on a 1958 interview with Pearl Buck

The narrow mindedness of 1958 American media mentality can be clearly seen in interviews conducted by the gold standard bearers of the time, smoking Parliaments, talking to women like Pearl Buck, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. Rather than base his interview on the masterful storytelling, the themes she covers and how she was able to write such captivating work, Mike Wallace focuses on clarifying her position on the role of the American woman in her family and community, and in relation to her man. She was diplomatic. If she were living today, and interviewed this way, she could sincerely have told him to fuck off.   #katyamills

last drop

I would question the sun's motives were he situated different, in closer proximity to the earth. If I got close enough for the interview, I would get all the answers I need. My pen would melt before I got a word down. Awakened by brilliant light, see me run toward the darkness at dawn. You would be waiting for me at the plateau, I know, the last drop of water on the edge of our collective sanity machine.

how you keep it together

the sun rises every morning. sometimes you have to pull the curtains back from the windows and let the light in, otherwise you may not know. the sun did its part and showed up. you have to do your part now, and arrive on scene. in the light and feeling the world upon your exposed skin, you can be rugged and raw. just exist. you won't have to recite your lines, though they may ask you. the longer i live, the more i find it difficult to rehearse. painful to memorize. how i keep it together (when i keep it together) is by showing up honest and true, hiding nothing. it can be painful getting here, and the magic lies in spontaneity. which also means... we cannot always keep it together. it won't necessarily break their hearts to see us falling apart for a moment. i love to watch them watch me regroup.

excerpts of an interview

My work was recently featured on Snowflakes Arise, a Wordpress website. The mission statement of this site is: "separating authors from the herd and giving them one-on-one time with readers." Here is an excerpt of the interview...

MAZE. a novel by Katya Mills: Maze is the name of the heroine’s boyfriend, a punk skateboarder who is slightly psychotic, paranoid and features throughout the story. There is a dark and damaged love story sunk within the plot.

WHY SOMEONE WOULD WANT TO READ IT: The book is character-driven, told from the perspective of a young woman who is struggling to makes sense of her life, unable to deny her shared DNA with the tribe that abducted her, and caught between those competing for her love and attention, particularly Maze and her best friend, Bless. The narrative is first person colloquial, flavored with attitude, a coming of age thread woven through it. Ame makes an honest attempt to recreate herself in the margins of society, and discovers she has inherited superpowers. I have been told (and close to 100 total reviews of my work on Goodreads and Amazon combined, which average 4 out of 5 stars, agree) that my writing style is unique, lyrical and even groundbreaking. Not everyone is into it, so be sure and read the samples beforehand or try the freebie on Smashwords.

Amazon customer: “Katya’s sui-generis style is like reading poetry with it’s own unique rhythm and cadence; like deciphering a new secret language (much like I felt first reading Frank McCourt). Once you have attuned to the pulse, you feel let in to the secret world of those seeking the Tangy Energetic; you are now on the inside, you are one of them. Katya takes you on a journey where you discover what is like to be different, from the dark origins of beginnings – to the heady days of everyday life; playing, seeking, surviving, using, living among humans, helping, energizing, questioning, and experiencing the thrill and torment of loving the one, or two, that captivate the heart.”

Amazon customer: “I’ve read her first in the Daughter of Darkness series, called Grand Theft Life and this book, Maze, like the first novella in this series proves to be about much more than an urban fantasy… to me it’s about love, fear, friendship, loyalty, learning, introspection, hope, mystery, fantasy, reality. All of this is being brought to us in the first two books of the series, Daughter Of Darkness… along with lots of juicy, fun filled, introspective, rhythmical flowing prose, expressing thoughts and perspectives on our world and life within it. Katya writes about very interesting characters and in a style so rich and poetry prose filled that it almost makes you forget the unfolding plot, fed to us slowly and teasingly as we get to know life on the street with Ame and her friends.”


 Katya Mills is an Independent author, self-published with several books to her name. She hopes to become a ‘Hybrid’ author and is currently seeking representation. She's proud to say there are now close to 100 total reviews of her work on Goodreads and Amazon combined, averaging better than 4 out of 5 stars... The link to the full interview is located here:  Snowflakes Arise

interview

Misha Gericke:  I want to welcome Katya Mills to my blog for an interview.

Hi Katya! Welcome to The Five Year Project! Tell us a bit about yourself.

Hi and thanks for having me, greetings from Northern California! My name is Katya and I am an American with German, English and French heritage. I am a social worker and self-published author of one novel, two novellas and a short story. I was born in Connecticut in February, 1973 and raised in New England. I first left home for school in Chicago, where I majored in English Literature at Northwestern University. I fell in love with books at an early age. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens was the first epic story I read all the way through. I was about ten years old. That’s about when I decided I wanted to write books. I am an Aquarius and my favorite color is royal blue. I support LGBT and human rights. I work at a non-profit with a team of compassionate caregivers providing support to homeless people suffering from mental illness. I work the nightshift now, which seems to coincide nicely with my writing life. 

Very cool. Tell us a bit more about your books. What are they about?

Girl Without Borders is a novel I wrote while living in Chicago. I consider it my tribute to this great city. The protagonist, a rather aimless young man, becomes the center of an unrequited love triangle. The story follows the guy as he basically gets blindsided by love, and caught in a deadly situation. These are young adults in their twenties, freewheeling with counter-culture attitudes, coming of age on the west side of town.

Grand Theft Life is the first book in my Daughter of Darknessseries. This is written in the voice of a strong lead (first person) heroine named Ame. The story takes place in Oakland, where I lived for many years. I like to set my books in cities I know inside and out. Ame is one of a divergent strain of humans, known as Delux. She doesn’t realize she is extraordinary until she is fully grown and her people abduct her and take her to Oakland, where she learns how to channel human fear, for survival. She discovers she can read minds and such. She falls in with an interesting group of characters, including Freddy, the man who abducted her. There is an anti-hero vibe about these ones, and Ame is trying to sort it all out.

Maze is the second book of the series. The title refers to Ame’s boyfriend, a punk skateboarder with an ice cream sandwich habit. He has mixed blood (hybrid human) but it doesn’t deter him from a merciless way he hunts humans for their fear. Ame hunts with him, but she is conflicted by the violence. She was raised by humans, actually, so she has a soft heart for them. There is a way to extract human fear without killing, however, and the results are unpredictable. Ame’s best friend Bless is crushing on her, and tries to pull her away from Maze. This book introduces Kell, the little sister, who is struggling with an addiction to Oxycontin. And an orphan boy with a gap in his teeth who likes to follow Ame around.

Everlee and Lee is a horror story I wrote about a couple of kids who are living in a spooky old Victorian house with their nefarious Aunt Rose. They are visited by the ghost of their mother, who provides clues toward unraveling a dark and disturbing history. The kids learn to communicate telepathically so to hide their thoughts from Aunt Rose, as they figure a way out. This story is published alongside my books on Amazon.com.


Ame and the Tangy Energetic is the third book in my series, and my WIP. I hope to publish it in late Spring or Summer 2016.

Your stories sound interesting. What comes to you first? The plot or the characters?

Thank you. Characters come first! I typically work without an outline, a very open-ended plot and a situation / circumstance / tension that needs to be worked out.

Sounds a lot like my process. How do you approach editing? 

I try and get the first draft all out without looking back, but sometimes I can't resist a little peek. Then I move the doc to Scrivener and read it through, make some notes and begin editing. I imagine a puzzle and usually find myself relocating paragraphs and passages several times to form any chapter. It can get pretty chaotic! But somehow my mind knows where to put stuff. Cutting is hard so I typically take my cuts and place them at the end of each chapter so I can reconsider later. This makes cutting easier. I try and keep a flexible attitude and playful. And say to myself 'simple story simple story' over and over again. Betas will be involved after the second draft. But there may be several drafts within the draft... I usually know when a chapter feels like it expresses the story the way I like. I also like to read my work aloud to hear how it sounds word for word.

What is the best piece of advice you can give new writers?

Writing a book can be thrilling and a whole lotta fun. Sometimes it's hard to get to that place. The page is always blank for you. It's the only way. If the mind comes in preoccupied, you may not get the immersion. I believe in mindfulness to bring a quiet mind to the process. Slow it down to one word at a time, one sentence, one paragraph, one passage... give it room to breathe and make sense of itself.

Good advice. Where can people find you and your books?

Here are the links. I have author profiles on Goodreads andAmazon.

My website is Katya Mills and I frequent the GPLUS community.

Thanks for stopping by, Katya! 

Anyone else use Scrivener to edit? What is your favorite program to use when editing? See you all on Monday! (Although I might try and sneak in a few visits before then.) 

LINK 2 MISHA'S SITE:

http://sylmion.blogspot.co.za/2016/03/interview-with-katya-mills.html

The Five Year Project: Interview with Katya Mills

The Five Year Project: Interview with Katya Mills: Hi everyone! Great news. Internet is turned back on at last, which means I'll hopefully be starting blog rounds early next week. Playing...

Interview with Jaideep @ 'Pebble In The Still Waters'

Pebble In The Still Waters: Katya Mills - Urban Fantasy Series :

Published Author Interview with Katya Mills
by blogger and author Jaideep Khanduja

INTERVIEW (Wordpress)

THE BOOK: Girl Without Borders

PUBLISHED IN: 2013

THE AUTHOR: Katya Mills

THE EDITOR: Katya Mills

THE PUBLISHER: Amazon.com

SUMMARY: Chicago. West side. Follow the paths of three young lovers, at the turn of the millennium. Working-class punks and degenerate-labelled youth move across the urban landscape, effortlessly, at night. Suffering the depths to which culture has sunk. Looking for refuge. Fearless in love.

Will is a young man with a big heart and big dreams. Intelligent, sensitive and compassionate. Determined to make a life for himself in the city. Determined to learn the code of the streets. He falls for a girl, Bella, who has a punk attitude and style all her own. In no time, she steals his heart. There is another woman, Cass who has her heart set on Will. But the love is unrequited. LIfe gets complicated, as Will gets lost in love. Danger, drama, and emotional turmoil loom on the horizon.

Generation X. Raised on punk rock, hip-hop and celebrity worship. Raised on high fructose corn-syrups. Pop and pop culture detritus. Raised on flat land, with crazy straws. Wannabe rockstars and burnouts. Follow the tale of youth who live and love large, in the shadow of the generation before them. Praying not to be reduced to culture’s blind carbon copies. Where love becomes power… with tragic consequences.

THE BACK STORY: “I began this story when I was living in Chicago, the heart of the setting. I finished the book a decade later. Having an emotional connection to a place is the foundation off of which I like to build my fictions. I wrote the book mostly in coffeehouses in Bucktown and Wicker Park, and I swear I almost got my ass kicked for using a laptop in a café in some parts of the city back then, pre-millenium. This is my first publication, and a complete – DIY- labor of love. I did everything and designed the cover. (I still do everything on my books, I just don’t design my covers anymore). I put everything and my heart into this work.”

WHY THIS TITLE: I have a MA in Psychology. I chose this title in consideration of BPD: borderline personality disorder. One of the main characters clearly suffers from this condition (and those around her suffer from her suffering from it, too). Just so you know, I do not preach psychology or discuss diagnoses within the text, it’s just a feeling you get by the characterization.

WHY SOMEONE WOULD WANT TO READ IT: The book is character-driven and told from the perspective of a young man who is struggling to makes sense of his life, not always thrilled to be caught between two or more women, somewhat aimless and reckless and pretty honest about it all. You might want to read it if there was a time in your life where you were fighting the tendency toward becoming jaded and/or numb. I cannot doll it up. If that sounds interesting to you, check it out. I do think my writing style is pretty original, but not everyone and their mother is into it, so be sure and read the sample.

Link to this interview: Interview

Link to this novel: GWB

Interview Q&A

Where have you lived, and how has this influenced your writing?

I have traveled far and wide, and lived all across the US. I like to set my novels in cities where I have lived. I grew up in New England, and was admitted to Northwestern University in Chicago. I studied literature there. After graduation, I waited tables and wrote in my spare time. I decided to move back home to Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts. I was there for a year doing social work but barely making ends meet. Then I took a well-paying financial job in St. Petersburg, Florida. All along I knew I loved to write, and writing was the only constant in my life. Finance did not appeal to me. I filled many journals with my writing. After a year living on the beach and typing away nights to NPR jazz on an old Smith Corona I bought at an antique store, I made a rather foolish decision to move back to Chicago. I swear the city was calling me! I would live in many different neighborhoods on the west side of town, from Wicker Park to Ukrainian Village to Humboldt Park. Again, working odd jobs and writing in my free time. I was going broke and broken-hearted a few years later, and well into my first novel, 'Girl Without Borders'. I felt like I had lost in love and life, yet I wasn't even thirty years old. It took me a decade to complete and self-publish that title, a literary fiction. I ultimately moved to Northern California, and lived in the Bay Area for a decade, ending 2012. I began writing 'Grand Theft Life' in 2013, an urban fantasy set in Oakland and the Bay Area.

Q&A -- Writing Process

Q  Can you describe your writing process?

A  Coffee. I like to get closer to a place where my mind is free-associating. Sometimes just after waking up. I usually write without much of an outline, but ideas which have some sorta emotional connect. My work is character-driven, meaning whatever happens is colored by the POV (point of view: thoughts, feelings, biases, dreams, wishes, desires, interest, sensations, internal experience, intuition) of the main character(s) in relation to their world. I use visual mapping applications and sometimes Scrivener to help see the various parts of the whole. I usually do a little freewriting before I know where I wanna locate myself in the narrative for the day. By freewriting, my heart is given a chance to tell me where in the story I can make the most impact. Because I come into the experience of writing with whatever thoughts and feelings the day has inspired, I hope to use the immediacy of my own life to come to bear on my story. Of course, the process does not always play out this way! That is a best case scenario. I try and stay as flexible as possible with scenes from a first draft, often cutting and pasting chapters relentlessly in my edits until the puzzle comes together the way that feels right. This keeps the editing process fun and sometimes, magical!    - KatYa

INTERVIEW

Here is an interview I did with Jen Winters, which was published on her wordpress blog just the other day...

JEN: You all know how much I adored this woman’s book, Grand Theft Life . Her book was utterly fantastic and I am privileged and honored to have her here today for an interview.

You write contemporary fantasy fiction. Do you read it as well?

KATYA: Yes I do. I firmly believe in the importance of taking the time and getting to know your peers. I must admit that when I am intimately involved with my WIP’s, I tend to minimize my exposure to other works. I may be superstitious but I worry about other writing styles leading me off and away from my own process. Lately I have been reading Paul Kater, Dean Koontz, and Steven W. White’s ‘New World: A Frontier Fantasy Novel’.

There are a lot of low cost to free books one can add to one’s kindle every day, and then you get to carry a library in your hands. I recommend people get one if you don’t have one. Yes, it IS a better feeling holding a paperback, for sure. But some Kindles are backlit, so you can read them in the dark! And no, I do not work for Amazon.

JEN: HA! I recommend getting a Kindle too, but that’s because I’m an ebook published author ;)

Is there an author that makes you strive to be a better writer? Who is it and why?

KATYA: There are plenty. Always been a big fan of Anne Rice. She gets me deeply involved with her lead characters and anti-heros. I love her worlds, both ex and interior. I can always turn to the Russians for a spark. Great storytellers. I am reading Dostoyevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’ for the x-teenth time. And Paul Kater is a Dutch writer who I met recently by way of social media. I am blown away by his work ethic and trying to emulate.

JEN: I am always amazed at how many amazing authors are out there just waiting for us to find them.

What do you think you bring to your books that makes you unique?

KATYA: Sensitivity. I have always been a hypersensitive creature, myself. This has worked for and against me. I am single by choice because intimate relationships tend to overstimulate me. I breathe rather shallow because deep breathing breaks up my peace of mind with the fullness of emotions under the surface. Sound strange? Well, I probably am. But honestly, this quality in me lends itself very well to the worlds I create in my books.

Experience. I never write very far away from my internal experience. For sure I code it into my characters.

Style. I like to say I write from the inside out. I have my own fingerprint. Some readers call it poetic. Some describe it as similar to magic realism. Others enjoy my ability to paint an image in the mind. I tend to naturally thread in social commentaries, though I try not to preach. My books are character-driven, and I tend to place the characters in (physically) real yet dystopian urban settings.

JEN: Reading your book was certainly a unique and incredible experience for me. Some books I read and it’s a good book, but yours, I read and it was an experience.

What is that one moment you have had as a writer that made you realize you were actually a real author?

KATYA: When I self-published my first novel, in 2013. Girl Without Borders.

JEN: Now that is the kind of moment I can connect to. I had been touting myself as an aspiring author for long enough when I saw my book online after hitting that publish button, I knew. I was an author.

What started you on the path to becoming an author?

KATYA: I did a ton of reading as a kid. The first novel that totally wrapped its arms around me and wouldn’t let go, was Dickens’ ‘David Copperfield’. I was about eleven or twelve years old. I was enraptured! And it was a big thick paperback, so I was really proud to be reading such a large volume. From then on I aspired to write a book. Around the same time, a classmate and I got notebooks on our own, and tried to write novels in them. My idea. Before then, my grandmother was cutting full page images out of magazines, pasting them on one side of a notebook, and asking me to write stories about the images. That’s how I began to tell stories in ink.

JEN: Your grandmother’s idea was fantastic. I might kype that!

How did you work your advertising and build your following?

KATYA: I have a facebook page which does not generate much interest. Mostly I am building a following through my website (circa 2007), and through the Google Plus community. I offer up something to somebody every day online. I also buy copies of my books, and hand paperbacks out to local bookstores and friends. In the past two years, I have joined Goodreads, WordPress and Twitter. I have linked up my social media to my author profile on Amazon. I may get back out to the coffeehouses and grab an open mic. I try and maximize the points of contact I have, and am willing to create more. But I definitely have a lot to learn about advertising, marketing, promotion.

There’s a cool website I found for Independents, called http://www.theindieview.com . Self-published authors can query a list of reviewers who will review your work for free. I stand behind all my published work, but I am still mostly unknown. None of it matters so long as I am excited about what I am writing, and dedicated.

JEN: Cool. Thank you for the referral! And indie’s first few years are a hard time full of expenses!

As an author, what is that one memory that will always stick with you?

KATYA: Being in Palm Springs earlier this year (on vacation) and waking up predawn to write to the full moon over the mountains, just outside my hotel window. Going to the lobby to get the free coffee and granola bars, and spending most of my week-long vacation inside my hotel room, feverishly completing my novella. I was clocking twelve hour days with my kitten by my side, and I had no hesitation working across my entire ‘vacation’! I was inside a tractor beam of energy. A true labor of love <3 br="">
JEN: Oh wow! That is inspiring! I’m not sure I could type for that long on any given day, but it certainly shows your dedication to your craft.

How have your aspirations as a writer changed over time?

KATYA: I suppose I always harbored a desire to be widely read, or published. Ten years ago I shopped a manuscript around to some of the majors, and found the process tedious and discouraging. The conventions were slightly less discouraging. I mostly enjoyed sharing my work with friends and doing spoken word. When I started blogging in 2007, I found I had access to anyone online. This brought some adrenaline back. But writing has remained mostly a healing process. My life has at times been in chaos. Fractured relationships and jobs, unemployment and relocations. Now I am a little older and found a simpler way of life. A calmer environment. A less stressful job. I still aspire to have my work read far and wide. But I feel fortunate I have this ritual and healing process to turn to when times get rough. Writing is good medicine.

JEN: It certainly is! I wrote my first after a rather harsh implosion of my life and it was the best therapy I could afford. Also, Kissing Demons was rewritten so that it wasn’t so much puke on a page. Haha.

Have you quit your day job yet or are you planning to anytime in the future?

KATYA: Wouldn’t that be nice? Haha – sure! I’m okay with my career, in fact I really like it. I’m a social worker and I meet and work with wonderful people every day. I work the nightshift, which is usually less stressful than the other shifts. I feel I can be helpful to people struggling with mental illness.

I enjoy coming home when the sun rises and keep a simple routine, making a clearing every day to write. Enjoy the process of writing and sharing and reading. Quit my job? Maybe. But I like my life right now and feel fortunate to have something else that excites me besides writing.

JEN: That is beautiful. I’m glad you have two things in your life that make it good right now.

What drives a fantasy for you and makes it something you want to read/write?

KATYA: Trying to put into words impossible things. Magical things. Superhuman potentials. Spirit life. Extraordinary abilities. Subtle sense possibilities. Things our five senses do not pick up! Energetics. But regardless of genre, a book is driven by its characters. You gotta have real characters who you care about. Yes, world-building is a critical part of fantasy fiction. I try and have fun with it, get creative.

JEN: You certainly manage! I thought your characters drove your story into this functionality I couldn’t see until I read it the second time around. It was one of those masterpieces of fiction that is like a good painting: no matter how many times you look at it, you see something new.

What are you working on now?

KATYA: I am working on Book Two of ‘Daughter of Darkness’. I have about 50,000 words, first draft, to play with. This will condense down to about half of that, or another novella. I expect to release Book Two this year.

JEN: Woot! I’ll be looking for that release day!

Tell us a little about your previous works and how we can get our hands on them.

KATYA: They are all published on Amazon, so you can find them by a single link to my Author page…

http://www.amazon.com/Katya-Mills/e/B00F5DWHGC

JEN: Thank you Katya for coming and spending time with me today! As always, it was a pleasure to hear from you. And thank you, Reader. We appreciate your likes, shares, and comments.