First Draft to Published

  1.  The Canker Death is my first full-length novel.  It's an adventure story about a reclusive, cynical computer geek who finds that one of his own servers has been cracked late one night and gets far more than he bargained for when he decides to track down the perpetrator.  What his search uncovers thrusts him, unaware, into a mad shifting between worlds, time and alien minds 2.  The Canker Death is not easy to classify.  I realize that many authors say this of their novels.  I only started saying so after my literary agent, editor, and, later, my readers all told me so.  Oddly enough, I wrote the book with both the literary and the sci-fi, fantasy audiences in mind, which is a bit of a strange mix.  I've been happily surprised to find that people with many different reading preferences have enjoyed the book.  If I were to really narrow it down, I'd say that science fantasy is the closest classification – sort of like Star Wars, w...

There were a number of inspirations for my debut novel, The Canker Death .  On the factual plane, the inspiration came from the fact that an FTP server I was running on one of the old Unix systems in my basement got hacked.  I have a collection of unusual computers that run esoteric operating systems.  Where most people's computer knowledge ends is where mine begins.  This fact alone gave me the idea for a main character who was based quite a bit on various facets of people I know – computer geeks, that is.  But, I didn't want to write a novel that was only tailored for sci-fi lovers.  I wanted to write something that was accessible to everyone, so I worked hard to make sure that the technical stuff was accurate and true, but that understanding it in any detail was not at all required for enjoying the novel.  Additionally, as I was getting started, I made a number of decisions about where the book was going to go.  I had been a high school English...

Our spotlighted person today is James Bottino , author of the fantasy and science fiction novel The Canker Death . Join him as he virtually tours the blogosphere in February 2012 on his first tour with Pump Up Your Book!   About The Canker Death When the reclusive, cynical systems administrator, Petor Fidelistro, discovers that one of his own servers has been cracked late one night, he makes it his personal business to track down the perpetrator. What his search uncovers thrusts him, unaware, into a mad shifting between worlds, time and alien minds. Fighting to keep his grip on reality, and forcing him to cope with his past, Petor finds himself uncontrollably transitioning between sentient minds that range from semi-conscious to dominant, from beings whose bodies and identities he can control, to those who control him so fully as to be unaware of his presence. As the story unfolds, Petor gathers clues in a twisting mystery that sends him shifting between the mourning chil...