be with

in a city
for the first time you
don't have to do nothing
but be with
walk around and explore
leave your damn phone
at home

#katyamills

dream sequence

In this dream I found myself in a stranger's house with you, and we were set up by two thieves to take the fall. We had nothing in our possession yet we started running. You  ran far ahead of me. I could see them coming for us and hollering after.

I wanted to run but my entire body was set in slow motion. I had a terribly helpless feeling! I moved up a long strip of land, connecting yards, and saw a puff of smoke and heard them shoot you. I never felt so hopeless.

Grand Theft Life 1.21.3

GWB 2.3.1 video book

GWB 1.18.3 a videobook

legendary. local and non-locally

The local legends are legendary, and so are you, too, full of codes and dotted lines, signing with the strangest of signs. The runners got confused and ran backwards cross the bases and back into the dugouts which could only be uncarved and replanted in the earth as trees, encircled by swaths of honeycomb and bees, and it was like a land before time that progress took away. We walked to a local show to see your friend,  an old man wide in the eyes and young in the heart, clear in the mind playing the blues what with a small silver briefcase full of blues harps behind him and walks with a cane. All the while I was hoping to reach my potential (but not really trying) when I locked the keys in the car again and had to fuck all and get a coat hanger. We manipulated everything wonderfully, you and me. You won't remember the guy sittin on a bench between here and there, looked pretty bad and hadn't been chosen in a while by anything but a park and a bench outta place. In the distance (in the memories) a local legend was picking the blues and won't be around for long. I wanna be a local legend some day, too. For now I am non-local and legendary, but only to you.

They call the losses progress, and write them rhythmically in the ledgers -as gains- to the sound of lawn sprinklers, and get away with triumphant bank accounts which open doors to high rooms vaulting into blue skies behind glass. You think you would but you wouldn't want to be there. It's cold and light. And the light is cold, too. I promise the world is easier to take when less experienced. The barriers between us breathable. Someone is wicking away my moisture and I'm not too happy about it, I coulda sold it high on the water mark exists below the levée, some day. You meanwhile are being yourself and doing what you do, working really hard, sharing it with someone and yourself. They wick it away and charge our credit cards. I never cried so hard as the sweat lodge losses. Congratulations on reaching your (earnings) potential, America. I wanna say I'm proud of you, but you see I am way below mine on purpose. I guess I like to suffer zero balances, every once in a while feels like I'm alive in a capitalist plot reserved for us over here.

the runway runs away (a remix)

REMIX of 'this loves for real .no stopping. all green some whole some lights' (circa 10 May 2011 at 03:48)  -- K by K

k by k, 2016

fuck I have been cold. I have been frightening cold, I have. until some small smile some sarah somewhere in this place post punk and petrified with perfect well wishing winning new paradigm nod to the north. if north is astral. if north is known by certain colors that stand out like a football i mean soccer jersey that’s brilliant yellow lighter than gold yet darker than lemon and loved even lusted after between air -steam- rising top of the crucial team consciousness on soft ground with soft ball and hard handshakes raising the rising roof of random screaming. a world of color a world of meaning. for most this was not so, but they backed on the tidal wave like the undertow, where the passion of the few was sourced you know, the masses go and they flow, the massive movement to go with the flow or go and go blow. rarely was this impressive, mostly nullified after the monument to him or her had been already built and cemented in place for public worshiping and it was discovered she or he had been sidelighting in a darker shade of themselves, shadowing the lives of innocents and extinguishing others candles because they lusted and cause they could. you know who i'm talking about there's so many of those. loved by many now hated by most. one circled roped in focus can distract from the life your partner your wife around you. your son who packs a gun -the heat is beat- and maybe boy or maybe girl, the foil-wrapped careful cut icebergs or powders or icicles or dub-sides come half-baked with home fries for the waiting guys waiting sometimes impatient waiting. sent. sent by that curiosity fills the soul kills some whole. just before the -you don't know now you know- part. the grow on your street that your feet touch and meet there. pavements so hard they killed fred astaire. or would had had he not been nimble. like no bread, just bologna with capers and mozzarella, white wet from the homeland near the river saucony. alive and kicking. kicking down the doors to taste buds. touch memory deeper than sentimental songs, you know. by heart. don’t start, ‘cause I’m not finished, planet earth, the spoon, the black and white, the dish, the fashion statement the runway ran away with. now you come back to reality and fall in love with someone and lose yourself. there now, your good and lost, child, god loves you like that, good and lost in love forever.   - KatYa

k by k, 2016

helicopters and obamaphones and you

Life can be pretty strange and you don't know what to make of it, so take it as it comes. Last night I went to bed in our beloved police state and woke up startled at 8pm as a helicopter was flying very low with loudspeakers and searching for a 'suspicious person' near eggplant alley. All the soft edges of the last polite evening have been pushed and shoved and formed into something bigger than the pushes and shoves. We are left this morning with a lot or enough or something more than nothing I guess. A thermos of coffee sweetened with cream and sugar... and I still don't know how things will work out between us, you and me, or if it will continue on and be space harboring satellite transmissions to obamaphones and tower drops. I remember when it was once chemistry. And then it was magic. That lasted quite a while but not long enough. Once you have magic you can get awfully upset when you lose magic. You want anyone who had anything to do with the magic to disappear, because they remind you of the magic you lost. And now I am left peaceful and guarded, cause if you come with your late afternoon talk show dsyfunction a-knockin on my door, I might just have to call the cops.

dominoes. heaps of clothes -ii

the little panels were etched plastic
if you lined them up right you
solved a code
and then they let you link
up and in

made a clicking sound
each time a panel hit the wooden table
(a computer will try and replicate this
but won't ever cut it. thank god)

the exhaust out the back
continued for hours (rising against the snowfall)
black fossil fuels somehow taken into
 the sky tone

crisp and light and exposed
unlike before when
it was soft and
dark and unseen

 well. you and me we would have it all
exposed
on a beaten path
now road. on a long road
west

moving moving moving
as if there was anywhere better
to go

navel (gone larger) label #2

A great compression hits the air and electricity unloads upon the city and picks up pavement like legs over jumpropes. Spent out on long nights and hazy days between command central (some adulator's basement or agitator's sister's garage) and the Civic Center. Planned protests (amidst unplanned parenthood). Your body and your mind are notched for shorter play, but the spirit moves the joystick. The sound of it makes most young activists want to switch to substitute teaching.

And many probably do
But not you know who

Others join the green party ranks
Or the army, marching behind tanks

I would  move (with you) to Amsterdam or Vancouver
where we could talk on talk radio with the world about
anything but that

what's behind the label
across the sheltering orange rind
of the navel

To be chicken-wired into a city 4 block radius
by choice. Fast food ideology. To give away your voice
by choice  -- Berlin, circa 1942

Caution. it might hurt
Planned parenthood (amidst pop-up protests), hazy days and spent nights for dizzy girls spun dry from wet, will never be women to boys will never be men, lucky if a fifth make it to the clinic where everyone's betting against them, only a tenth make it out half-alive. Fast food ideology.  -- Chicago, 2016

There, there...
All washes away, tears and problems and headaches and trash
Flags come out on Patriots Day and how dare you? I love
(my country) too

There, there...
The pulp is safe and juicy inside
full of nutrients (and whatever's in the water)

A great decompression hits the air and electricity unloads and picks up pavement like legs over jumpropes. Feelings around the block so diverse and tangential, burning like coals in the eyes and faces of those who live deep in the heart of the American city. Every AMERICAN city unified, from Quebec to Tijuana, Houston to Montreal, Toronto to Rio de Janeiro. Feelings catch on and so alive!

We will need no lighter fluid. You and I
 The solar flares (sent by sun) have arrived

GWB 1.14.3 videobook

sun.15

 

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

k by k. 2016

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 # 07.02.16

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.

as life is life and living is living

as we watch the world go by and loved ones die as we look into the sky and wonder why. as we get over ourselves and live another day and go to bed after we pray. as we judge and condemn and smile and then we judge and condemn again and we smile and again we smile with our family with our friends. as the light offers ever new glimpses of the same familiar places and ever new plays on the same familiar faces as we see we see again and what we see we remark for its beauty as it is remarkable. and when the sun goes down soft yellow or new white lights illuminate our little private corners and spaces. in rooms in houses in woods do not go so deep anymore or do they. as we feel we feel stronger and better more encouraged as we feel we feel lost in our feeling or scared in our rooms in our homes in the not so deep so darkened woods. we pull the blankets closer. i will hold you really tight as you hold me really tight i will hold on to you and tell you i love you in a whisper and mean it. you will say nothing as we fall asleep this way as a trace of yellow light fogs up the hallway. you left the light on for me because you know my nightmares are less vicious in less than replete darkness. for whatever reason it does not matter. i set the coffee grounds in the maker and set the timer to brew the coffee at dawn for you. i may not wake when you do but if i do you may be certain i will arise to kiss and say goodbye to you.

GWB - Video Book 1:5:1

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

Exeter NH

November came in with storms and I began to think of you again. I went out on the back porch with my coffee and the sun felt so good after the rain. The lemons turnin yellow on the lemon tree. Everything was gettin recycled even thoughts. I guess I could do somethin about us again, even if I hadn't seen you in ages. Did we have any kids together, and where are they? Probably without shoes somewhere cursin the memory. With hazelnut eyes and germanic steel wills. A century ago they'd be in Exeter, NH, underage workin in the mills. I would collect the pay and put it in a can. And hide it from the man. If we had any energy to spare, you would take me down the river aways and somewhere all alone, make love to me on a slab of granite stone.

SHADOWING

" I was hot with a madness. I was becoming accustomed to the darkness inherent in me. I may not have been happy about the violent quality, but I accepted it. I was conscious of it. I was not running from it anymore. The immediacy! I could access the power. I could nurse on the fear. I could feel it, I could compel it out of a human with no remorse." - K

LOVE POTION #K

love potion no. K

I was in the laboratory, minding my own business and yours, when all of a sudden that eureka moment came hurtling from space to earth, half-burning up in its double wide flavor, five-lane atmosphere pressure pull. I pounced immediately upon it, before it could scurry away into the recesses of some famous French cave, whose drawings of stick figure animals shall be preserved to the end of human time only. I cupped my mind around it like a cat claw trap upon a squeakmouse.

A large question mark took form in a gasping vexation of breath out my pores. My entire organism shook. This created just enough room for the object, not yet become subject (or subjected to my personal universe of great darkness and fragmented light), to slide into a crack, in the unwaxed and unpolished (and rather rough from wear) mahogany floor, which had suffered the weight of me for one too many months in this place, my self-described laboratory. All I felt (other than insatiably unanswered in pursuit of my less than scientific inquiry) was an increase in space beneath my mental tendrils, which were left groping about like a suddenly blind sea anemona in atrophic waters, abandoned for good by an ungrateful school of single file clown fish with genetically mutated pioneering tendencies.

My object, my dear sweet eureka, escaped my grasp! No! I cried, reducing my own equation to expletive tears.I dropped to my knees, then fell to the floor and my whole body collapsed like a dying star.

Then, after a few horrendous moments of breathless wonder, something magnificent happened! That which I had been pulling and pushing and groping and gnashing my teeth to capture and consume, with the bully gravitas of a desperate Putin in Ukraine, suddenly unfolded itself to my surrendered spirit, like the most beautiful of flowers set free in the sun! Love potion no. two thousand, seven hundred, sixty two (dot) infinity.