Tracy Skylar Johnson's Blog
October 20, 2014
Lord Freud Benefits from Media
I had planned to meander down a summer memory lane and reminisce about meeting with Hanif Kureshi this summer. Instead I feel compelled to make a comment, or have my own opportunity to pass judgement, on the impeachment of Britain’s “benefits” minister Lord Freud. What an oxy-moronic decision to make a “Lord” residing in a massive MacMansion, the leader of the office for the supposed economic security of the unemployed and unfortunate. A man who has not the grace for compassion, never mind the caution “There but for the grace of God, go I”.
I wrote to Lord Freud in 2013, requesting that his department move their case forward as the endless postponements (due to my mental distress) were only making the condition worse. I was not seeking any special treatment for my emotional disability, or to escape whatever may be due me, only that they stop canceling their interviews at the police station, forcing me to wait weeks and months for another when that waiting was only intensifying PTSD.
The Minister of State for Care and Support, Norman Lamb, has stipulated that mental unwellness must be treated in the criminal justice system in exactly the same way as physical unwellness – a concept, like most of the Conservative (Republican) party’s – all mouth and no trousers. I wrote to Mr Lamb also, only asking for my case to be concluded, and didn’t receive even the condescension of a response.
I still believed in Justice at that point. I was certain that MiniWork & Pensions was sure to drop a case based on fabrication. The supposed crime was committed in 2007 and they were using “evidence” lifted from the internet relating to 2011 and beyond. This is how building your Google profile to support your business efforts could come back and eat you.
But the Conservative Party and their flunkies at MiniWork are on a mission, not to get people into employment and reduce expenditure, so much as to further the increasing gap between those who have nothing and those who have it all.
Lord Freud believes disabled people are not entitled to wage parity. Lord Freud believes that the hungry are catching a freebie at the Foodbank (which the State does not even finance). These attitudes, along with the profit-making private prisons and the use of them for dumping mentally unwell women inconvenient to the “health service”, is a stance I don’t believe the British taxpayer really wants to take. However, the fact that the State builds fictitious cases around so many individuals to further its agenda is akin to East Germany’s Stasi. And no one wants to get in front of that.
The moral panic around “Benefits” Britain rolls on among a populace easy to fire up with the belief that “scroungers” are stealing their taxes. They don’t mind paying for their Ministers to dine like Kings but if one of their own is not able to join the wage slave hamster wheel, they scream “scum”. In no other country in the world is this constant aggravation about unemployment and taxes front page news when there is a simple solution – Change your policy. If Amazon and Starbucks aren’t paying corporate tax, don’t boycott them, demand that the government implement proper taxation law.
Lord Freud doesn’t accept apologies and there is no reason we should accept his false regrets either. He probably won’t get his comeuppance. No doubt he’ll be consigned to a back seat of power beside Maria Miller and allowed to remain in the “Ruling” party. But at least now he now knows how it feels to be trialed by media storm.
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October 5, 2014
A Heroine’s Journey
My understanding of the structure of a storyline came into focus a year or two ago when I read about the Hero’s Journey. Every story ever told contains the hero(ine)’s journey because every life contains one – or has the possibility of one. We arrive on earth with the purpose of completing our story through the heroine’s journey. It sits before us like an invitation to an awesome event, but not everyone will RSVP yes.
By definition the Heroine’s Journey is the supreme challenge. It contains many trials and tribulations that test our resilience, our creativity and our courage in facing our fears. Ultimately we return with the “Golden Chalice” and claim our reward – that of deeper understanding of existence and greater acceptance of our place in it. Or we live life in the cubicle, too afraid to enter the innermost cave. It’s dark in there. There might be monsters.
And like all Heroine Journeys, if you return from the ordeal without having learned from the experience, you are doomed to repeat the adventure.
So I’ve been quiet recently and focusing to understand the nature of the journey. Why me? Not even because of he journey itself, but the utter ludicrous events that propelled it. No one had ever been through quite that set of circumstances. Once again, I was in complete solitude without the support of even my peers around me. No one knew what I was going through.
The journey is always made in solitude. You never see mythical characters setting out with cohorts, or when they do, the companions all die or abandon the protagonist so she is left to her own resources.
Even after the return from the ordeal, the journey may not be over. What to do with the learning and knowledge. The drive is to share and to guide others to their own mythical journey but first the fear and shame must be negotiated. Which is actually the work of the curious traveler. Awareness ca =n never be found when hidden beneath self-denigration. [contact-form]
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December 30, 2013
The Signature of All Things – Elizabeth Gilbert
How we come to select a book is an interesting concept – the subtle influences that make us choose one over another. I saw “The Signature of all Things” listed on the Goodreads site in the “Best of 2013″ awards category. From there I went to the reviews, which were naturally, mixed. And I suspect that, like many others, I purchased the book because of Elizabeth Gilbert’s previous work – “Eat, Pray, Love”. Oddly, “The Signature of All Things” also happens to contain selection as a driving theme.
If I had to select a star count for “The Signature of All Things”, I’d be as confused as Alma in the novel. I can’t say I enjoyed it. It’s too long. I don’t know whether this is because the fashion now is for extremely long books. In an age where readers have come to expect “Free, Cheap, Long” as the parameters for their purchases, maybe Liz Gilbert was told to ‘bulk it up’. But it’s way too long and I found myself skimming portions where Liz delved into Dickensian lengths. If this were a novel submitted to a publisher, by an unknown author, it would certainly have been heavily edited.
Editing should also have taken care of a few irritations in the mid-section where Liz Gilbert lost her timeframe. She makes statements such as Alma was “not a swimmer” when no woman was a swimmer in 1850. Then there were niggles such as why didn’t she jut show the drawings (the non-vulgar ones) to the natives and discover the identity of the boy she’d traveled across the world to know instead of wasting years of her time and hours of mine? The ultimate identity of the boy was obvious to me chapters before it emerged which only makes the mystery more annoying.
Eat, Pray, Love was also a book I struggled with for its narcissism although I adored the concept and my dislike could have been similar to Alma’s own quandary when another writer pips her to the post. Still, “The Signature of All Things” occasionally reads like “Eat, Pray, Love” in crinolines – as though Liz Gilbert wishes to explore her voyage of self-discovery story in another age.
And then we came to the denouement.
And this is where I woke up and felt my own long, sometimes agonizing, journey became somewhat worthwhile. Without hitting the “Spoiler” button, the ending sums up for me, a concept I have been recently very focused on. Coming through personal trauma is a complicated endeavor in which it’s natural to seek out reasons and validation. I have always believed in a bigger entity outside of the weak and fragile human – the Universal Energy. In the battle through adversity, we turn to the bigger force as a teacher and inquire what are we meant to discover from our problems.
But like the questions posed by “Signature” what if we are merely seeking another mothering figure out of personal fear? Just as Darwin’s theories raised fury, so our own adversity makes us seek some justification for what may be a totally random fact of human existence.
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December 21, 2013
Music track to “DELUSION” Book 2 of The Narcissism Novels. Who is Isobel thinking of with these song lyrics and has she finally accepted love?
December 17, 2013
Writing Narcissistic Personality Traits
“Illusion” – Part 1 of The Narcissism Novels is published , I’m into a second edit of “Delusion” – Part 2 and it’s an even more intricate process than the first. Writing the narcissist is straightforward enough but feathering the layers of a person/character who has what is becoming known as Narcissistic Victim Syndrome, is like trying to depict teenager tribulations to geriatrics. (Swift aside – I really don’t like the words victim and syndrome, especially side-by-side – narcissistic healers would be much more apt)
Isobel, the main character in The Narcissism Novels, has experienced severe psychological abuse from birth. Her mother has narcissistic personality disorder at an extreme level on the spectrum – what would be called malignant narcissism, meaning she’d rather see her child dead than having a better life than her. This may be achieved through beatings and criticism, but what if it’s accomplished through enmeshment and the fantasy bond? Consequently, Isobel is very comfortable with narcissism and has slithered into repeated torturous love relationships with narcissist/sociopaths that have left her feeling broken. Now, with a child of her own, she worries constantly about not repeating the cycle of a hidden abuse she cannot understand.
She doesn’t even recognize narcissism as abuse until halfway through the novel. The sequels focus on how she battles to come to terms with it’s effects, and as we know – this can be harder than the original abuse.
Writing the narcissist is quite fun. There’s plenty of information about narcissistic personality traits and the hideous behavior makes for entertaining scenarios with a character similar to Hannibal Lecter, only camouflaged. Writing the narcissist victim is difficult because although Isobel is all the things a “woman” is supposed to be in our culture, she’s also damaged and this makes for a less obviously likable character. (I might have mentioned before that my first editor asked; “When is she going to turn into Superwoman?”)
In Book 2 – as Isobel approaches a “proper” relationship with the first emotionally well-balanced man she’s ever known – she battles herself and him, feeling not only that she doesn’t deserve to be loved for herself, but that the person doing the loving must also be damaged simply for loving her. The NV pushes love away out of mistrust and fear. Sometimes we test whether the person will stick with us through our pushing away, sometimes we shoot first to maintain the only sense of control (safety) we know. Sometimes love and kindness is so strange, it evokes terrible sadness and loneliness as we remember childhood lack
“Love is scary when it contrasts with childhood trauma” -R. Firestone PhD
Yesterday as I edited “Delusion”, Isobel stepped forward and forced a bizarre change to a scene (Any writer will confirm that characters have the tendency to do this as you get to know them more deeply). I say bizarre because, without giving up the plot, her behavior could be misconstrued as immoral by readers who have no notion of the backlash of fantasy bonding. Whatever the reaction, Isobel asserted her character and will be who she needs to be. Her actions may invite disapproval but in any exploration of human nature, real or literary, we have to be willing to look for the underlying layers of motivation. (In a film, a good actor can indicate a layer with a look, in a book in takes foreshadowing, 3-4 pages of explanation, character self-appraisal and resolution, etc.).
Even though Isobel is aware her mother is a malignant narcissist as it was diagnosed by a psychotherapist, because she is highly fantasy bonded to Cynthia, she repeatedly dissociates from this reality. Many women find it excessively hard to separate from their narcissist mother for reasons of identity that run deeper than desiring the comfort of a mother. Especially when she consistently demonstrates herself as unwilling or unable to give it.
In receiving love from the truly ideal man, Isobel unknowingly goes through an identity crisis as her entire concept of her world is shatters. Everything she has known for four decades is wrong. She’s come out of the fog of idealizing her mother (and every man shes chooses as a mother substitute) but receiving genuine love on top of that is beyond her mind’s ability to digest. She has no idea who she is.
I’m taking a chance that Isobel will not be “liked” for her struggles with the view that many victims of narcissistic abuse are also disliked through lack of understanding of the seemingly infinitesimal onion skin layers of our nature we are required to confront in order to heal. Isobel’s commitment to winning is a motivational reminder that we all can do the same no matter what anyone else thinks of us.
Have you had problems with accepting love or maintaining relationships? Does the awareness of fantasy bonding and idealization of a parent ring true? I’d love to hear your opinion in the comments.
“Illusion” is available now in paperback and Ebook at Amazon here and Amazon UK here. “Delusion” will be published in early 2014. Sign up to the newsletter to receive advance notice of publication and sometime goodie offers, but no spam and chips.
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December 14, 2013
Giveaway
This is probably a good policy in the spammer era, so I will just thank everyone who entered and send out congratulations to the winners, who will be receiving their copies shortly (Xmas mail willing).
Many women have reached out to say they're glad that awareness is being raised around narcissism, as they have been devastated by the psychological abuse and suffered for a lengthy period following it, because of lack of understanding in their network.
For this reason, there is no physical or sexual violence in "Illusion". There are many novels and memoirs detailing this subject but almost none showing the strange inability to function that possesses victims (how I hate that word) of a narcissist.
With Isobel - the main character in "Illusion" - I depict her need for real love and complete inability to accept it, her self blame and struggle to make a decision after having been gaslighted and fogged. Isobel is a successful woman but as a single mother is stretched too wide. These qualities may elicit dismay in readers who want a Superwoman style heroine but Isobel is genuine in her attempts to understand how she's wrecking her life and determined to improve life for her son, Dylan.
Of course, addiction to her malignant narcissist mother makes it impossible for Isobel to thrive. She is unaware of the enmeshment and trauma bonding that she was born into, making co-dependency seem normal to the extent that genuine love feels uncomfortable.
The tug of war over Dylan, the golden child, as both Isobel's mother and her narcissist ex-husband, Matt, try to steal her son using lies and accusations to the authorities is a scenario that occurs all too frequently with drama hungry narcissists.
December 11, 2013
Book Raffle WInner
And The Winner is….
The winner of the gift copy of ILLUSION – Book 1 of The Narcissism Novels and a $10 Amazon gift certificate is…
Nicole Kene
Congratulations Nicole! Your prize will be winging its way to you in time for Christmas.
Look out for another book giveaway coming soon.
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December 10, 2013
Narcissism Novel Published Today
The first book in the series The Narcissism Novels is published TODAY!
When those who love you want to destroy you- it sounds strange until you’ve been there.
ILLUSION details the struggles of interior designer, Isobel, to understand why every man she meets loves her, then hates her – the same attitude her mother has always adopted with her only child. ILLUSION is a novel of psychological rather than direct physical abuse – an area that is under-portrayed in literature. Here’s the book jacket synopsis:
Have you ever encountered the seductive genius of the emotional vampire?
Interior designer, Isobel Hobson, has escaped an alcoholic husband and her narcissist mother has moved in with the sociopath next door. All she and her young son, Dylan, want is a complete happy family. When she meets Saul on a business trip to Manhattan and he convinces her she’s found it, she moves her life and child across the world.
But her happiness is brutally shattered and her mind starts to unravel when Saul’s character abruptly turns. With desperate attempts to make their relationship work, Isobel is unaware that others are planning deeper psychological torture with life-changing consequences and her horror has only just begun.
Illusion is the nightmare tale of love and motherhood – a powerful exploration of the narcissism epidemic in intimate and family relationships set against the turbulent background of terror and viruses of the early 21st Century.
ILLUSION is available for download and in paperback at AMAZON and AMAZON UK (Click to be taken straight to site)
Please spread the word to readers who may not have personal experience of this abuse but might be interested in understanding its subtle destruction.
And remember there’s a Giveaway party for a free copy and a $10 Amazon gift certificate (with which you could buy two or ten other great Indie titles) today, launch day. Simply sign up to the Newsletter to enter. Winner will be notified on Wednesday!
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December 9, 2013
ILLUSION Launch Party
ILLUSION BOOK LAUNCH
ILLUSION – The first book in The Narcissism Novels series is here.
Publication week has arrived finally – what with juggling the release dates for the E-book and getting the print proof back to Amazon and having to wait for all the approvals – It’s a wild juggling act. I’m only hoping I can keep all the balls up in the air for publication party week.
My plan is to run giveaways and raffles for the entire Holiday season, so if this one gets away, come on back for another or, better still, sign up to the newsletter to be informed right away about all upcoming special offers and prizes.
ILLUSION BOOK LAUNCH PARTY
WHERE – RIGHT HERE ON THE BLOG
WHEN – TUESDAY 10 DECEMBER 2013
HOW - SIGN UP TO NEWSLETTER
This week features a free book (ILLUSION print paperback) PLUS another free book in the form of a $10 Amazon gift certificate. All you have to do for a chance to win some lovely free books is leave your name and email by signing up to the newsletter. Hopefully you will want to stay friends and hear about the second book in The Narcissism Novels series – DELUSION – ready for publication early 2014. I will inform the winner by email on Wednesday 11th.
As many of you know, it’s been my intention in writing these novels to raise awareness of the psychological horror of narcissism so that, if it can’t be stamped out, there will at least be some empathy for those who have experienced the torture. I am really looking forward to hearing whether the novel brings about any lightbulb moments. As Gabriel says in Book Two, “We would do well to think as children and view life’s experiences and tribulations as toys in the box we are given to play with for a while”.
There has been a ton of interest and many women who have experienced the type of abuse that Isobel struggles through in ILLUSION, both as the daughter of a narcissistic mother and in love relationships with men with narcissistic personality disorder, have reached out and said they want to write a book too.
This is an awesome ambition and if anyone is moved to do it, I say go for it with all you’ve got. Only know that it takes a huge amount of effort to line up all the elements in the right order to produce a book, followed by possibly even more elements in order to publish a book. Every writer I know comments about the hard work involved. Russell Blake, one of the indies whose advice I follow, says he has worked 16 hours solid every single day for the past two years to successfully publish. I’ll be blogging about this subject, hopefully in the next day or so. I’ll just add now that ILLUSION is my fifth novel (2 under a pen name) and it was ten years in my mind and came out (can’t quite say ‘birthed’ for a novel) through a very dramatic writing process.
In the meantime – I look forward to seeing everyone tomorrow, Tuesday December 10th for an anti-narc party.
ILLUSION (Book 1 The Narcissism Novels) is available at Amazon HERE and Amazon UK HERE
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November 30, 2013
Narcissism Novel Published
Today’s the day (in a way) – it’s the Saturday after Thanksgiving so maybe not too many people are thinking of buying a new book and that’s okay. “ILLUSION” doesn’t hit its pub date until next week but I see that Amazon have made the E-book live today – thus giving me the chance to check it for nasty inevitable errors. The e-book formatting was done by a pro, awesome job but even the Top Six Authors have hideous layout anomalies in their Kindle books – the upload scrunching does bizarre things with words.
Speaking of words, I had a very nice new review on “Magic” saying “Tracy Johnson sure has a way with words” – I’m assuming that was a compliment. I’m going to be taking “Magic” down for re-formatting and rewrites soon – once my WIP on the second part of the narcissism novels (“DELUSION”) is complete. A very successful author said to me that there is no reason not to upgrade your work as you get better and that he has rewritten fifty percent of his early work to reflect his improvement in his craft.
“Magic” has its own tie-in – a book of recipes that main characters Suzanne and Diego create during their travels in North West Argentina and North East Brazil. So that will now be published when the new issue of the novel goes live – hopefully in time for the Christmas rush of new Kindles. Sign up to the newsletter to hear about the date and for a free recipe in your inbox right now!
Over the last couple of months I’ve studied some of the great authors (working methods rather than writing) and read up on procrastination in order to up personal productivity. I highly recommend Hillary Rettig’s book on the subject to anyone wanting to work smarter. This means writing the next book (“Delusion”) and creating its cover at the same time as publishing and marketing another (“Illusion”) and re-writing another (“Magic”). At the same time of course, other ideas are percolating in my mind and reams of notes are written – I’m thinking that the third part of The Narcissism Novels will be a prequel exploring the early life of Isobel’s mother and the possible reasons behind her malignant personality.
This idea stemmed from the many narcissism forums where daughters ask repeatedly “Why is my mother like this to me?” and “What made her this way?” These are interesting questions to explore and I’ve wanted to do a novel set in the mid-20th century for a long time (Cue more reams of notes) so we’ll see how that works out.
In the meantime, I shall be running a giveaway on the blog later this week to celebrate the publication of “Illusion”. It’s super tempting to set it up now but I feel bound to honor the readers who have told me they don’t own kindles and have purchased my novels in print. The giveaway contest will be run with the option of print or e-book prize. Sign up to the mailing list if you want to be informed of when it goes live, along with a free chapter from book 2.
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