Guest Post and Giveaway with James R. Bottino, author of The Canker Death

Hi, everyone!

I am pleased to participate in James R. Bottino's The Canker Death Virtual Book Publicity Tour hosted by Pump Up Your Book.

About James:

James R. Bottino is a self-admitted computer geek and a creative writing teacher rolled into one. He earned a BS in English Education from Illinois State University and taught high school English in a suburb of Chicago for several years. After teaching all day, he studied creative writing in graduate school at Northern Illinois University. All the while, though, in the deep corners of the night, when no one was looking, he led a double life hacking and building computers and networks. Eventually, unbeknownst to him, word of his activities leaked out, and employment offers started coming in. In the end, he switched his hobby with his profession and became a senior computer/networking administrator for a scientific research laboratory. Just six months into this position, however, tragedy struck when, at the age of 31, James was diagnosed with cancer. Given ten to one odds of living out the year and knowing that his infant daughter would never remember him if he died, he began the fight of his life, enduring massive doses of chemotherapy that killed the cancer but nearly killed him as well. After years of struggle, he survived, but only after enduring systemic nerve damage from the treatments that left him permanently photophobic, phonophobic and with frequent difficulty in using his hands. These events focused his efforts and helped him to prevail in his dual goals: being a father to his daughter and completing his first novel, THE CANKER DEATH. James currently lives in a suburb of Chicago, with his wife, daughter, two Australian cattle dogs and far, far too many books and abstruse computers.

CONNECT WITH JAMES ONLINE:

Website | Facebook | Goodreads | Twitter 
 

Welcome to Darlene's Book Nook, James!

James has written a guest post, so I will now turn the floor over to him.

Confessions of a Compulsive Writer
by James R. Bottino

For as long as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a writer, and the fact of the matter is that I'm always writing. At almost any free moment, I am composing and creating some sort of story or scene or character or plot in my head. If I'm listening to music, which is pretty often, I compose scenes in my head that flow with the passion of the songs. While I'm listening, I don't know how these scenes will work into a larger story, but I know they must be a part, somehow. Sometimes I feel like I write stories to connect the scenes in my mind into something coherent. I honestly do not remember any time in my life when I was not this way. I find that some of the ideas I think about I end up dropping pretty quickly as being “too out there and not feasible,” but most others I latch onto for one reason or another. These ideas continue to grow and mature until I have a chance to write things down, once it's all been sorted in my mind. This is how it usually happens. Sometimes, though, I get some inspiration that makes me stop in the midst of whatever I'm doing to write down the idea. I'll be in the middle of a long bike ride and suddenly something occurs to me, and I have to pull off the path and frantically scribble my thoughts on a notepad. Or, sometimes, I'll awaken from a dream and know the answer to some plot point or theme or character or whatever. Sometimes the events of a dream spark the inspiration for an entirely new story. Then too, I'm immediately up and writing. As for how long I've been writing, I guess it's been since about the age of thirteen or so; that's probably the first time I ever wrote out some scene I'd been kicking around, though I composed without writing when I was much younger than that. I was fifteen when I first showed anyone what I'd written (a girl I liked), and it wasn't until I was eighteen that I ever submitted anything for publication. The work I submitted was a comedic short story titled “Beauty, eh?” which was extraordinarily silly, and was published in a local magazine. After my battle with cancer, though, is when I decided to take writing seriously and to dedicate myself to the long hard hours it takes to write anything, really, but most especially novels.

Thanks so much for joining us today, James! 

One lucky winner will win a digital copy of 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 child Nanzicwital; the golem giant Faskin; the lascivious, female ambassador Desidia; and Nokinis, an insane prisoner with whom Petor battles for mastery of his own memories. As he struggles to make sense of what is happening to him, Petor finds himself embroiled in the tumultuous upheaval of a ubiquitous society that transcends life, itself.

To enter the giveaway, please fill out the Rafflecopter entry form below.

This giveaway is open worldwide until 12:01 AM EST on April 26, 2012.


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Tour Participants

Monday, February 6
Interview at Book Marketing Buzz

Tuesday, February 7
Guest Post at As the Pages Turn

Wednesday, February 8
Interview at Pump Up Your Book

Thursday, February 9
Guest Post at The Book Connection

Friday, February 10
Interview at Paperback Writer

Monday, February 13
Guest Post at Literarily Speaking

Tuesday, February 14
Guest Post at The Story Behind the Book

Thursday, February 16
Spotlight at The Plot

Friday, February 17
Character Interview at The Plot

Monday, February 20
Interview at Beyond the Books

Tuesday, February 21
Interview at The Writer’s Life

Wednesday, February 22
Spotlight at Celtic Lady’s Book Reviews

Thursday, February 23
Review at Martha’s Bookshelf

Friday, February 24
Guest Post at Everyday Adventure

Monday, February 27
Spotlight at Blurbs N’ Bytes

Wednesday, February 29
Guest Post at InkyBlots

Monday, March 5
Interview at The Examiner

Tuesday, March 6
Interview at The Hot Author Report

Wednesday, March 7
Guest Post at The Hot Author Report

Thursday, March 8
5 Things Guest Post at The Hot Author Report

Friday, March 9
Guest Post at KellyMcClymer.com

Monday, March 12
Guest Post at Review From Here

Tuesday, March 13
Interview at BlogCritics

Wednesday, March 14
Guest Post at Alchemy of Scrawl

Thursday, March 15
Review at The Hot Author Report

Friday, March 16
Guest Post at Coffee and a Keyboard

Monday, March 19
Spotlight at Books, Products and More!

Tuesday, March 20
Interview at Broowaha

Wednesday, March 21
Interview at American Chronicle

Thursday, March 22
Guest Post at Words I Write Crazy

Friday, March 23
Review at Words I Write Crazy
Review at Working for the Mandroid

Wednesday, April 4
Guest Post at Celtic Lady’s Book Reviews

Saturday, April 7
Live Chat at A Book and a Chat

Monday, April 9
Guest Post at The Book Vortex
Guest Post, Excerpt and Giveaway at Writing Daze

Tuesday, April 10
Guest Post at Writing Daze

Monday, April 16
Guest Post at Between the Covers

Tuesday, April 17
Excerpt at Between the Covers

Thursday, April 19
Guest Post and Giveaway at Darlene’s Book Nook