2.23.25

 my tooth is cracked my ears are ringing the light is hurting my eyes and i have a million things to do and politics on my heart but let us start by writing. #katyamills

time blind

The sun set on a quiet winter day and they fell off into a faraway cavernous thought space with music playing off a box radio plugged in and hung up over the sink with bungees so they could access it from the bed, too heavy to move. Time got lost in their blindness of it.

#katyamills

quint.essence

the quintessence
of the initial draft
a chaos of emotions
boiled down over a thousand
cups of blue bottle coffee
matched by morning
suns

#katyamills

April 28

my god how I cooled into a calm to see you settle into this deep faith leaving your momentary suffering behind.     #katyamills

April 27

You would come to me, sad and belittled, with holes in you, sometimes angered always hurt, and I would tend to your wounds, reminding you gently that he wasn't all bad and nobody is... a byproduct of the war, damaged property of the US Army and in a great deal of physical and psychological pain. 

 #katyamills

April 25

I could hear the thunderous bass line on the other side of the bridge. From here it was much kinder like the water took the heat out of it. I had to repeat myself five times. The first two because you were drowned in sound. The last three because you could not believe what I said. You made your way to the side of the stage and stuck a finger in your ear and pressed the phone to your head, 'Why?'

#WIP #katyamills

STAR 67

I remember the first time we fought. We were sitting in a booth at Mel’s Diner and he made a comment which offended me to my core, and I just got up and left him and my denver omelet behind, farewell to the fluffy pale sunshine masterpiece. When I get that stirred up it’s like a profound abandonment, someone completely misses me, it’s like all the long talks and understanding got wiped out and canceled, like painting watercolors in the garden in the rain. My blood pressure went haywire and I started to feel hot and freezing cold, I left because anything he might say could only further confirm my bias. I hate it when my armor goes up, the absolute worst because it’s the exact opposite of what I’m usually going for, the connection. Then the memories show up. They dive at me, engines blaring, like kamikazes, intrusive and blowing up my mind.

by #katyamills. (story opening)#WIP

excerpt dec 4 from memoirs

"You would be a fool to unblock if you knew you were facing annihilation."

#katyamills

excerpt december third from memoirs

"But let me tell of the best times for to leave them out would be like painting watercolors in the garden in the rain." #katyamills

power.less

she had a title she commanded a bit of respect and it was all a bit of a facade but what can you do? in the context of power you travel farther from the thing you hoped for. she was left feeling a modicum unloved  #katyamills

the west

they wanted out but there was no escape. they had chosen this. they had gone to school for this. they had gone into debt for this. they had traded out of a life of dim prospects and odd jobs for this. this was the West and no matter your colors capitalism would make you pay. #katyamills

notes 24 october

with hope upon wakening

believin the work to be done 

i open my manuscript

and like the washer the dryer you

spill out on the floor at my feet

such is life

replete and resplendent

we sharpen our blades

and fall on them

#katyamills

nobody get hurt

"Dani had a way of defusing Fleck, like taking the wick out of a bomb, and he became more like a bowling ball rolling along. He might still knock you over but nobody got hurt." #katyamills #wip

YES#WIP

the story is taking shape finally after the last five months of writing and editing and struggling to understand which direction to go. trying to unravel and get some ground underneath this...i met a guy who is sitting on manuscripts he wrote years ago. i told him he might want to consider self-publishing. it can be a joyful experience.  #katyamills

excerpt

They were in Florida at the time. Ocean, orange juice stands, rednecks, salt and sugar, lizards. She was coming down for a visit one week. The summer of ‘98 found them smoking and drinking, watchin the surf pounding away at the beach, lulling them to sleep until the sun rose and woke their asses up. Pop some X and go for a swim. Lay out the multicolored towels. Feelin the sun layin in the light. He was pushing into keys on the typewriter nights while she kicked back on the couch reading magz. They worked their fingers across the board so the letter arms wouldn’t rust, living off the pay and bonus from the last job. Rumbling around the intercoastal on the bike to take the steam off a hot humid day after the noon rains.     

- Katya Mills. Excerpt from my new project, tentatively titled They The Firmament.

pandemic 2020 day 6

March 23. Truth is indeed as strange as fiction. It's ironic how taken the USA was by the zombie apocalypse movies in recent years. Watch out! They look like us, they walk among us; if they touch you, life as you know it is over and you become a zombie, too. Some better known celebrities and figures have been testing positive without realizing they were exposed, including a US Senator from Kentucky, several sports stars, a renowned opera singer, and the doctor of the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, who recently administered her a pneumonia vaccine. Germany has now banned socializing in groups of more than 2 people. The next mandate will have you bumping up against yourself and your reflection in the mirror. You will only have your multiple personalities to embrace. None of this is funny but we need a sense of humor. Someone who's infected need only breathe on you, cough or sneeze toward you, and you've caught it. And you may not know for days. Yesterday I hit the local Raley's and got 100 caps of tylenol, nasal spray, more canned soups, chili, and multivitamins. In 5 days I have been unable to locate eggs, tp, or a damn thermometer to check myself in the event of a fever. I went online and Amazon appears to have a backlog of orders for thermometers. Last night I had some crazy dreams which reflected my greatest underlying subconscious fears like the world falling into complete disarray. I am about to put my face on and go to work. We shall see if my company has developed a solid telehealth plan over the weekend. I'm more than happy to stay busy and I can basically isolate myself in my office unless there's an urgent walk-in. I feel I have come somewhat to terms that 40% or more of the population will be infected. The 1918-19 pandemic came in waves and killed off 50 or more million people. They say it sourced in Alaska among an Inuit tribe, and was easily spread through the military ranks in the first World War. Clearly people were not as interconnected 100 years ago as they are today, and the 'wave' concept spells doomsday for the global economy. The Great Depression may not have been caused by the pandemic, but it sure timed perfectly, coinciding with a stock market crash and the industrial agricultural movement which was to blame for the Dust Bowl in the west. We are guaranteed a recession, they say, and if there's a second wave of COVID-19 in the late summer or fall, we may see a second Great Depression. I have a few things keeping me steady in a time of greatest uncertainty. My family. My work. My cats Bunny and Mouse. Running out on the river. Cooking. Reading. And working on my #WIP : Trouble'99.

Trouble'99 #wip

"I sat beside him in the freezing cold, and he asked if I could sing and I said no. Great, he told me, you got the job. When you recognize the song I want you to sing along. I started humming along at first and then begin by whispering them, the lyrics, then my whisper got a little louder. I still got quiet and shy with all the people rushing in and out during the heaviest of the commute times. He told me my voice sounded lovely next to his tired hatchet job on the guitar. We were a broken record of a different kind. If we could just be a little louder we might make some bread."    --  Katya Mills

Trouble'99 (excerpt wip)

Everyone but Aden thought little about the future and investing in it, and even he was beginning to get derailed. I was protective and discouraged him from going out with us, stay and do your studies. Sometimes I stayed back with him and we went to the library or a coffeehouse to work. These were special moments for us. Fetching machine made coffee late into the night, talking about medicine and the life of a surgeon, cutting people up, dreaming about our great future. When he got into a zone, I dismissed myself and took a detour over to the fiction section to find something by Burgess or Borges or Burrows or Bukowski. I thought, if god or the head librarian told me the funding was cut off for fiction and made me choose one letter of the alphabet which we could keep, sorted by authors last names, I would likely select B. Then I would jump off the Navy Pier wishing I might drown.

novella. sneak peek

Here's an excerpt from my WIP (work in progress): "The night hung heavy and winter would not wait. The days grew shorter and colder in Chicago. We haunted an apartment wedged between others on a long city block not far from Division, the four of us. The whole block seemed to shake every time a train passed by. Factory chimneys exhaling smoke, incessant sounds. What I loved about the city was how it’s so alive. There was all kinda weather coming through, winds blasting across Lake Michigan for days. Early snow subsided to rain, and all the kids on their way to school pushed gleefully through the puddles. Skyscrapers stood tall among the trees. The vertical life in Chicago in obvious contradiction to the system of streets and rails. All diversity of people caught up in all diversity of things, twenty four hours a day. Altogether it made for a life you would not wanna miss."
- Katya Mills

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!