Filmmaker Author Jonathan Harnisch Uses His Mental Illnesses to Create Harrowing Characters

MINNEAPOLIS - March 18, 2015 - PRLog -- Filmmaker Author Jonathan Harnisch Uses His Mental Illnesses to Create Harrowing Characters in His New Novels

Filmmaker, fine artist, musician, and published erotica author, Jonathan Harnisch (Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia, 2014, etc.) is pleased to announce the release of his new bestselling book, Lover in the Nobody. Diagnosed with schizophrenia and Tourette's syndrome, Harnisch uses his experiences living with mental illness when he creates the characters within his novels.

Book one of the groundbreaking bestseller, Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography, Lover in the Nobody, introduces Benjamin (Ben, Benjy) Schreiber, whose Tourette's syndrome causes him to display uncontrollable tics and hops, and to stutter and swear inappropriately. He is bullied throughout his school years and can never form firm friendships, especially with women. He is simply incapable of happiness.

In his late twenties, he plunges into a downward spiral of drug and alcohol abuse, which culminates in an attempted bank robbery using a cell phone as a fake bomb. He is arrested and placed under psychiatric evaluation, where his psychiatrist, Dr C, quickly recognizes Ben's affliction as more than just Tourette's. Ben is not alone: inside his head lives Georgie Gust, Ben's alter ego. Georgie is obsessed with his manipulative, but extremely sexual next-door neighbor, Claudia Nesbitt, and shares a sadomasochistic relationship with her that is supported only by his obsession — Claudia has no love for Georgie.

Ben is desperately searching for someone — Claudia Nesbitt as the Perfect Woman — who will provide him with the unconditional love that he never received as a child. He finds it easier to retreat into his mind to share Georgie's sick obsession with the cruel and abusive Claudia than to deal with his real issues. Dr C senses that Ben is suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress from an event that occurred early in Ben's childhood, and that he uses Georgie as an escape when bad memories start to surface.

It is up to Dr C to help Ben face the buried terrors of his childhood so that he can finally let go of Georgie and reduce him to the literary character that the writer Ben wants him to be.

Recent Praise for Lover in the Nobody:
A young man battling extreme mental illness brings his sadomasochistic fantasies to life in Harnisch's (Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia, 2014, etc.) latest novel . . . The novel plunges readers into the mind of a man at war with its own urges, memories, and sexual obsessions . . . Despite the garishness, brutality, and squalor of many passages . . . sophisticated readers will appreciate the extraordinary feat Harnisch has accomplished . . . An extraordinary, harrowing odyssey into an embattled self, full of humor, compassion, and a rare understanding of mental illness. – Kirkus Reviews

Lover in the Nobody is available in print and ebook formats.

Book Details:
Lover in the Nobody
By Jonathan Harnisch
Publisher: Babydude Press
Published: December 2014
ISBN: 978-1505562460
ASIN: B00RN8IL80
Pages: 160
Genre: Erotica, Mental Illness

About The Author:
An all-around artist, Jonathan Harnisch writes fiction and screenplays, sketches, imagines, and creates. Produced filmmaker, fine artist, musician, and published erotica author, Jonathan holds myriad accolades, and his works captivate the attention of those who experience it. Manic-toned scripts with parallel lives, masochistic tendencies in sexual escapades, and disturbing clarities embellished with addiction, fetish, lust, and love, are just a taste of themes found in Jonathan's transgressive literature. Conversely, his award-winning films capture the ironies of life, love, self-acceptance, tragedy, and fantasy. Jonathan's art evokes laughter and shock, elation and sadness, but overall forces you to step back and question your own version of reality. Scripts, screenplays, and schizophrenia are defining factors of Jonathan's life and reality – but surface labels are often incomplete.

Jonathan is diagnosed with several mental illnesses from schizoaffective disorder to Tourette's syndrome; playfully, he dubs himself the "King of Mental Illness." Despite daily symptomatic struggles and thoughts, Jonathan radiates an authentic, effervescent, and loving spirit.

For review copies, author interviews, or more information, please contact:

Jonathan Harnisch
Email: press (at) alibiography.com
Website: http://www.alibiography.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jwharnisch
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jwharnisch