How to Write Romantic Comedies. Rich Amooi ep15

Rich Amooi is the “King of Romantic Comedies.” He is a former Silicon Valley radio personality and wedding DJ who now writes romantic comedies full-time. He is happily married to a kiss monster and has a hairy golden retriever/lab mix that likes to eat carrots, tuna, and Manchego cheese imported from Spain. He believes (Rich, not the dog) in public displays of affection, silliness, infinite possibilities, donuts, gratitude, laughter, and happily ever after. On his website, you will find the tagline “King of Romantic Comedies”, during the course of the conversation, I discovered it was not an exaggeration.

Listen To The Podcast Episode By Clicking Below

Discussion on Romantic Comedies

• Rich Amooi was interested in the world of radio since his early teens. He joined a broadcasting school at the age of 18, for an 8 month course. After completing the course, he worked in the field of radio for 33 years.
• He became a wedding DJ by accident when one of his listeners was after him to become the wedding DJ for her wedding. Over a period of time, Rich would be the DJ for over 100 weddings a year, and it formed an alternate or second career for him just as the radio industry started going down.
• Towards the end of his radio career, his career as a writer began, starting with radio commercials. On advice of his wife, he took creative writing classes at Stanford University. Two of his short stories turned into a novel.
• He credits his wife for inspiring him to write novels. He considers her to be his greatest critic and his greatest supporter.
• Five Minutes Late is his first published novel.
• He is a fan of Bollywood movies, Monsoon Wedding is the first movie he saw. He likes the Bollywood movies for the color, the energy and the storylines.
• There is a fun section on his website called “Jumping for Joy”. He likes to surround himself with positive people, and whenever he travels to a new place, he jumps at a particular spot and his jumps are recorded in the form of pictures.Rich included this section on his website because he thought it would bring out this aspect of his personality and help in connecting with the readers.
• We discuss his book Mr. Crotchety in the interview, while An Eclair to Remember is his latest Book at the time of release of this podcast.
• He has a list of advance readers or reviewers, but he waits for 3 or 4 weeks after the release of his book before running any promotions.
• In 2016 he plans to release 4 novels, and he has a team of freelance contractors to help him with editing, formatting, cover designs, etc.
• He is self published author but he is open to working with traditional publishers, particularly Amazon imprints.
• He and his wife love Indian food. His wife is a published author. Her debut novel is Postgirl. He is open to getting his books translated, but he understands that it is not an easy job. German and Spanish would be high on his list of preferences. He may consider translations into Indian languages, provided there is a market.
• After this podcast, our guest went on to add pictures of his dog Chiki on his author website.
• Rich is not considering sequels to any of his novels for the time being. He believes in writing standalone novels with a Happy Ending. He has another 7 or 8 stories in the pipeline.
• There is an interesting story behind how he met his wife. I allude to it in the interview.

References mentioned in the Podcast:

• Creative writing course at Stanford University
• Rich’s amazon Author page
• Rich’s Goodreads page
• Amazon Publishing
• Jumping For Joy page on Rich’s website

Ways to Contact Rich:

• Rich’s author website: Rich Amooi
• Email: rich at richamooi dot com
• Rich on facebook: Rich’s facebook author page
• Rich on Twitter: @richamooi

Links to Bookd by Rich

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_{This post was updated on 2016-02-09}