whatever (it takes)

 smoked a whole pack 

of cigarettes drank an entire pot

of coffee

whatever it takes to keep still 

and write the damn

book

#katyamills

writing.

writing is the only outrageous thing i do anymore

#katyamills

GRAND THEFT LIFE

HERE ARE SOME RECENT REVIEWS FOR MY BOOK 


Jessicarated it really liked it
Sep 12, 2021

Sep 10, 2021Paula Cox added it  ·  review of another edition

This seems really familiar. It seems to be like the book Maze I read. It was good. I liked it a lot. Would definitely recommend.

flagLike  · see review

Amandarated it really liked it
Sep 05, 2021

Kristenrated it liked it
Jan 01, 2021

Bianca Bettsrated it it was ok
Nov 17, 2020

Aaron Stroudrated it it was amazing
Nov 08, 2020

Apr 20, 2020Christi Massey rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition

Shelves: bought, kindle, finished-giveaways

I really enjoyed the grittiness of this book. Very atmospheric and engaging. Great read!

flag1 like · Unlike  · see review

books

If your reading list includes favorites such as...

Girl, Interrupted

Naked Lunch
Flesh and Blood
Junky
Basketball Diaries

Angela's Ashes

you might like
 

Sarah Berry-O'Cain rated a book 

really liked it

Trouble '99
by Katya Mills (Goodreads Author)

latest book review

 Trouble '99

by 

Katya Mills (Goodreads Author)

Sarah Carney's review

Sep 17, 2020

liked it

bookshelves: giveaways, my-kindle-list

I really liked the story and the message of this novella. I don’t think I’ve read a stream of consciousness styled book in a long time and parts were hard for me to get into.

It surrounds four 20-somethings in the Chicago area in 1999. The point of view is through the eyes of Kat and her experiences.

Overall I liked it, but probably not loved it. I would read more from this author, especially if there was a sequel to find out what happened in Kat’s life after 1999. :)

I won this book from a Goodreads giveaway, but these are my true opinions. Thank you for the chance at reading this book.

book review

Girl Without Borders by Katya Mills


I am the author of this book. I wrote the greater portion of this book when I was in my twenties, living in Chicago on the west side (not far from where the Smashing Pumpkins got famous, and the movie High Fidelity was filmed). I used to go to the coffeeshops in Bucktown and the Polish Triangle with my laptop to write. This was late 1990s and you could get your ass kicked for writing on a laptop in public. It wasn't cool to be a geek. Writing from my protagonist Will's perspective was not difficult seeing as I am gender fluid myself. I was a pretty tough chick or I thought I was, rather angry at the world, introverted, rebellious in attitude and spirit. I hung around other punks and geeks I met in the bars, cafes and small clubs on Division and Damen, and in Wicker Park and the Ukrainian Village. All I wanted was to be left alone and write. I was in some existential pain, I suppose, lonely in my heart. So I gravitated toward others who felt injured or broken. I had more than one love/hate relationship, the characteristics of which you will find in the novel. You can call in creative nonfiction if not fiction. If you ever go to Chicago look up Quimby's bookstore and the Flat Iron Building. I wrote the greater portion of this book a stone throw away.


View all my reviews

bio. california writers

I am an independent author of literary fiction and urban fantasy. I have 3 novels and over 100 positive reviews of my work online. I also publish flash fiction and creative nonfiction on my website @ www.katyamills.com. My most recent novel Maze won a table at the Sacramento Library Author Festival in 2016. I also have been a featured reader for the last 2 years @ Writers On The Air. I am currently close to self-publication on my fourth novel, Ame and The Tangy Energetic. I was an English Literature major at Northwestern University and enjoy not having to be bound by traditional publishing demands. I earn my living as a practicing psychotherapist. I consider writing my spiritual practice. That said, as my storytelling evolves, I do hope to some day submit my work to a house and become a hybrid author, if only out of curiosity and the willingness to try new endeavors, be challenged, and help my work reach a greater audience. - Katya Mills, 2018

"Believe that life is worth living, and your very belief will create the fact."

- William James

know things

there are things you know and oh, did i tell you i know some things, too, like how much i miss you and need you around, to fill up my heart with your being profound?

k @ home 2017

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.

type.writer -xv

one morning you sit down
to your work with your coffee
beside you and

the tides have been broken 
they have turned on the ocean!
this is what you came for
so suddenly
emergent

disciple to words
the reading
the writing

the sea and the healing
fresh atmosphere replaces
the ceiling! an absence of the world
you recollect so unfeeling

your voice is upon you
you've found yourself! finally
the struggle is gone
you no longer push into page

strangely awakened
enveloped by an undercurrent
you sing the song you were born to sing
you come thrashing to surface!

like faith
you cannot see it
you only feel it
you know

these are the moments a writer lives by!
when time loses interest
appetite gone silent
and the sentences form on their own

full of spirit!
making meaning
full of feeling!
with rhythm and rolling

you collide with the page
like a strike
when you're bowling

thank the stars
thank the gods
you got lucky
kid

type.writer -xi

they stared at you
they stared at me
get lost! i thought
you said it

i wrote it
i typed it up

one day
i got up off a bar stool
liquid courage
and read it

in 1998
i believed
in you and you
in me

i moved
thousands of miles away
in 2003

i'm not broke
i realized
i'm broken

oxygen starved
the urban air

i don't smoke
i thought
i'm choking...

doesn't mean
i didn't
care

type.writer -vi

the voice of the machine
unmistakable. a whole room listens as
the natgeo journalist in the forest of my mind
takes a tentative step forward

that night
the ritual

a quiet preparation of the scene
the placing of a sheet
rolling it into view

the smell of oiled letter arms
placement of the fingers
for some thought momentum

the ringing of a bell
the end of every line

i slap the arm to sweep the barrel
down the rail again
hit the block and then recoil

writer's block...
deus ex machina

carry on

type.writer (archive #K) -iii

the bluefish dissolved when
the devil rays flew in
and the sea disseminated
into sky

a line no
longer

what a solution
now nothing would never
make sense

indie author KatYa

indie author KatYa

I am an Independent, self-published with several books to my name. I do hope to become a ‘Hybrid’ author some day, and am currently seeking representation (of course I wouldn’t wanna lose my humanity or anything). I’m proud to say there are now close to 100 total reviews of my work on Goodreads and Amazon combined, averaging better than 4 out of 5 stars. I also blog daily and publish flash fiction and creative nonfiction on my website, which has over 150,000 pageviews to date. I started a storytelling project on my youtube channel, where I read my work and enjoy creating video books, reading and writing have always been close to my heart. I get a lot of my ideas while running along the American River, and ran my first marathon last year. Soon I will be running in the ‘Way Too Cool’, my first Ultramarathon on the trails in the American River Canyon and I cannot wait! I do have to slow down my superhero once in a while and morph into a social worker to pay the rent, and have been counseling indigent peoples with mental illness for over a decade. In case you fancy degrees, I have a BA in English from Northwestern U. and a MA in Counseling Psychology. I play guitar for my 3 cats in my spare time, and have lost many a boy and girlfriend over my screeching insolence. I also roast and drink a lot of coffee, what’s new? I love to walk around cool neighborhoods and loiter around sweet coffeehouses, too.

indie author

Katya W. Mills is an Independent Author from California. She writes literary fiction with a free and lyrical style. In 2013 she self-published her first novel, Girl Without Borders, about a love triangle gone bad in Chicago. She is currently hard at work on an urban fantasy series, Daughter Of Darkness, about a girl with psychic powers. In 2015, she released both Grand Theft Life (Book#1) and Maze (Book#2).  Katya received her BA in Literature from Northwestern University, and has a Master's degree in Psychology. Her preferred tools of the trade are Scrivener, coffee and a Chromebook. At night she morphs into a social worker.

Journal # 07.20.16

My new blanket, sea green, provides comfort against the squalls of the world. Wrapped in soft waves of blended cotton, I am hard to convince. Maybe it's the celebrity twitter fiascos and heat waves, the political conventions. Maybe it's the people who let me down. Maybe it's the many gods, the guns, exploitation and fear. Maybe it's my great expectations. Endorsements bought and traded and ringing in the ears, racial tensions expansive in the cities in the nights. How we go about reaching out for our implosives. Some of us are down on our luck. 

 I am up on my luck and not scared to get close to someone in need. Outside of car troubles, empty wallets, degradations, and syncope spells... loneliness awaits the life of living on couches in cars on corners. Nobody should ever feel left completely alone. If all I can offer is my company, kind words and home cooking, this is what I shall give. No one oughta feel no one cares. 

I pray that you will make it and come back to us like Spring.  For now I fall back to my routine, preservation of sanity, and settle down to read of the exploits of pioneers attempting to cross the Sierra Nevadas two hundred years ago to reach our sacred, sweet valley. Thank god for family and community, and cheap, blended cottons. I had just enough fight in me, in Walmart, to open mom's palette beyond earth tones. 

me and my baby

me and my baby

readers help writers

How and why? Did a part of me die? The madness in my art described the sadness in my heart. Then someone walked by. The circling of my toe inscribed a path inside the snow. They told me about the sky, and how to use that space. My teeth were misaligned, you saw them in my face. Then the kittens came, a-crying for some milk. I went to find some sweet cream, I found it in a dream. The readers read my mind. I signed their hearts, with love. A part of me was healed. The message was not mine, the envelope was sealed. It came from up above. I told them about the sky, and how to use that space. Some fled, some stayed. They stayed with me, in grace.

author. city cemetery.

GUEST BLOG

Here is the Guest Blog I did for Jen Winters 

Guest blogger: Katya Mills On Mood Manufacturing
by Jen Winters


I am a mood perfectionist, which has put me into business in mood manufacturing. Yes, it is a confession. I cannot often just sit down and write, and not worry about setting my mood just so. I grew up in the eighties, and my parents bought me an original Mac Plus for school. This computer was the coolest. I taught myself how to type. I realized I could open a Word document and stare at a white screen. The ‘tabula rasa’: Latin for ‘blank slate’. Which is what every artist faces, almost every day. I remember staring at the screen and feeling something in my heart which yearned to be expressed, but how to put that in words? The little cursor was blinking, just counting the seconds, endlessly waiting for me.

Self-publishing today is a luxury, just as computers were luxurious back then. My appreciation of both comes from having been born in a world without either. A world without the internet. Thank God for all the hackers in their garages who dreamed of this day, and worked toward their dreams! What a gift. In the eighties you could never reach a wide audience so quickly. Readers in China, Russia, Germany, Romania? Forget about it! I would be lucky to get my next door neighbor interested.

Today everything is in place for the indie authors of the world to succeed. Once you have your story the way you want it, complete and intact, you can follow in the footsteps of successful writers. Cookie-cutter. Only the creative process remains enigmatic. To me, the creative process must trump everything else. Which means I need to find the ideal conditions (for me) to write. A very personal process. It starts with noticing how I interact with my environment.

Now I have written in a boarding house full of noise, on a laptop so beat up I had to tie the screen back with zipties and twists, with a keyboard whose keys I had to superglue back on. I have written in a room with an (ex) boyfriend whose paranoia and jealousy could turn on me in a second. I have written despite real and imagined voices on the other sides of walls. I have written under threat of being momentarily evicted. I have written with the sun in my face and heavy metal in my ears, and no money in my pocket. I have written in a bar, in a car, in the cloud of someone’s cigar.

I came to realize how external conditions never defeated me. My problem was really internal! My moods are like weather patterns in the Jetstream. Unpredictable. So I developed my mood manufacturing industry. I thought I could figure out ways and means to boil my moods down into a mind-state conducive to writing the next bestseller.

I will spare you the details, except to say that this business failed! I struggled and struggled, trying to control my mind. A real turkey shoot! Many suns set without my having pulled the screen up, at all. Today, I am back to the basics. Focusing on the practice of writing. Get to writing, one word at a time.

What I realized in the end, was I gotta let go. Have some faith in the process. Stop trying to control things and manufacture the perfect mood. I gotta surrender. Trust. I have to sit myself down, every day, and do it. I have to be kind and encouraging to myself. I have to remember why I write, and the rewards of the creative life. The self-insight. Getting in touch with my feelings. Expressing myself deeply. Healing.

In the end, I write for my life.

BOOK REVIEWS

Dear Readers,

I just got another 5 star review for my novel, Girl Without Borders. I wanted to share with you all the 8 reviews - all 4-5 stars - on my debut novel. I feel this is a good indication, and sets the stage for the upcoming release of my novella, Daughter of Darkness, to succeed on Amazon and attract more attention with your help. I am determined to make a living at writing, as I simply continue to write. 4 life! Thanks!


Reviews :
5.0 out of 5 stars Good read, September 24, 2013
Sarah V. Arnold (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews
With an intriguing plot line, storytelling that channels bits of Hemingway and Faulkner, and descriptions reminiscent of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mills creates a rich American subculture in which she places her characters--deeply fragile, but living forcefully, and at times, frantically. The read is entertaining and enveloping; my only negative is that is left me wondering in a few places (I won't give any spoilers)--is there a part 2 to follow? Definitely worth checking out!


5.0 out of 5 stars Read this today., October 1, 2013
Sonia M Ibarra (Joliet) - See all my reviews
When you start to read this book - put away your phone, turn off any distractions and cancel the dinner date, because you aren't going to want to stop reading.Growing up in Chicago, it was easy to read the descriptions and feel like at any point, I could have been sitting at the bar with any one of the characters. Striking up a conversation, being a part of the world the author created. You feel Will's frustrations; you can feel those experiences as if they were your own. You can almost remember walking down the street with Will or sitting at the bar ordering another whiskey as you make your way through the pages.I wanted to give Will a hug and a high-five and a smack on the back of the head. It was like he was someone I loved once, long ago.


4.0 out of 5 stars Katya Mills is an author to be reckoned with, November 17, 2013
YusufToropov - See all my reviews
A fresh, authentic, and confident new voice in American fiction. This is not a YA novel, a fact the cover design could do more to get across. Some minor quibbles: The book still needs a power edit for minor style errors, and perhaps a little cutting in places. And the female protagonist's first name is not one I would have chosen. But tiny problems like that, juxtaposed with the feast of inventive, sprawling, muscular, character-driven writing here, are no big deal. Tiny problems just remind you that you are getting in on the ground floor with a writer who is going to do important things. Which she is. A little excerpt to give you a sense of what I am talking about. Excerpt..."The summer was pretty damn hot, but not so hot folks had to lay out bags of ice to sleep on or put their shirts in the freezer, Cheech and Chong style. Wasn't so cold you had to piss on your hands to move your fingers. Everything was bearable if you thought on those who really had to suffer, like the aged and infirm, or people trapped under the debris after an earthquake. Or the people who loved them and searched in vain. Water was much harder in other parts of the world. Harder and harder to find. In America, you had only to sweat and drink and bitch about the failure of another transformer, and wait, and hope you wouldn't die an absolute death or a death out of love, hope any addictions were still in the insidious stages." It's marvelous stuff and you should read it RIGHT NOW -- a) because it's superb and b) so you can say you saw it all coming.

5.0 out of 5 stars Chicago....and nowhere else, October 16, 2013
Aaron C. Stroud (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews
Sure this story could be one from any city. But it's about Chicago. And the lives of those who were born after Vietnam and before things managed to get even crazier. Will's story is hardly unique from the thousands who lived there at the same time, but it is wholly genuine. Told with stunning descriptions you feel like you lived it yourself. From Cass's insanity to Bella's wit, you can see why he felt torn between the two. This is about the "real" Chicago and some of the characters who graced her fickle but glorious streets in the late 90s and early 2000s. Enjoy. I cant wait to read it again.


4.0 out of 5 stars Dystopia on the Lake, November 19, 2013
Arthur W. Turfa (Batesburg, SC) - See all my reviews
A good read.about lost young people in Chicago around the year 2000. Vivid characters amid the backdrop of a large city. Good dialog, but the author is especially good at painting a picture of where the action happens.


5.0 out of 5 stars I recommend this book to all who make giant winnings battles ..., August 31, 2014
sunshine gallegos - See all my reviews
A modern day woman writer of rarity and relevance. Written the sand of a man, a view woman and the heart forHumanity.The writing is urban. At the same time peppered with the old masters words hanging over and in the minds of the characters. This is a story of how some of the biggest wars are won quietly, such as the case of the main character Will.
He willingly carousals himself in a waking ghost world of listless characters, being half ghost himself. He pleasures himself with the mundane and illicit. In the end although he clings to his half life he finally grows enough flesh to decide on a life, however unsung it may be.
I recommend this book to all who make giant winnings battles quietly and with dignity everyday.
Sunshine Gallegos


5.0 out of 5 stars modern love triangle, with enough unexpected twists to hold my ..., August 7, 2014
frank ramon - See all my reviews
A fascinating and well written, modern love triangle, with enough unexpected twists to hold my interest for the whole read. This the perfect novel for that trip in the car or a plane ride or a day at the beach. Just short enough to not take a lot of time and then at the end, it somehow leaves you wanting more.....download and enjoy....Frank Ramon

5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars, December 31, 2014
By
Thomas Phillips - See all my reviews
loved it from beginning to end! excellent read..