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.

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

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.