latest publications

 Hi friends. as you may know I am working on a short story collection - my first. 

this week was a good one with 3 publications!

here they are ... 

read #1 my latest story published in the inaugural edition of this quarterly independent #press ... https://www.thewordsfaire.com/issuei/pulses-synched-and-fading

read #2 - https://latinosenglishedition.blog/2026/04/10/royal-sessions-10-5-1998-by-katya-mills/

read #3 - https://latinosenglishedition.blog/2026/04/11/cover-sheet-by-katya-mills/

probably all 3 will go into my collection.

I may have enough published stories now to submit a sample to traditional publishers looking to publish collections from emerging writers. so that's exciting. 

• Katya

Royal sessions [10.1.1998]

 10.1.1998

The cold front is here and I shut my windows which upset Raccoon who lost communication with the alley cats. Out of love for her I open one and she stretches down before me on her front paws with gratitude then leaps up to the sill. I had a cold but the cold front was so cold it killed my cold, swear to god. I am driving for a messenger company in my grandma’s Mercury Sable, may she rest in peace. I broke out my wool hat with the bulldog and pulled it over my ears and hit the road with my cell phone, pager, a boiled egg and green apple. There are leaves falling across my windshield and football on talk radio. I am waiting at a light on Ohio facing a billboard of a woman smoking Slims. I wave off a Chicago Sun Times salesman in a tan leather jacket and the junky asking for money at the gas station will have no luck with me today. The street cleaners left a neon orange ticked under my wiper blade demanding a fifty spot. You wouldn’t know they clean wallets. They don’t advertise that. Downtown a black man is passionate about how the whites are trying to put him down. A well-dressed woman in heels and a fur coat hails a cab. The modern art installments in front of the state administration buildings are eyesores to me. The sky high Amoco building gives me bearings; I am disoriented on Dearborn. I don’t get a lunch break but my mind wanders between deliveries. I am thinking of a guy I bailed out of jail in Florida last year. He called me again last night. Somehow the court has my address for him and sends letters about his failures to appear, and when he calls I open and read them to him. Are you wanted in many states? I asked him. This was meant to be a joke but he answered it seriously. Only two. He is a troubling glimpse at a chapter in an awfully frightening book. But when I think about it, he’s not that bad… it’s not all that bad. I am peeling and eating my egg. I’m curious about one thing… how did that nice guy who owed him money, die?  #katyamills

Royal Sessions [10.5.1998]

Storms carry clouds over Lake Michigan like a doomed zeppelin. They boarded up some of the many vents in the apartment to mitigate the wind and make it through the winter without too high a heat bill. The needles on the tops of the Sears and Hancock towers puncture the clouds and the yellow cabs slide on bald tires across the oily streets. Her oldest kid got a job in a hardware store making keys on weekends. Hands grip hammers and pliers and the sound and smell of metal being cut up into unique patterns, silver and gold slid on to rings with other older keys which makes your world seem bigger but really it's smaller as you leave behind the wide open spaces that most find unbearable as they drive into their garages as the final joints pull the door up and parallel to cement floors. I will survive was declared the best disco tune of all time yesterday and she was feeling it, gosh darn it, she got all her life to live, yes. She fucking hated disco for some reason but the song was great great great. It would be a busy day at work and she was loading up on coffee and getting ready to conquer. There would be no more sitting down at any kitchen table because who has time for that? She was always moving about, taking care of the kids, the pets, and herself if she was lucky. Gone were the evenings of saying prayers before meals and patiently cutting and eating one's food. Gone the breadwinner and patriarch, too. The kids were very little then. Yes she was irritable, anxious, stressed, and not so happy. But when she was happy watch out, you might not be able to handle it, she was really fucking joyful. A contagion of fear and doubt had swept over the land a long time ago. Everyone relied on keys and it was considered ridiculous and stupid to leave your doors unlocked anymore, which gave her son plenty to do at the store. When he came home he helped take care of his brother who spent long hours watching the world through the windows like a cat, the rain beading on the glass and streaming down into the rivers to the street. He wanted them to know where he was, he wanted to show them where he had been and make them guess where he might end up. One day to return to the anonymity of a cloud that learns to cry. He had lost the ability to express it but he wanted them to know. The sun would pull everything together some day.   

by #katyamills

earthen world

I confess 

I am undeserving

of your caress 

these words he spoke 

a mouse in his throat

for you know not yet

of my betrayal 

my fingers closed 

into a fist. i struck out 

until my knuckles

bled

the earthen world

undeterred

#katyamills

we are true

you took my hand you 

pulled me forward against the same old stories

surrounding us

they would always be made up

whereas we are

true

#katyamills

 

december 6

today will be like most days and i am content with the lot i have. out of bed without an alarm just before five am, woken by the cold nose of one of my two kittens in our little family. i will take my single pill and put the coffee on, do a couple of jumping jacks and make a single phone call. then for the coffee and water in an lamp lit room at an old oak desk i have had for a quarter century. i still don't always know where to situate my feet what with the outcroppings of two crossed wooden legs in the way. there will be this silence amid the brief blasts of furnace and sound of keys tapping. i used to write on paper as a kid but i am a late gen x and got my first mac plus, and what a dream, on my 17th birthday, and never really looked back. i don't often know where to situate myself in my writings, for every author will, but i do try and be honest about life and these days i am working on telling these stories in a more linear fashion, so they can be read without so great a confusion folks give up right early.

Reading (ATE92)

Reading (ATE67)

i fought it all

now i live and know differently, i see how unwilling i was to accept my lot in life. how sad. so many years lost fighting shadows. reality never folded...

i am okay now, mostly. i have my moods. maybe those years were neither sad nor lost. they just were. i liked a good fight. i liked being counter and intuitive...

whatever. it made me who i am. and i am no longer any demon or junky. i would rather ask you more about yourself. then chase down juicy stories in my head.

seven

you recently got off the streets. you aren't getting any younger, and you feel your age. chronic pain has kept you from doing the work you love. i was just listening to you tell me your story, all the 'lost time' after you lost your kids and your purpose. but you don't feel sorry for yourself. you found a way to connect with your grandkids and even took them fishing. you still want to live even if you cannot always understand what for. i elevate you to survivor status. we laughed when you told me the story about the time you got shot in the back. you were under the hood in the garage, working on a carburetor, when a stray bullet flew from San Pablo Avenue and knocked you to the ground. once you realized what had happened, you dragged yourself to the office for help. they got you to the hospital and most of the fragments were removed and you walked out of there in under 48 hours. when you got back to work, you walked to the office to thank them. your boss had a parrot he kept in there, and the moment you walked in, the parrot saw you and started screaming: 'I'm shot! I'm shot! I'm shot!"

the mad scientist in me and you (creative process)

mad scientist

I don't know about you but only in silence can I break away from routine and find my way back to her, the mad scientist in me. Ya, once I find her all bets may be off, she may decide to pump some Iggy Pop or Nine Inch Nails into my bloodstream with all the coffee. Here in my laboratory -- aka my apartment --  playing with the soft membrane between you and me in my mind. Going off somewhere unusual and yet somehow self-validating. The unitive awaits us, the collective mind, where we may connect from any distance. It's extrasensory. My head is buzzing by Alice Munro's  Carried Away. I let the kittens outside for the night. They will be cold but they want to go. I am denying the urge to go off with salts and butters on a plate of broiled veggies and shrimp. Other tenants in the building are bumping into our shared walls, makes me feel safer. Me and you, we really need to break the routine for a hot second. Let the atmosphere in my kitchen become remarkable all of a sudden. Only because I am paying extra attention. Super cool and clear with vinyl floors, flourescent overheads, a giant green chair, a laminate wood table. Much different from the feel of the carpeted living room with cathedral ceiling. I can breathe into the silence and feel the softness of the inside of my baby blue dollar store slippers. I can follow the whisping whirr of the ceiling fan. The lovely chime of the Tibetan bell tongue, rocking against itself. Why fear my mad scientist when I love her so? She is raison d'etre like no other! Out of her comes strange stories like Maze and Grand Theft Life. Maybe that's what terrifies me? Stories of my life but not exactly memoirs. Call it creative nonfiction. Or don't call it anything at all. Just what comes out of the silence with me. Alluring and luring us to a feast of re creation. Thank god I have my laboratory. Thank god I have my routine to break. Thank god I have my health. Thank god for Alice Munro. Thank god for you. Thank god for books. Thank god for the mad scientist in me -- and in you. Let's all let ourselves get carried away by our experiments tonight. This is true living!

Maze 2:7:3 storytelling

Book Two

Chapter 7

Part 3

In the last episode 2:7:2 Ame talks about the general happenstance of waiting for her boyfriend while he steals ice cream,  dealing with the johnny b. dangerous checking her out,  her efforts to recycle, his efforts to romance her in a vacant lot maybe. 

Maze 2:6:3 -- storytelling

Book Two

Chapter 6 

Part 3

-- -- AUDIO NARRATION -- --

In the last episode 2:6:2 Ame is talking about her friendship with Bless and Freddy, and the time Freddy helped her get gum out of her hair. Then he took her on his Harley to Berkeley to a salon where she has a dreamy moment in soap suds. 

Maze 2:3:1 -- a reading

Book Two

Chapter 3

Part 1

In the last episode 2:2:3 Ame uses her energies to perform the alchemy upon the thief, who dissolves into a pure pool of being and soaks through the carpet (which cannot seem to hold him) and into the floor, which becomes waterlogged with what's left of him.