The Art of Living Joyfully

Do you feel overworked and “underjoyed” during the holidays? Allen Klein is here to the rescue with The Art of Living Joyfully! Allen is on a mission to help people laugh more, love more, and “live more,” and offers many ideas and suggestions on how to up the “joy quotient” in your life. Allen Klein is a motivational speaker and author who believes strongly in the way words can influence how we feel mentally, physically and spiritually. In this era of tweeting, email, cyberspeak and the non-language of texting, the written and spoken word has extraordinary power to touch our hearts and lift our spirits. In The Art of Living Joyfully, Jollytologist Klein presents a compendium of advice and plain old common sense comprising a guide to good cheer. “Psychoneuroimmunology is a long word with a short, simple concept. It means the body, mind and spirit are interconnected. In other words, your mind can influence your body. What you think affects how you feel. Of course, what you think of consists mainly of words — and those words have the power to drag you down or lift you up.” – From The Art Of Living Joyfully Read below for a Q & A with the author: 1- You call yourself a “Jollytologist.” What is that and how did you come up with that title? I studied therapeutic humor in college (Master’s of Human Development) so technically I’m a gelotologist, (from the Greek gelos, meaning laughter.) But since most people don’t know what gelos means, I change it to Jollytologist. 2- You are the author of a number of best-selling inspiration/motivational quotation books, including The Art of Living Joyfully, which was just published. What got you started writing those books? After I wrote my first book, The Healing Power of Humor, I had hundreds of quotations left over pertaining to humor, laughter, joy, happiness, etc. So I put them together in a quotation book, Quotations to Cheer You Up When the World is Getting You Down, which was first published by Sterling Publishers. 3- Why do you believe in the power of words to change lives? Words can lift us up or bring us down. They can encourage us or discourage us. They can hurtor they can help heal. Don’t believe it? Then just look at the words of bullies that have lead young people to end their life. Or, on the opposite end, how prayers and affirmations have helped people get through trying times. 4- Can you give us some examples of how the quotations in your books have changed people’s lives? I have a number of remarkable letters from readers of the quotation books telling me how one quote changed their life. One woman, for example, related how she had been violently raped twice when she was a teenager. For 55 years she never told anyone about it. Then she read a quotation by Dale Carnegie about taking back your power. She posted the quote where she would see it every day and wrote to me to tell me how she has finally taken back her power and how those words changed her life. I have several other examples of how one simple quotation have helped change someone’s life. 5- You have a remarkable story of how you found Viva Editions, your current publisher. Please tell us how that happened. A year after Sterling released Quotations to Cheer You Up When the World is Getting You Down, they stopped publishing it. Then they sold it to a division of Random House who repackaged the book as a hard-covered gift book. It did so well that Random House asked me to put together another quotation book, then another, and another. They did extremely well and sold over 400,000 copies. In spite of the great sales, when RH was scaling back their operation, they closed that division of the company and stopped printing the books. I got the rights back to most of them and tried to sell the books to another publisher, without any luck. This went on for over a year-and-a-half. Then, instead of trying so hard, I put a sign above my computer that read “The Perfect Publisher Will Find Me.” I saw it almost all day long, everyday. Then one day I went to a meeting at the Northern California Book Publicity and Marketing Association, I had been a member many years before but hadn’t gone to one of their meeting in a long time but I wanted to hear the speaker that day who was a social-media expert. I took a seat on the aisle. Next to me was a man who was turned around talking to two women behind him. I overhead them saying that they work for a very successful publishing company who was starting a new division. They were looking for upbeat motivational and inspirational books that would bring joy to readers. I turned around to the women and told them I had a number of quotation books that would fit their needs. They gave me their card and asked that I send them the books. I looked at their card and discovered that their office was five blocks from where I lived. I hand-delivered the books the next day and the rest is history. They have thus far re-published four of those books, plus one original book that will be issued for Mother’s Day. The perfect publisher, indeed, did find me! 6- What is the best way for people to use your books? Readers have told me that they use the books in a variety of ways. Among them are… -They open the book to a random page and use that thought to guide them through the day. -They post them on their emails, on Facebook, or use them in their blogs. -They send them to others who need a lift. -They use them in their writing or newsletters. -They give the books as birthday, graduation, or holiday gifts. 7- What got you started on your path to becoming a writer? My wife and I used to laugh a lot together. She had a great sense of humor. When she was 31, we found that she had a terminal illness. She passed away at 34. There were lots of tears during the 3-years of her illness but there was also lots of laughter. It was the laughter that helped me get through that difficult time. After her death, I had a burning desire to share my message about therapeutic humor. I went back to school to study the subject. I wrote The Healing Power of Humor to share that message with the world. The book is now in a 40th printing and 9th foreign language translation. 8- What advice would you give to aspiring writers? Carve out a time every day to write. You can’t just say you want to write a book. You have to somehow get those words down…on paper…on the computer…on a tape machine. It doesn’t matter how you do it, but you must do it. 9- I understand that you used to be a scenic designer for Captain Kangaroo? How has that influenced your life and your writing today? Working on the Captain Kangaroo show, and thinking like a child, helped me have more playfulness and creativity. Both have been a major influence in my writing. 10-What’s next on your publishing agenda? I’m working on a book about how we often let other people take away our power and ruin our day, or even our life. In an easy-to-read entertaining way it will contain 52 ways readers can take back their power so that they have a great day, every day. 11- How can people find and buy your books? How can they get a hold of you? All my books are sold on Amazon, B&N, and other online bookstores as well as brick and mortar stores around the country. Some of the books are also on Kindle and Nook, and some are also in audiobook form at audible.com. Information about the books and ordering information can be found at: http://www.allenklein.com/books.htm I can be reached via email at humor@allenklein.com

by Staff