Dating, love and circumstances

“Your eyes red like tomato.

Your lips purple like grape.

And your face white like dead jellyfish."

Have you ever done a Visa-run during your stay in Thailand? If so, it is a good chance to meet interesting people along the way.

When I did my first Visa-run to the border of Cambodia this year, I met such an interesting person. He is a writer from Canada. His name is RJ Silver.

This is not his real name. It´s his pseudonym for writing and publishing funny and amusing stories.

"I love writing stories that cheer people up

and add something positive to the world."

"I love to laugh" is one of the answer when asking RJ Silver why he is writing this kind of stories.

RJ Silver is the creator of this surreal sounding conversation I quoted at the beginning. The most funniest story I read for a long time.

I haven't heard about him and his published E-books yet, even he is very successfull in this genre. So I was happy to meet him. I like his sort of humor and I am conviced, you will like his humor too.

(I haven´t read any of his stories at the time of doing this interview with him. That´s why we are talking more common things about this books and the technique of writing.)

This interview is part of my cliB project, so let me introduce RJ Silver to you:

Actually I became clairaudient when he told me one of the titles: "My Third-World Girlfriend".

I mean, I am traveling in South-East-Asia for more than one year already and I am used to see plenty of foreigners with their Asian girlfriend.

A South-East-Asian girlfriend

want to take care of her boyfriend.

Mostly you see them happy, but sometimes hanging clouds above such relationships, detached by hailing and storming. ;)

Ups, that can happen.....

Though I never called them "Third-World girlfriend". That was a new term for me.

"My Third-World Girlfriend"

RJ Silver

RJ Silver is writing about himself "...I love writing stories that cheer people up and add something positive to the world...."

Yes, indeed he is looking as he wants to cheer up the world. Every new sentence can end in a witty way. It seems that he want us to cheer up permanently. The smile in his face is almost infective.

RJ Silver, a 48 year young guy with a remarkable outfit, wearing a blue t-shirt, blue shorts and flip-flops. His grey-black colored beard remind me at mine, although I just shaved my beard this morning.

RJ is normally working as an IT-specalist for a few big American companies. He was already twice divorced, that's why he decided to change his life a couple of years ago.

As he is working online enables him to do this everwhere. The only thing he need is a proper working Internet connection and so he took a worldmap and choosed with closed eyes his first new centre of interest. "That's how I started traveling around the globe."

RJ's finger pointed on a two million city in the South of China. He is an adventures guy and so he went there and tried to live a different way of life. A city where are no english signs and nearly nobody was speaking English.

His communication skills are very miscellaneous and so he got in touch with plenty of people....and he met many chinese people.

"I remember a meet up in a park. I went there for practising my Chinese. There were only Chinese who wanted to practise their English skills. It ended up that I talked more English and helped this guys practising English than forcing my progress learning Chinese."

"Every time I said something in Chinese, this guys looked at me as I am an alien. As soon as I showed them the written word, they started full-throated laughing and repeating the word as it is so obviously."

This reminds me in my attempts speaking Thai sometimes. It seems we have a big problem with the correct pronounciation.

I asked RJ: "When did you start writing?"

"I dreamed since my childhood to be a writer. After a few early novels, I started working together with a well known agent for the duration of four years. I worked hard for publishing a crime thriller and finally they offered me a contract. To me, the unknown writer."

"But they asked me to change some things and restricted things in the book. Because of that I decided not to sign the contract. At this point I changed my mind and started writing a different kind of content. And I realized that I want to be independent from a publisher."

"My new stories should be not anymore serious like the writings before." For a better separating I choosed the pseudonym "RJ Silver". I want to write about funny things to keep the readers smiling and enjoying."

And apparantly it seems like it is working. I read some of the reviews in the online shops and they have one thing in common. The readers enjoyed reading his stories and they had plenty to laugh.

"I offered the first published E-book for free. It was a bestseller as messured by the downloads."

Kingdom of Shlongdia

The location where the story of
"The Princess and the Penis"
plays.

"Every book contains a few sketches of a small green alien in tricky situations." "Aliens?" I asked suprised.

"Actually the stories don't tell anything about aliens. It is only a substitute for the protagonist of the story."

"My readers love a blue sky, that's why you can see it on every cover of my books. I like making people laughing and to see them happy."

While his years in China, he wrote the book "The Ballerina The Gymnast And The Yoga Master".

On my questions about an including autobiographic part in his stories, he replied: "There is always a connection to my own life, or situations in my life, stories, whatever.... this time I was in a relationship with a yoga teacher. So I envolved this in my story."

"The Ballerina The Gymnast And The Yoga Master"

RJ Silver

How much research are you doing during developing and writing a story? "The Ballerina The Gymnast And The Yoga Master" is a good example.

I read plenty of yoga books to get background informations and hints for my story. It is very important that everything is logical, otherwise you will not be reliable. "

"Look at a movie. You can be very creative, having a brilliant idea, but if it is not reliable, or if it is implemented worse, the whole idea is nothing more worth it."

"When I have an idea, I figure out, how it can work. For example, sometimes I write several processes, based on the same idea. I choose one and dump the others. Onetime, I wrote three stories and threw them all away."

"How important is the title and what role is it playing?"

"More important is the topic than the title. But of course it is neccessary to have an interesting title for selling the story, to wake up the interest of the reader. Mostly it works hand in hand."

"The Princess & the Penis"

RJ Silver

"Your books aren't that long. Mostly they are short stories with a maximum of 30 pages. How important is it to give the readers a break while reading a book? Time to think about written words and to think about the whole story. You said, your stories aren't anymore like your previous writings. Is it light lecture?"

"This is correct. It is a light lecture, anyway you have to offer a break in form of some asteriks or a new chapter from time to time."

"How many pages does your chapters have in average?"

"One chapter has between three and eight pages."

"I didn't read your books yet, because I heard this morning first time of you. So, do you like timejumps and are you working with them?"

"Yes, sometimes I work with timejumps, for example at "My Third World girlfriend. Sometimes you can´t work with timejumps, because it doesn´t match for the story. Then it is better to write along a timeline."

"Do you know exactly your target group?"

"I am writing light fun stories for light-hearted happy people with a positive thinking and yes, I know. I get a lot of feedback for my writings, not only in reviews, also in e-mails and comments on my blog."

http://rjsilver.com/blog

"I can see what kind of customers are buying at the online stores. 90-95% of the readers are so called "romance readers". 99% are women between 18 and 50 years. Most of my readers are from USA, UK, Australia and Canada."

"It seems you are very popular for female readers. Ok, then I will do my best to make your work more popular for male readers and to push their amount." :)

"Surprisingly for me that Canada is only on fourth place."

"Yeah, not so many people know that I am a Canadian." told me RJ with a smile in his face.
"Are you doing some PR-work for publishing your books?"

"No, I don't do PR. I have only my blog. I offered my first E-book as free download and after that big success I decided to sell my E-books online for a few bugs. I offer them at i-tunes,Amazon and Barnes&Noble.""Right now, you are working on your fourth book. How long do you need to write a whole book?"

´"That depends on the story and my time. Sometimes I can only spend two hours writing per day. Normally I can finish a book, including a new idea, research and working out different ways of the idea in about six to eight month. But it can also take a year."

"Do you need to be in a special mood to be creative? How and where do you create your stories?"

"I start in the morning and writing two hours every day. Sometimes I have some notes, sometimes I let it flow. I have always a good mood and can write anytime. My topics are not anymore that complex that I need plenty of memos or a special mood. I can keep my ideas in my mind. I am writing directly on my Mac, no hand writings, only a notice from time to time."

"How do you create a story or the characters?"

"What I am doing is, I create a complete charakter and write a documentary for each one. I learned this while writing this crime thriller. The reader has to read between the lines, because he will only see the roof of a building, but under the roof are plenty of informations, why something is, like it is. Personality, clothes, environment, knowledge, mimik art and gestures.....everything what constitutes a real person. "

"Do you have an lector? Is your girlfriend reading your stories first?"

"Over the years I have many international friends and editors, which are my lectors and volunteers. They are into the writings and helped me a lot. My girlfriend likes my stories, but she is more like one of my readers than a lector."

"Your first E-book was very successfull. Did you feel a big pressure launching your second E-book?"

"Yes and no. My first two books werde sold really good and positioned under the top ten in the online-stores, so they were bestsellers. From this view I had a kind of pressure, but I took my time."

"The third book took longer than expected. But I wouln't say it is a negative kind of pressure. I will always give my best. The story need to be logical and the reader should have fun reading a book."

"When I finish a book, then it is complete in my eyes and completed. Then it is the readers issue to like it or not. I feel fine with my finished works."

"Are there any thoughts about translation your stories into other languages, or other projects?"

"Well, after my successfull sales at the online stores I got a few offers from other countries for translation and animation works. I didn't decide anything yet."

"I am working with the caricaturist Scott Fiander together and he realized really good sketches. That's how I like it and I am thinking to do more in this direction."

"Another thing is, that my first book is played live for a dinner theater in Los Angeles first time in July. It seems to be very successfull and is very interesting and may be there is a chance to realize more in this vein."

"And a totally different thing is another project. It is the creation of a foundation to help underprivileged children in South-East-Asia get out of bad situations and into good homes that provide love, care, and a proper education. You can read more about this cause at:"

http://www.rjsilver.com/foundation/

Thank you RJ for giving us the opportunity and insight in your life and work.

http://www.rjsilver.com

...

In the meanwhile I read all three E-Books and I had cramps from laughing. My favorite is "My Third-World girlfriend" with so many seen and well known situations here in SE-Asia, neither that I had such a relationship ;)

I am not interested in ballet and so I decided to read "The Ballerina And The Yoga-Master" at last but it was much more fascinating than expected and my secret favorite now.

I am looking forward to the newest, the fourth E-book of RJ Silver. ;)

And if you are still looking for a last-minute gift for christmas. Here is your chance!

Take a look at RJ Silver E-books. They are funny written and you can get them for a reasonable price. Right now there is a special offer for all three E-books: