CELTICLADY'S REVIEWS: The Canker Death by James R. Bottino Guest Post for Pump Up Your Books

Join James Bottino, author of the fantasy and science fiction novel The Canker Death as he virtually tours the blogosphere in February 2012 on his first tour with Pump Up Your Book!

The Writing Routine

James R. Bottino

Like most authors, I have a day-job, so I have to find a way to work-in time for writing. The first place I found time was by ditching the TV. That's not entirely true, I still have a boob tube that I use to watch a movie or two every weekend, but I don't watch it at all most days of the week. This simple exercise provided me with large blocks of open time. Next, I made use of this extra time by establishing a routine for writing. I tried writing after coming home from work, but, since my day-job is very mentally demanding, I found that I was too drained to be particularly creative. Through trial and error, I found that mornings worked best for me. Being a night-owl by nature, waking up early wasn't easy for me, but I made it work. After deciding to kill two birds with one stone, I started a routine alternating writing with exercise. Three days a week I wake up at 4:00am and exercise for around an hour and a half before going to work, and on a different three days of the week I wake up at 4:00am and write until I have to start getting ready for work. I normally get between an hour and two hours of uninterrupted writing in during the writing sessions. The challenge is when the writing days are non-consecutive because in that case I'm spending a good deal of time reading my notes, remembering where I was going and getting my mind into the flow and mood of what is happening in the story. Some of the writing days are spent re-reading, planning and writing notes. Some are used for writing back-story that never appears in the finished story, but which I need to have in order to make things feel real and consistent – to find the motivations behind why things are the way they are in the actual story. And, of course, the most fun days are those when I know I have my mental ducks in a row and I can just write. I usually stick to what I've planned, but, sometimes, I get into a zone and come up with stuff I never imagined I was going to write. One unexpected thing that I found during this routine of alternating exercise with writing is that I end up testing out ideas, solving conundrums and creating new avenues or even universes on the days I am not writing. I know there is a good deal of research to show that exercise helps with thinking, but I had no idea when I started just how integral the off-days were going to be for the work of creating a story. Let me put it this way, if my latest novel made me a millionaire tomorrow, I would not change my exercise/writing regimen. Without a doubt, creating a routine for writing was the single most important step in making writing an integral part of my life.

About the Book

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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.

About the Author

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.