A Pow Wow With Kitty Sutton

My pen name is Kitty Sutton, but I was born Kathleen Kelley to a Cherokee/Irish family. Both sides of my family were from performing families in Kansas City, Missouri and I was trained from an early age in dance, vocal, art and musical instruments. My father was a Naval band leader. During the Great Depression, my mother helped to support her family by tap dancing in the speakeasys even though she was just a teen; she was very tall for her age but made up like an adult. I had music and art on all sides of my family which ultimately helped to feed my imaginative mind and desire to succeed.

I married a wonderful Cherokee artist from Oklahoma, in fact the very area that I write about in the Wheezer series of novels. After raising my family, we came to Branson, Missouri and I performed in my own one woman show there for twelve years. To honor my father, I performed under the name Kitty Kelley. I have three music albums and several original songs to my credit and I am best known for my comical, feel good song called, It Ain't Over Till The Fat Lady Sings. I have been writing for many years, but did not try to publish any of it. However, in 2011 Inknbeans Press accepted my manuscript of a historical Native American murder mystery. First in a line of stories featuring Wheezer, a Jack Russell Terrier and his Cherokee friend, Sasa, it is called, Wheezer And The Painted Frog. I live in the southwestern corner of Missouri near Branson with my husband of 40 years and my three Jack Russell Terriers, one of which is the real and wonderful Wheezer.