hot.

wip. coda

this morning i was not feeling well but i got up just the same and chose tea instead of coffee to steam in a cup beside me while i wrote. i worked on the epilogue. i am reframing it: coda. i also changed the prologue to prelude. i did not simply choose these words because they are sweeter to the tongue. i chose them because i do see my novels, holistically, as musical compositions. they have rhythms and beats, high and low pitches, hooks and repetitions and refrains

wip. thursday

this morning i walked out on the porch and watched the sky turn a lighter blue. i hope these morning skies in america never become full with drones. i hope to hold this book that has been in my head and on my screen for so long, in my hands. i have momentum and a routine. i am seeing an organic whole. my challenge right now is how to properly end this. remember. the guiding principle in the universe, god or what you believe, is a clashing and mixture of forces; tragedies and wonders exist simultaneously. a book is a life, created by a life, reflective of a life, and may be loved or hated when read. the poorest anyone could be on the final page, is when they got no feelings at all.

stranger than the dawn

off beat
cold and warming

raining upside down

sets the day
in silence

there is nothing
stranger
than
the dawn

wip. monday

i love my characters. the only one i hate is the Malafide. maybe because he stands for an abusive perpetrator and sociopath. for a while the only way i allowed myself to write about him, was in the spirit of all my characters i love working towards destroying him. it took me over a year to realize i was doing this. i had to delete several redundant scenes of destruction. i was getting off on killing the antagonist! and sacrificing the story. as a novelist, you need to be flexible and willing to change direction, in service to the story. it may also be a good idea, when writing fiction, not to create antagonists who are too close to home.

wip. sunday

i am writing the book mostly early mornings. drinking hot chocolate mixed with home-roasted coffee. sitting at my small wooden desk with a swing-arm lamp. i like silence. i may keep low volume classical on a clock radio. because it is spring in sacramento, i keep the window open. the birds wake up and start twittering before dawn. i cannot face the window. too distracting.  i write on my chromebook pixel off a g.drive document. i spent the first 2 years working the book in scrivener. i think wearing prescription glasses now has impacted the way my mind processes information. or how i read. i also keep telling myself: it's all in your head. 

wip. saturday

i took some time off last week and made great headway with my novel. word count now exceeds 60,000. most of what got worked out was a scene where Kell is employed by a laundress in a laudromat in Oakland. the boss is feisty and demanding. a real irritant. but she's the only ordinary human to give Kell a chance. she sleeps on a mat on the floor behind the counter. and copes by smoking menthols.

recreate.journal

Yesterday I ran and the weather was hopeful, was spring. Today the hopeless feelings come on in waves, and collect inside me then strike. They leave me hurting. I won't have time to sit with them for tea. I must ditch them and go to my work. I am confused. I am touched. My eyes feel weak from staring at the diverse screens. My spirit is strong. My mind is tired of going over it all. The world. The brevity of life. The many many feelings I mistook for fact. Again I promise myself to do what's in front of me, refuse to retreat or indulge in the pain. For even if the sun be stolen from the sky, I must recreate the sunlight and be joyful. There is no other way I can live.

bio. california writers

I am an independent author of literary fiction and urban fantasy. I have 3 novels and over 100 positive reviews of my work online. I also publish flash fiction and creative nonfiction on my website @ www.katyamills.com. My most recent novel Maze won a table at the Sacramento Library Author Festival in 2016. I also have been a featured reader for the last 2 years @ Writers On The Air. I am currently close to self-publication on my fourth novel, Ame and The Tangy Energetic. I was an English Literature major at Northwestern University and enjoy not having to be bound by traditional publishing demands. I earn my living as a practicing psychotherapist. I consider writing my spiritual practice. That said, as my storytelling evolves, I do hope to some day submit my work to a house and become a hybrid author, if only out of curiosity and the willingness to try new endeavors, be challenged, and help my work reach a greater audience. - Katya Mills, 2018

"Believe that life is worth living, and your very belief will create the fact."

- William James

polish

My boots were polished by twelve hundred hours as the sun scrubbed the last clouds from the sky. I had a coke with my submarine sandwich. The world smelled of oil and leather and tobacco. Politicians making their points. Walking was preferable to running. This is the only  time to live.

journal # end

the past lies deep in my consciousness today. like a scar it healed over but will never go away. i awakened from my nightmare by falling to my knees in prayer, 12.12.12, after so long living without feeling the need. i was sure i was a goner. i could not awaken without faith. i came to believe. i found a grateful heart. i sought after family and true friends i had left behind. i became willing to rise early and work hard toward some peace of mind. do right over wrong and be honest. be helpful and admit when i am wrong. take what i need and not what i want. only faith can restore me. i came to know the freedom that comes by selflessness and gratitude. and the harmony that comes through fellowship.

journal #

i would never see Drama alive again. i came back 5 months later from rehab in Oregon, to claim him. they said he had been struck by a car at an intersection not far from where the our mobile home had been. i buried the poor little guy up in Martinez, in the hills. i felt terrible. but all the nightmare i lived over the previous 4 years, was over. i had been beaten, downtrodden, and become willing to let go of all my old ways. i resolved to live differently, to live right, if only i had a chance to live again...

journal #

i was so very sick when i awakened. i was addicted. my unemployment had run out. i was living off of food stamps and the kindness of strangers. i was lonely, hallucinating, scared. i was searching every day for my cat who ran away. our home was a tiny trailer on a truck bed in Richmond, near the train tracks led to Oakland and the San Francisco Bay. i rode my bicycle slowly, calling out for little 'Drama' on the surrounding streets. the only responsibility i had anymore was my cat and myself. and he was the only one who loved me anymore.

brothers drama and shy

journal #

i can clearly recall my awakening. it was over five years back and i was close to street homeless. i remember the date, 12.12.12 and how some had attached to it an apocalyptic forecast. i was living in my friend's truck and very alone. i was full of powerful feelings and fears. i was dreaming again of my family and better days long behind me. i was getting high around the clock, for i was addicted to methamphetamine and could not escape. i used it alongside the psych meds i had been described for anxiety and depression. it had become my medication. the allostasis in my mind was severe. i heard voices through walls. my depressive moments lasted long and deep. i was unkempt but i had access to laundry, electricity, food, and water. i had witnessed crimes on the streets and been assaulted and manipulated more times than i could count. i knew a dangerous dead end romance like i knew my middle name. much of my energy was lost to hypervigilance and traumatic recall. i feared people and economic insecurity. i listened to am radio talk shows like they were my only friends...

journal #

all my life had fallen apart and i was a ghost of my former self. all i had left were a couple of friends, a will to survive and some powerful feelings i could not often control. three things would become central to my acquisition of a better life...

a renewed faith
a renewed integrity or personal code
a courage to fellowship

journal # 04.09.18

i experienced a period of several years when life became more challenging and lended me freedoms i had before, and lost. i can appreciate these socioeconomic freedoms more than i could before, when they had come more by luck and birthright and privilege than hard work. this time i would have to earn my freedom. early to rise, i kept my pulse on a spiritual practice.

silence

"How much silence is needed
to dilute the poison in a mind
deluged by media?"


- Ame and the Tangy Energetic

author @ home

plot twists

i scrapped a large wordcount toward the end of my novel-in-progress this morning. it was related to a fighting scene which turned out  interminable, and a bore. if i am bored by it, certainly you would be, too. one of the central characters whom was going to die has been saved, as i mentioned in previous posts, however it looks as if somebody will die, after all. arrangements will be made today, and the ceremony will be held inside my skull, first floor: suite # medulla oblongota.

go on without

I'm not certain why it's so hard for me to be around people, I guess I may be sensitive. There aren't just unfriendly ones. There are ignorant ones. Mean ones...

Yet the hardest kind of all are the ones who you fall in love with, the ones who you treasure, the ones who you cannot go on, without.

diary entry

i am busy yet still fearful time to time

mostly okay and usually inspired

i work from the inside out

out of stillness

Created by a passion, shaped by forces both seen and unseen, driven by wind, confined to earth, dialed into feelings, fine-tuned by the moon and a heartbeat, enlivened by sun, roaring with water, beaming light and then darkness, laughing, conflicted, now humming with purpose, now drowned in thought... i become, out of stillness, and come to you. We are lucky, my dear, to appear on scene.