Entrepreneur, Thrillist

How an international engineering career morphed into a three-book series.

By Nicole Maranhas

Three years ago, civil and environmental engineer John Butziger ’91 had already traveled all over the world as a former partner of an innovative advertising technology company and the current chief operating officer of a medical device start-up. But unfinished business nagged at him. “I had always wanted to write,” says the East Greenwich, R.I. resident. “I started to feel that if I didn’t start now, I would never realize that dream.”

He began mapping out a plan for a three-book series, spending mornings and rare free hours (he is also a married father of three) researching and working on the page-turning first book, The Second Tree, a mystical thriller set partly in Uganda, that combines three of his passions—exotic locations, food, and supernatural phenomena—and draws heavily from his own travels and technical expertise.

Encouraged by his wife and friends, the first-time novelist relied on the discipline and problem-solving skills he first began honing as an engineering student at URI. “I’m not a fast writer,” he says. “You can’t get overwhelmed. You have to take it in chunks and move at your own pace.”

He recently published the second book in his The Order series, Eden’s Revelation, and is working with the Uganda chapter of the African Film and Writer’s Society to develop The Second Tree as a film, all while plotting the third and final book of the trilogy and taking advantage of the booming self-publishing industry to release an audiobook version of the series. “It’s a lot of work to balance everything, but it’s a dream,” says Butziger. His advice for other aspiring writers: “Some people would hesitate because they don’t feel like the most fantastic idea has hit them, but once I started writing, other pieces of the story began folding in,” he says. “Don’t downplay the ideas you have now—they will lead into places you’d never imagine.”