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

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.

WIP - developing tension

Nobody wants to read a book of fiction that lacks tension. My immediate efforts as I prepare my latest in my Urban Fantasy series - MAZE (Book #2) - involve setting up central and peripheral tensions. I want to have both internal and external conflicts mapped out (outlined), and then freewriting can help determine what happens when the characters actually come up against one another. Sometimes you have relationship stuff (eros) and sometimes you have survival stuff (thanatos), I see Eros as the love or sex drive, whereby characters are wanting to merge with other characters. Thanatos is the death drive, whereby characters are wanting to eliminate anyone who threatens their survival. My central character, Ame, is falling in love in Book 2. She is also learning to hunt down humans, not to kill them, because they have something she wants and knows how to extract. Her internal conflict, in basic terms, involves her relationship with herself. In psychology this is called 'ego-dystonic' (as opposed to ego-syntonic): parts of yourself you are not comfortable with. Ame is learning to hunt to survive, and has been taught by her native people, the 'Delux' (Latin for 'of light'), how to master this art. It can be violent and can result in human death, but not always. Ame was adopted and raised by humans, so she is about to experience an identity crisis of sorts (which will carry on far beyond Book #2). She does not want to see harm come to humans, but at the same time there is a thirst and an appetite for destruction in her with which she must contend.

Journal # curiosity, torque and the WIP

The fireworks began just before the fourth of July, and continued on in my imagination, working off a basic outline with some central tensions, rounding out the love story, letting myself drift into the unknown, for what is compelling is not often on the map, but rather a billowed sail out to where you were told to believe the world would fall off. You had to have the courage to go there, yes, and even before the courage, the critical questions and the curiosity.

I must confess I cannot always break through the finite limits I have placed upon myself. Forty years of acculturation and shaping as an American in a society of human beings and animals of course has done some domesticating, as it always will. But I have had my years upon years of rebellion against the status quo, which ultimately left me alienated and alone. I was missing something essential. I had lost myself somewhere in the neurosis. That little tumbleweed had grown so large in traveling across my life, it was all i could see anymore.

The love for self and the spirit of exploration has slowly come back to me, but there will always be the root acculturation that is like hardware and very difficult to change or recreate. The foundation of my self in society. I am not trying to uproot all that, I can work off of my hardware because it's a great foundation actually, lots of Latin and a strong work ethic, and a loving nuclear family. I am one of the lucky ones.

So now I am creating from there. And just trying to get more and more involved in my own creative process, because I know the feeling: attractive, magnetic. But the feeling is hard to reach for me. It requires sustained force in one direction for a long time. Perhaps a month of daily ritual immmersed in the WIP, with a singular devotion, takes me into that particular effort zone where it is pulling and not pushing off. Because it is difficult is why it pushes off. Even now, maybe halfway through Book Two (the finished product), I am still finding more pushing away than pulling toward.

And it drives me crazy, to sit down and get involved, and an hour into it feel like I have to walk away! I only know from experience the tables will turn, the tectonic plates will come together just right, if  I keep at it, sustained force in one direction, physics, torque, and KABLAM! Suddenly fall into orbit around the central planet of tension! The atmosphere is so fine.

Latest Reviews - 'Grand Theft Life'

5 STARS

Fast forward flash photosynthesized heroics
By Peaceseeker on April 30, 2015

This is a riveting read: gripping in the power of the telling, disturbing in the mindset of the teller. It is short enough to be read at one sitting, and fascinating enough to make it difficult to do otherwise. I suspect that the author – as she says about one of her characters – has “read a lot of culturally-sanctioned literature; from Charles Dickens to Jane Austen to Hemingway.” The style is assured and ambitious: crisp, focused and strong.

“The voices. They were incessant. They reminded me I was not like the others.” “There was a meanness about humans, to which I could not relate.” She says of Freddy – the man who snatched her when she was of age – that he was like family she never knew she had. “Maybe I was ready to start making my own Hallmark cards for a year. Ya. Then open my veins in a Sylvia Plath bath.”

Daughter of Darkness is a powerful poetic monologue from someone who felt so different from those she grew up with/around that she concluded she belonged to a different species altogether: one that looks human, and that lives among humans, but is in fact not ‘human’ in the accepted or acceptable sense. One that has no fear of consequences, and that feeds off human fear. You find them in numbers in the dangerous, poverty-stricken, blighted belts of every concrete jungle. They come out at night, and prey on humans whose fear of consequences makes them easy meat. They can also prey on each other when those inner voices scream…

I urge you to read this book. It thoroughly deserves to be widely read.

5 STARS
I enjoyed reading this book
By Kristina on April 23, 2015

I enjoyed reading this book. When I started to read, I couldn't drop it from my hands. I could literary feel that I live in the head of the main character. It was always something happening, in her surroundings, or in her head. I look forward to the next part.

5 STARS

How can I headline a review for a masterpiece of literature?
By Jen Morrison on April 2, 2015

This was one of the most difficult books for me to review. I honestly took much longer than I expected to contemplate how to review this book. I had to talk about this book for days before I could coherently organize my thoughts for this post. I could say this book was stunning, amazing, wonderful--all the adjectives I might use for a 5-star review, but I wouldn't be doing this one justice.

Writers of all ages often wonder about writing the next Great Amercian Novel. Katya Mills has done it. A hundred years ago, if the genre had existed, I believe William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying would have been something like paranormal fiction.

Wait. Did I just compare Katya to Faulkner? Yes. Yes, I did.

This is a masterpiece of urban fantasy that should be dissected in classrooms and universities. while I may not agree with the socio-political opinions, I recognize the importance of her vivisection of urban gangland. This book kept me engrossed and I even had to reread it before reviewing. I can say that very few books warrant a reread from me, but I got to the end and immediately reread the entire thing.

My first reaction to the first few chapters was, "What the hell?" and I honestly thought I was going to have to pass on reviewing this one, but as I read further on, my opinion sky-rocketed. She left me both confounded, confused, and amazed--and in dire need of a second read. Give this book a place on your shelf and in fifty years when your grandchildren are complaining about their reading in school, remember this moment. They will be complaining about Katya Mills.


5 STARS

Daughter of Darkness
By P. Kater on March 25, 2015

Daughter of Darkness is a different kind of fantasy book. It's tense. Paced. Fast. And it introduces you to a world of people who are different from us. Different in a way you can't see. Ame, the main character, is one of those different people. She grows up being 'strange' and it takes a drastic move and lots of strange encounters and experiences before she realises who she is and what she can do.
I was very entertained by the opposite of the title of the book and how these people, who are so different call themselves. If you want to know what that is I suggest you buy the book and read it.


5 STARS

on hold for second volume
By frank ramon on March 17, 2015

I have read this book three times and continue to glean more out of the story each time. Told by a protagonist (Ame) who is both good and bad, this tale intertwines adroit commentary on modern culture and the underlying affects of fear on human beings in general. This is all woven together in a well told story of a modern anti hero set on the soulful and gritty streets of Oakland California. From an area well known for earth quakes, the writer will certainly rattle your walls with this story. I eagerly await the next volume in this series, it is a real bargain, for a rich story.