A STEP AWAY FROM BATHING WITH A TOASTER

But Still Wanting a Tomorrow

The title is not metaphorical theater. The Toaster is David Kitzmiller's recurring image for the pull toward self-destruction, named with the specific dark humor that runs through everything he writes. In this book, it is the absolute edge he is standing a step away from following a volatile second divorce. Some days closer. Some days not. That agonizing distance is the whole story.

Some people go to Australia to find themselves. David Kitzmiller went to Australia to find out how much finding himself was still going to cost.

A Step Away from Bathing with a Toaster opens at the apparent end of a life reduced to a repetitive, numb "Groundhog Day" existence. Stripped of his identity, Kitzmiller embarks on a twenty-hour flight to Sydney alongside his independent, twenty-three-year-old pilot daughter, Mary. Ostensibly a vacation, the trip rapidly transforms into an immediate, high-stakes confrontation with his past as a husband and a father.

The story shifts focus entirely when Kitzmiller crosses paths with an enigmatic Australian woman. What follows is a profound break in a decades-long pattern of self-erasure. Standing at the absolute crossroad of physical intimacy, Kitzmiller halts his toxic, lifelong habit of using new romance as a temporary "replacement" to bandage old scars. In a devastating moment of clarity, his heart overrides the pattern, executing the agonizing realization that another wounded soul cannot function as his medicine.

Driven by this psychological breakthrough, Kitzmiller processes the fallout during a nine-day cruise along the Australian coast. He writes this entire volume in a blistering, ten-day real-time sprint. Not at a comfortable desk at home, but at sea, using a tiny LEGO figure alter-ego named Lenny Blocky as a photographic anchor to force his eyes outward away from his own shadows.

The writing is a fierce, unshielded reckoning with a life of addiction, paranoia, and obsessive thinking written entirely while the emotional events were still warm. Kitzmiller does what he has always done: pays close attention, writes down what matters, and refuses to make any of it prettier than it actually was.

• An Unblinking Mirror: This is an addiction recovery memoir, a travel memoir, and a multi-decade excavation of relational wreckage. Refusing to portray himself merely as an injured party, Kitzmiller completely subverts the traditional recovery arc. He walks the reader directly through his deepest vaults—revisiting the psychological ghosts of his past connections (Nails Down My Back Girl, Girl With a Song Title), his blackouts with alcohol and cocaine, and the profound, inherited guilt of childhood trauma.

• The Interwoven Verse: Woven throughout the narrative are Kitzmiller’s own poems—not as decoration or filler, but because some things need a different shape than prose to say them properly. Serving as the literal blueprint for your master reference guide, these pieces say in eight lines what the surrounding chapters take pages to approach. They function as the original lyric architecture that directly birthed the Recorded Songs, Burnt Songs, and She Sings discographies under Ace of Toaster Records. 

• The Currency of Humor: The narrative maintains a sharp, situation-specific wit that emerges when someone has sat in the dark long enough to find certain tragic things genuinely funny. It treats comedy not as a relief from grief, but as an essential component of survival. Deliberately refusing a tidy inspirational ending, Kitzmiller undercuts the solemnity of global self-discovery with an irreverent final chapter—proving that the thing that keeps a human tethered to tomorrow doesn't have to be a grand revelation; sometimes, it’s just a pan of Way Too Much Meat Lasagna.

• Award Distinction: Winner of the Indiana’s Own Award for Exceptional Nonfiction Narrative.

• Core Foundation: Serves as the official genesis and structural anchor of the entire multi-medium Toaster Universe catalog.

• For Readers Of: In tone, the memoir combines the darkly comic candor of Augusten Burroughs's Dry with the addiction-and-recovery honesty of Tiffany Jenkins's A Clean Mess, while structurally using an Australian journey much as Cheryl Strayed uses the Pacific Crest Trail in Wild: as a physical framework for confronting a much larger personal history.

"Equal parts confessional and cathartic, this book is for anyone who has ever felt like a mess on the mend. One of the most unforgettable voices in indie lit today." — Unbound Ink Magazine, Micah Tran

"Kitzmiller has crafted a masterclass in vulnerability. He doesn't just share his story, he spills his scars across the page and dares you to feel something." — The Literary Current, Sasha Greenfield

"An emotional gut-punch softened with wit and warmth. This is more than a memoir. It's survival poetry dressed in cruise ship chaos and heartbreak." — LitPulse Weekly, J. DeMarco

"Brutally honest and beautifully human. Kitzmiller invites readers into the center of his story and somehow makes it feel like home." — The Indie Memoir Review, Harper Lane

"I read the book in one day because it kept my attention so well. I had to know what happens next." — Amazon reviewer

• Author: David Kitzmiller

• Imprint: Norman Kitzmiller Publications

• Genre: Literary Nonfiction / Memoir / Addiction & Recovery / Travel Writing

• Aesthetic: Honest literary memoir for readers who do not need the hard parts softened.

• Formats Available: Premium Trade Paperback / Digital eBook / Collector's Hardcover

For Journalists: View Full Press Release