BOOK RELEASE!

TROUBLE'99 by Katya Mills


This 42,000 word book represents a project I started two years ago, digging into my archives for material. The book is set in Chicago where I lived for 10 years of my life, and my intention was to capture the spirit of twentysomethings at the turn of the century. My first published novel, Girl Without Borders, covers the same historical ground, so if you enjoyed GWB you most likely will find Trouble'99 a sort of homecoming yet with different characters. This story follows four friends and comrades, facing hard luck in both love and life in the city. I hope you like it.


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book review

Ame and the Tangy Energetic 

by 

Katya Mills (Goodreads Author)

 

Nick Reeves's review 

Dec 01, 2019

liked it

Katya Mills comes on like Douglas Coupland's pill-addled street scion in this skid row helter skelter psychic tumble through a downtown United States of Imagica.

Ame & The Tangy Energetic rails against the sheen and shite of corporate pop culture and captures both the hyperreality and the blur of the high, the bleed-out of the sidewalk comedown.

Mills will dose your soda with her magical, druggy, otherworldly cocktail when you ain't looking.

A tale of getting clean, with washing machines.

(Also well worth checking out are Katya's YouTube readings of 'Ame...')

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Book Giveaway: Grand Theft Life by Katya Mills

 
 

    Goodreads Book Giveaway
 

   

       
   

   

     

          Daughter of Darkness
     
     

          by Katya Mills
     

     

         
            Giveaway ends June 26, 2019.
         
         
            See the giveaway details
            at Goodreads.
         
     
   
   

    Enter Giveaway

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book review

Girl Without Borders by Katya Mills


I am the author of this book. I wrote the greater portion of this book when I was in my twenties, living in Chicago on the west side (not far from where the Smashing Pumpkins got famous, and the movie High Fidelity was filmed). I used to go to the coffeeshops in Bucktown and the Polish Triangle with my laptop to write. This was late 1990s and you could get your ass kicked for writing on a laptop in public. It wasn't cool to be a geek. Writing from my protagonist Will's perspective was not difficult seeing as I am gender fluid myself. I was a pretty tough chick or I thought I was, rather angry at the world, introverted, rebellious in attitude and spirit. I hung around other punks and geeks I met in the bars, cafes and small clubs on Division and Damen, and in Wicker Park and the Ukrainian Village. All I wanted was to be left alone and write. I was in some existential pain, I suppose, lonely in my heart. So I gravitated toward others who felt injured or broken. I had more than one love/hate relationship, the characteristics of which you will find in the novel. You can call in creative nonfiction if not fiction. If you ever go to Chicago look up Quimby's bookstore and the Flat Iron Building. I wrote the greater portion of this book a stone throw away.


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Reading (ATE63)

books

i was invited to Folsom this week by a book club to showcase my work and meet some who read my first serial fiction. i had a blast and got to share my process, and listen to some fine critiques of my work. now i know i cannot fool anyone and why would i? good books can sell and weak books sell, too. i am determined to publish only books that brought out the best in me writing them. blood, sweat, tears, and coffee. it's no use to be loved or hated if you cannot take pride and stand behind your little offspring-creations.

MAZE - an ebook

LINK 2 BUY: https://www.amazon.com/Maze-Daughter-Darkness-

AUTHOR: Katya Mills
PUBLISHER: Amazon / CreateSpace, 2015

SUMMARY: In modern day America, there are those -- indiscernible from you and me -- who thirst after (human) fear. Ame, in her twenties and the heroine of this tale, has fallen in with them. As a youth she had the same light in her eyes and androgynous form, which marks them. She was abducted and taken to Oakland, California, where she comes to terms with her own dark heritage. Her love interest, a resilient young punk named Maze, skateboards into her life and together they roam the streets, seeking and extracting fear from Ordinaries. Conflicted by her own violent nature, Ame has become nevertheless intoxicated by her new life and associations. Meanwhile, lurking around the boarding house where Ame and Maze stay, a Malafide is busy trapping and hollowing out Ordinaries and leaving them shells. Ame discovers her little sister Kell, in the grips of a terrible addiction. Just as Ame seems to have found her rhythm in the chaos of this new world and city, Kell disappears. Then, searching for her sister, Ame unravels a secret buried on the tapes of a security camera, which threatens to uproot her once again.

cover of Maze

BACK STORY: I wrote this novel as a way of making sense of a decade living in Oakland, California, which is where it is set. I consider it a creative nonfiction of sorts, but I pubIished it as a fiction, having touched up many of the characters with superhuman capabilities. Having an emotional connection to a place is the foundation off of which I like to build my fictions. Submission of this book won me a table at the Sacramento Library’s 2016 Author Festival. This is my third publication, and sequel to my novella Grand Theft Life, which you can read for free on Smashwords @ https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/550226 I consider Maze a freestanding book, and Grand Theft Life makes for a good introduction.

'Forced Entries' - a book review

Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries: 1971-1973 by Jim Carroll
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed reading Jim Carroll's movement from all out junkie in NYC to mostly clean weedhead in California then traveling back to NYC to re-experience it like a challenge he was taking on for himself in his new sparkly dried out persona. - may he rest in peace - You almost think the kid didn't stand much of a chance, hobnobbing with celebrity at Max's and getting dissed by Warhol over the phone, because Warhol only wanted to talk to him when he was wired on speed (and recorded these phone calls apparently). Great street level perspective of NYC in the early seventies. Jim Carroll is an brutally honest sorta writer, so be prepared to go under carpets with him and hangout with fragments of cheese doodles and mites. Or inside a festering abscess. He certainly won't glorify substance abuse or addiction, so you don't need to worry about your children. Or do you? I found the first half of the book a little harder to get through, a lot of socializing with Ginsberg and name dropping (though anyone could be envious to hang out with William Burroughs and Bob Dylan for a night). Sometimes I felt he was writing to impress his celebrity buds. But mostly I admire Jim Carroll, I consider him a strong writer and the survivor we know by his Basketball Diaries. This book was supposed to be a sorta sequel to that one. He didn't stand a chance as a kid himself going deep on the streets, yet he always respected the muse and was a real creative mind, and a local new yorker in his heart. The second half of the book I found a bit clearer, more honest, and particularly his return from Bolinas to NYC. The last quarter of the book was a straight read, I hunkered down in my apartment and really got into it. It ends well, I mean, more intimate and heartfelt. A good read.


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Book Review

Indestructible & Other Poems by Kristy Rulebreaker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Indestructible is Kristy's sophomore effort as an indie author and poet. She is beloved for her contributions to social media circles, particularly the poets of 'G+' If you follow closely, you can see her evolution. She is experimenting with form and verse in interesting ways. I feel as though I am walking through life with her, and it is not sugar-coated. I appreciate her honesty. "The sun is posing but I don't have enough tears to cry for a sunny day that does not warm the heart" she says. In other verses, she gives us a fresh take on the gap between rich and poor. You almost feel as though justice has already been served: "I couldn't buy calm nights with my soul bright as lighter, I couldn't buy clean days with my heart as cotton tender." There is exciting talk about nature, and dreaming about nature overrunning the unnatural world and reclaiming it. In her poem "The wind has lost his mind" she personifies nature well to describe her grief. Her expressions are often spare and crystal clear. She opens windows into relationships and little loves of her life. I really love her work. She beckons me to the living of an authentic sorta life. The one and only way to live.


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GWB 2.2.1 a videobook

Book Review: The Outsiders

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ponyboy narrates the story of his teenage life within a sewn together band of brothers and young 'greasers' in small town America (reminiscent of American Graffiti) who include working class orphans, school dropouts, criminals, athletes. He provides an emotionally-centered account of these trying circumstances for kids on the back side of the mainstream. Desperate times give rise to fierce loyalties, and it's easy (as a reader) to love Ponyboy and root for him and his friends as they fight the rich kids and steal the hearts of their girls. The action includes drive-ins, cars, turf wars, switchblades, leather, cars, hair, grease, cocacola, madras, cops, heaters, music, 'weeds' (smokes), denim, runaways, sunsets, vacant lots. A whole lot of fun as you get to know some of the characters on deeper and deeper levels. Ponyboy's not afraid to give you his opinion on people and things, and he's not cool with all the greasers, either, but he sees the good in people when he can. It's a sweet and tragic story and you might feel it all ends too soon.


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GWB 2.1.1 a videobook

GWB 1.15.2

GWB 1.14.3 videobook

Review: Vintage Munro

Vintage Munro by Alice Munro
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Vintage series of books is great. Whomever made the selections of writings of contemporary authors did a fine job. The short stories in this book show why Munro won the Nobel Prize. Her power of description is second to none. Her characters may as well be in the room with you. There's a lot of small town Canada in here. The central characters are often revisiting the past through the present, when someone or thing catches their eye. I love the way Munro walks us seamlessly through time, often to explore the interplay of relationships between several generations of any given family. What time has done to them. What time has given them. The characters often have a delicate understanding of their own lives, it seems. Confronted with the opinions and memories of their relatives, trying to hold on to the dialectic without shutting down or falling apart. Like no other, Munro is able to draw the reader into the art of investigating her characters' lives, and feel the pain of separate truths.

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Review: Running with Scissors

Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sometimes the saddest things make for great laughs. Augusten's memoir is like that. He could have painted his childhood in brooding, sentimental brushstrokes. The abandonment. Mental illness. The manipulation. But he edited out his ego and left us with absurdity. The peculiar absurdity which comes with tragic circumstance like fast food come with fries. Neither is really good for your health. I got sick with him. And broke out in laughs.

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Blogger Richard Gibney's A to Z challenge on K

Just some of the Ks that you will find on this blog




Kari Rosvall: I highly recommend the book Kari wrote about her childhood as an adopted war baby and her life thereafter - she discovers dark secrets related to her origins, and details of a nefarious Third Reich breeding programme. Nowhere's Child is a terrific read. Kari struggles with identity not just of herself but the less introspective, political and national markers to which most people can subscribe. Nowhere's Child's got human rights, social justice, rootlessness, family, the meaning of home and - in fear of sounding glib - it's like the origin story for a superhero. In fairness, Kari Rosvall is a superhero! Read the book! Her co-writer, the unassuming and awesome Naomi Linehan, is on Twitter.

Kevin Bacon, ehh? Need I say more? Yes! Yes I must. Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon can be found here.

Katya Mills: This wonderful scribe writes straight outta left-field in the tradition of Dickinson, Ginsberg and other American greats. But she's also a terrific, erudite and insightful interviewee. Her book series featuring Ame involves a subculture of somewhat vampiric creatures who prey not on human plasma, but on human fear. Katya's inimitable phrasing in her long fiction and poetry often shames me into wanting to write a bit more better. Check out her blogand blog.


Kit Kats: Bite off the ends of a Kit Kat finger, and dip one end into your beverage. Whaddaya got? A delicious filter-straw type dealio!



SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: The ends of your KitKat are called #ObesityTips - and a pinch on the lips is an inch on the hips!

That's enough from me anyway!