readers take on my latest

i have shared my latest novella (not yet published) with three of five chosen readers, no nonsense folks (not all of whom are writers) whom i felt would give me an honest appraisal. i got a call from the only one who finished and held my breath awaiting the truth...

they really liked it!

they liked the rhythm and lyricism of the writing.
the setting was clear.
they cared about the protagonist and anti-heroic quality of her friends.
 the character development was solid.
 the plot kept them interested.
the end left them wanting more.

one of the areas i could work on, they suggested, is by limiting the time i spend in the headspace of my protagonist. they found these extended daydreams much less interesting and wanted me to get back to the storyline.

i am grateful for this critique!

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.

Book Review: Franny & Zooey

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Franny and Zooey. What was the book about, anyway, if not about what we do to ourselves in a world of criticism and judgment, when we get carried along that way and lose sight of what our indy purposes are, if not about what happens to a family that was once seemingly so united and celebrated for its little unit of togetherness and genius, when it deteriorates and gets cut up by suicide and sending some to war and leaving the rest to smoke and think and worry and carry on in pursuit of something or in pursuit of not pursuing anything, detachment, if not about the funny window into a messy nuclear home life and the quirkiness of moms and sons and sisters, if not about prep schools and homecoming football games and lunches and fainting spells... if it wasn't about all that, to me, it was about something a bit more thoughtful, less fanciful, more serious even grave, gravely concerned with how we go about our lives faced with the butchers and fat ladies, the disappointments, the faded dreams and painful realities, the fakers finally unmasked and left with what if i'm a faker too, the horrifying naked truth somewhere... and alot of this was also covered in the Catcher In the Rye, so you know it was Salinger in that little bunker on his property in NH where he stole away for weeks at a time in his infantry boots and clothes, probably touching his dogtags from time to time not knowing day or night, night or day, trying to get off the edges and into the heart of something even if it left him with no peace of mind, celebrated in a world he once wanted to celebrate him then reclused himself from, the painful residuals of an earlier attachment, having to detach but going on writing all the same and living a pretty damn long and pretty well respected, earned kinda life... not caring about being prolific or getting his work out even while he was alive necessarily... and i love that about the man and the work... and what i most love about Franny and Zooey whatever it was about, was the smallness of the book in my hands, and the spareness of the cover, the clever east meets west font... but most of all, just the way the two grown kids got around-about-way to the heart-centered business of helping one another out. That's what i loved about it most of all.


View all my reviews

the indie in me. the intimacy. self-publish yourself to death. for life

Cadence in my head, coffee mug in my hand and a laptop fired up. Hair falling about my face, tickling my nose, where oh where did my eyeglasses go? Trying to let my imagination find me, she can have me, oh grand channeler,  saucy bitch, take me, take my arms, wrists up, fists into palms. Here I go again to the graveyard for the pay. The work is good, I like it, keeps me honest, keeps me humble. Not really spending much money, not making much money. If I could I would buy some time, though, forty plus years old and some street life to show for it. Lots of hard lessons I think I finally learned, lots of colorful visions and deep seated incisions. A good dose of radical acceptance in my heart. I will only be a mom to all the motherless children in the world. I am American and all the good and bad that comes with it; I may not be able to find Cameroon on the map, but I can tell you where several authors homes lie and Siberia. I will do my own dishes and raise kittens until the day that I die. Self-promotion is a bitch. Sometimes I gotta open the flat of my hand and slap her aside, get back to the tabula rasa, open my veins to another page, anchor here, deus ex machina there. Inhumed into Book #3: Ame and all her tangy energetics. All that toxic boiling blood has to settle somewhere. I can laugh about what I've made of my life, I keep faith, I can love myself now. Out of the fear and into this great struggle where I found myself belonging all the time, to write, never missing a day, and try and keep up with what may come by the sharing, believers in me, when I have trouble having faith in myself, I like to let them know I'm alive and they touch me. Don't know about you but my indie spirit gets my ass outta bed. That's just the way it is. I am on pace to publish a couple novellas a year, a comparatively slow pace in the self-publishing arena, sometimes I think I oughta write more and faster; but the people who read my stuff tend to calm me down in my temporary crisis of confidence, and tell me its okay, they can wait. Just make sure I keep delivering the goods. Radical acceptance. I can breathe. I'm okay with my pace, coming back from that silly sidetracked sometimes comparison-shopped myself with someone else's success. It's very important that I stop there - it could be envy - and translate that fukker into inspiration. You indie spirits out there, you are my best friends! Always sharing how it feels, how it aches, and the catharsis behind the blood sweat and tears over these years and on your own. And here we are. Never alone. Your goddam life hiding behind a cover for all to know and some chosen few to cherish. Chosen because they chose you. How does it feel? The intimate moment (so far away) at once shared with the one who reads you, the one who gets you, who gets what you're trying to do? Wow! I'm a rooster just before dawn! I'm stretchin into the biggest smile, the exhaust of a yawn when I'm done with the edits and the story's been born. On to createspace, the tweets, goodreads and reddits. Thank you god for showing me the way. So many of us out there, having a blast and working hard. The possibility! Each one of us a star. And nobody needs to know in the end cause it's not an adulation game, it's simply a lifestyle. Hit a hundred thousand keys or more. Suited up on everyone's doorstep. Unraveling it. What you have to say. Your fresh vision. Your bloody mess. The writing life, painful as it can be, is the only life for me.

FAVE QUOTES FROM READERS OF MAZE

Readers of my book Maze have submitted some of their favorite quotes from the text. I thought I would share them, and thank you to those who shared them with me!

"When life is no longer a mystery, you’re history."

"God and the mayor had not paid a visit for a long time."

"burning against the streets beneath a careless sky drained of the deep blues of dawn."

"while the Pakistani who worked the desk was spilling diatribe like a mattress cut open on the side of the road, sharing his dislike for us freely."

"I swear next time he blew a gasket I would find a special natural consequence to administer."

"a real megalomaniac or my name is Jung"

"If human consciousness was a flickering candle, Black knew how to play the wax so it was always in danger of being extinguished."

"We show loving kindness to allies, neutrality to strangers, and prayers for the ones get in our way."

"The Pakis had an immutable contract with Black, coerced by his oil slick off their narrow road of regulations, his power and trade, fronting with his fine threads and stature and sweet-talking manner of murderous things."

"that was me and Bless, the way we shuffled the whole deck of cards or drew from of the deck the numbers our numbers, the aces, the deuces you see, when one becomes two and two becomes three."

"Everyone knew (presumed) that those who ask for help are not truly in need, because those who are truly in need do not ask for help. The American ways were peculiar."

"Whatever nails I grew faced a life colliding with skin and pavement, denim and teeth."

"…if I had to guess my soft skin and the sugar juxtaposed against brick and mortar turned him on"

"Freddy had drawn, into the van for some sneaker chiropractics, pushers and hustlers and junkies and escorts, former husbands and wives and church-going people, please, can a sea change fall from the sky?"

Maze is available for your reading pleasure 

on Amazon @ amazon.com/Katya-Mills

GOODREADS GIVEAWAY

Here's a link if you wish to enter the giveaway I am doing for a signed free paperback copy of my new book, on the Goodreads website...  https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/155331-maze

author on Harrison Street in Oakland. 2011

Swiss Miss and the Illiterati -part i

Swiss miss. 

The nemesis and stalker of real writers and readers, aka: you and me. Roosting and lording in a decollaborative fashion over her house label of omni ignorance. The Illiteratis.

Formerly, abundance came here to nest. 

She is up to no good again, swiss miss. Panhandling the system. Damn, what shall we do? Ghetto blast her out the city limits? Tried that. Listen to see if she has something today to say? Tried it. Accept and tolerate her? What choice do we have. 

She's always there, like gum under the table. 

Cannot pull her passport. Her license to quill. Under strategized pseudonyms and marketing blurbs straight out her mental vanilla extract suburbs. Gosh! I hate to be mean. But when someone is oozing self-centered fullness of being? 

Leeching off my holy land, the word scene? 

I find my mean girl comes decidedly back into creative being... 

-to be continued-