[Book Blitz Guest Post] Stim by Kevin Berry

Stim

by Kevin Berry
Release Date: October 16th, 2013

Summary from Goodreads:

Robert is different. He has Asperger's Syndrome. He experiences the world differently to 99% of the population. 

Follow his entertaining and highly empathetic story as he struggles to realise and accept who he really is, try to understand other people—which he cannot—and find a girlfriend. Especially find a girlfriend—he's decided it's his special project for the year. 

Accompanied on this transformative journey by his quirky flatmates, Chloe (who also has Asperger's, amongst other things), Stef (who hasn't, but doesn't mind) and their oddly-named kitten, Robert endures a myriad of awkward moments in his quest to meet a nice, normal girl...and not even a major earthquake will stop him.

This absorbing and humorous story is starkly told from Robert's point of view, through the kaleidoscope of autistic experience.

Guest Post: Writing in Christchurch, New Zealand

I live in Christchurch, New Zealand, a city devastated by major earthquakes in September 2010 and February 2011. The earthquakes have had a huge impact on everyone living here. We all know people whose houses were badly damaged or who lost someone. And for some of the writers here, the angst from the earthquakes comes out in our writing. In my case, in a whole chapter in Stim, when the 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck in the early hours of the morning.

There's about 400,000 people here, a small city by international standards, but big enough for there to be plenty of writers. We get together in groups for things like NaNoWrMo write-ins, SpecFicNZ lunches and Christchurch Writers' Guild catchups, and many of us are good friends as well as writing colleagues. It's great to be able to have other writers to talk to; for instance, if you say you were kept up half the night by voices in your head that didn't go away until you'd written down what they said, it's nice to have friends that understand you're a writer and not just simply crazy. And we have lots of skills between us, like editing, design, proofreading, marketing and formatting, so those of us who want to self-publish can swap skills with someone else. Or just swap ideas and get feedback on our writing.

About the Author

Kevin Berry is an indie author. His particular niche is writing Aspie New Adult contemporary novels set in an earthquake zone. The first of these is STIM, published in October 2013.

His first novels, co-written with Diane Berry, are Dragons Away!, Growing Disenchantments and Fountain of Forever (humorous fantasy). These are available as paperbacks and ebooks at Amazon and elsewhere.

Author Links:

 Website |  Twitter | Goodreads