NORMAN KITZMILLER PUBLICATIONS • MEDIA RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: JUNE 27, 2023

Media Contact: Press Operations | Norman Kitzmiller Publications

Digital Gateway: davidkitzmiller.com


HEADLINE: DAVID KITZMILLER UNVEILS "A STEP AWAY FROM BATHING WITH A TOASTER"—AN UNFLINCHING LITERARY MEMOIR OF ADDICTION RECOVERY, TRAVEL, AND CREATIVE RESURRECTION

DATELINE: SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA / INDIANAPOLIS, IN — JUNE 27, 2023 — Independent imprint Norman Kitzmiller Publications has officially announced the global street release of A Step Away from Bathing with a Toaster, the highly anticipated flagship memoir by multimedia writer and poet David Kitzmiller. Marking the author’s definitive return to literature after a prolonged, thirty-year creative absence, the 277-page volume documents a visceral, high-stakes psychological reconciliation written entirely in real-time while navigating the Australian coast.

THE NARRATIVE CRUCIBLE

A Step Away from Bathing with a Toaster opens at the absolute bottom—a place where the days blur, the voice goes quiet, and the identity a person built has already slipped away. Following decades of emotional exhaustion, self-erasure, and a severe gray depression in the wake of a fractured marriage, Kitzmiller reached a point where writing no longer healed and hope felt like a distant memory.

The turning point arrived during an unexpected weekend in Sydney, Australia, where an unforeseen romance at precisely the wrong moment broke a lifelong pattern of passive endurance loose. Driven by the immediacy of the event, Kitzmiller embarked on a nine-day cruise along the Australian coast, writing the entire manuscript in a blistering, ten-day real-time sprint at sea.

Refusing to sanitize the text or smooth over the jagged edges of trauma, Kitzmiller chronicles what a human spirit carries across an ocean—the heavy gravity of grief, the weight of past loves, and the realities of addiction that do not stay home just because you have booked a flight. The book introduces "The Toaster" as a recurring structural image for the pull toward self-destruction, mapping the exact distance between where a person stands and the worst place they could end up.

INTERWOVEN VISUAL ARTISTRY

Departing from conventional memoir structures, the narrative is interspersed with Kitzmiller's own poetry. Rather than decorative filler, these verses operate as vital primary source documents, saying in eight lines what the surrounding prose takes chapters to approach. Paired with a dark, situational humor that treats comedy as an essential component of grief, the book provides an unblinking mirror for readers navigating their own uncertainty.

MEDIA DISTRIBUTION PACKAGING

Official Database Registries:

Availability: Distributed globally via Amazon and Barnes & Noble retail networks.