Kittle, 56, who has always been interested in storytelling, studied both theater and English. She has written five adult novels and one novel for young adult, describing her work as “book club fiction.” Her last book was released in 2011. “There was cancer twice, there was my mom getting dementia, moving my parents. I wrote through all of it. This feels like the comeback.” Her sixth novel, “Morning in this Broken World,” comes out Sept. 1 through Lake Union Publishing.
She and her partner, Jason, share their home in Springboro with a beagle named Selena (“makes friends with all the bunnies”) and a black cat (“might be feral”), Annie.
A SURVIVOR
“I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten cancer. I’ve had breast cancer twice. And that made me really paranoid about security of money. Both times I was self-employed but had insurance through the Affordable Care Act, and so it was affordable. So many people don’t understand it’s the health care that’s so scary when you’re self-employed. So (the ACA) actually saved me.”
A PROFESSOR
Kittle became a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Dayton in 2018, which brought financial stability after her cancer treatment. “I really missed belonging to a community. I have the discipline to write full time from home, but (it gets) so solitary. So UD has been perfect.” She teaches four classes a semester. “In the past I taught middle school and high school. Those people work hard. At UD, I’m not there all day long like I would have to be at a high school. I like to write in the morning best, so my classes always start in the afternoon.”
A WRITER
“I don’t teach in the summer. I love this time to regroup and really focus on the writing. It’s actually the same on a UD morning. I always get up at 6 if not before. I set an alarm but if I wake up and it’s a little before, I always just get up, because I love to get to write. And I always feel like I get to do it. And I love that.”
“If I get up, then the two ‘girls’ get up — Selena and Annie. I feed them and make a coffee. You gotta have coffee.”
SNUGGLE TIME
Kittle heads to her writing office with her coffee, and Annie, who has taken time to build up trust, gradually follows her in. “I set my phone for 30 minutes and start with reading for fun before I settle into work. That became my snuggle time with Annie, our reading time. If I sit in the orange chair in my office she will come out. I’ll crack the window open and she loves that. She’ll eventually come and sit in my lap, so I can pet her while I read. The last thing I read was ‘Yellowface,’ it’s so good. It’s really brutal about the publishing world. Oh man, it was good.”
BUNNY PRISON COMPLEX
“If it’s crazy hot, if there’s gardening stuff that needs done, I have to do that early, because I am such a baby about the heat. And I like to walk after I’ve written.”
Lining one side of Kittle’s large garden are daisies, day lilies, black-eyes Susans, coneflower, and Rose of Sharon, and in another section are veggies and herbs. As she utters the words, “I have to defend it from the rabbits,” a tiny baby bunny appears near the daisies. She claps her hands, and the bunny disappears deeper into the flowers. “In the edible part of the garden — I call it the prison complex — there are all these wrapped up fences around it. I’m sure the chasing is futile.”
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
SETTLING IN
“Then I journal and settle into whatever the work is. If I’m writing brand new stuff — drafting — I can only do that for maybe two or three hours. My brain can only create the new stuff for so long. But if I’m revising something already written I can do it lots longer. It just takes different kinds of energy.” Kittle’s home office has a large wooden desk enveloped by warm yellow walls hung with artwork, a quilt by her mother, and an inspirational mood board. There are mementos given to her by fellow cancer-survivor friends, like an evil eye pendant and a rainbow-shaped piñata.
NO DISTRACTIONS
Sometimes she moves outside to the garden to write. Working from home, “I try really hard when it’s writing time to not do the other stuff. It’s so easy to put in a load of laundry, but then a little bit of your concentration is on listening for that to finish. No — writing time is just writing time. It feels almost like a treat (to do chores) when you’ve been sitting for so long.”
PROMO WORK
“Knowing that this book was coming, there’s been a lot of promotional work, of pitching podcasts, various places for review, setting up local and virtual events. The publisher does some of that, but it’s always up to the writer to do lots and lots.”
“You want to feel like you’ve done everything you possibly can to have the book in front of people. Lake Union was really generous with the advance reading copies, so I had several to give librarians I know, or podcasters. My first (podcast) for this book is scheduled with ‘The Perks of Being a Book Lover’ out of Louisville. "
“If I have a bunch (of interviews) in a row, I get tired because I’m such an introvert. But I always just feel so grateful. There’s so much competition out there for people’s attention. That’s where the theater training comes in handy, because you pretend it’s the very first time, just like when you’re performing a role.”
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
CHANGE OF PACE
After writing, “on a nice day, I might go walk just to get out of my head. I might garden. At this point in the summer, it’s time to start planning UD stuff. Especially with the book coming out Sept. 1, classes will be in session for 2 weeks by that point. It’s gonna be crazy, so I need to have everything ready.”
WALK WITH DAD
Every Wednesday afternoon Kittle meets her father at his retirement home. “We’ll go for walks around the hospice grounds and the pond. He’s in a motorized scooter but the grounds are so beautiful. We’re pretty hardcore about the weather, it has to be really bad for us not to go outside. We both love routines.”
HARDCORE WRITING SISTERS
“At least once a week I meet with five other writers — ‘my hardcore writing sisters’ — where we’ll go to a coffee shop and write together. It’s that mirroring idea that if we’re all writing nobody wants to be the one that breaks it. We set a timer for an hour and write, and then we set a timer for 15 minutes where we can talk. We love ContempoRoast that just opened in Centerville. It’s owned by the people who introduced me to Jason!”
ALWAYS PLAYING
Kittle is already at work on her next novel. “There’s a book that just finished revision, I’m going to be sending it to my agent today or tomorrow. In this retreat I was just on, I started playing with a brand-new idea. You’re always playing with something. Those really early stages feel really fun. Toying around with a new idea.”
WORDS WORTH
“A couple times a month, I teach for a group called Words Worth Writing Connections that my friend Darren McGarvey started. I’ll have an evening class with students from all over the country. I have a class called ‘The Writer’s 12 Step Program.’ The idea is to finish a first draft in a year’s time.”
EVENING STROLL
She and Jason decompress after work. “We take the dog for a long walk together, and we have a rule about no cellphones while we’re walking. It’s her walk, so she can stop and sniff. We do that almost every evening.”
GARDEN PARTY
“In the evenings, we’ll typically make dinner together” out in the garden. “This is the nice processing place of talking about what we accomplished that day. I love to grill in the summer, even vegetables and fruit.”
Kittle enjoys hosting friends for dinner gatherings. The basil in her garden is plentiful. “If there was something I really love to make for dinner? I’m known for the pesto. Friends sometimes request it, and my friend Anne once road her motorcycle all the way from Columbus because I was making pesto.”
“The more I’m figuratively cooking on a book, the more I’m literally cooking. Chopping and stirring stuff, your hands are busy, but your mind is going over scenes and figuring stuff out. Walking, gardening, weeding, helps with that too. When you’re really rolling and working consistently daily, then everything you encounter you start to see through the filter of the characters. Everything you’re doing fits the novel. It’s a weird synchronicity.”
About the Author
