Interview with W.
Bruce Cameron
Interview by Jenna Glatzer
W.
Bruce Cameron is the author of 8 Simple Rules for
Dating my Teenage Daughter And Other Tips from a Beleaguered Father (Not That
Any of Them Work), (Workman Publishing, Inc., May 2001).
Despite his claims to the contrary, W. Bruce is neither a
member of Mensa nor a Nobel Prize winner. In fact, he has never won any awards
or special recognition of any kind, though he is pleased to announce that he was
recently named a finalist in the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes.
W. Bruce was born in Petoskey, Michigan, in 1956, so how he can claim to be 34
years old is anybody's guess. He never grew up, but if he had, it would have
been divided between his home in Kansas City and his grandparents' cabin in
Michigan. He attended Westminster College, is a member of the Sigma Chi
fraternity… does any of this really matter?
After 15 years working for a small company called General Motors, W. Bruce went
on to found and destroy a number of small start-ups. If a pilot can be judged by
the number of crashes he has survived, W. Bruce is an Ace.
He is married with three children, all of whom are teenagers. He can't explain
how any of this happened.
Meanwhile, and through it all, he has been writing. In 1995 he started his
on-line internet column, using "viral marketing," which is as
unpleasant as it sounds. In April, 1999 he became the humor columnist for the
Denver Rocky Mountain News, and his first book was released in May, 2001.
W. Bruce speaks in public unless prevented by a restraining order, and relates a
much more interesting story of his life when he does so because, well, he lies a
lot.
Why do you write?
I get asked this question a lot more AFTER people have read my work. I think writing allows me to unload all the words that are
building up inside me from the daily deluge from my teenagers and my wife. They're always talking to me, usually in a distressingly
disrespectful fashion. So I've got this incoming shipment of words that I have to discharge, or I might otherwise explode.
How did you become a newspaper humor columnist?
Well, I'd had a lot of experience in newspapers, because I was a paperboy when I was 13.
That's probably what impressed them the most.
How is your column syndicated?
In the worst possible way--essentially, for free. I sell my column to the Scripps Howard News Service through their flagship paper, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. Scripps Howard ships it to ALL of its subscriber newspapers, any one of which can run it without any additional payment to anyone, most tragically including me.
I have dubbed you The Most Plagiarized Man On The Internet. Want
to tell our readers how you came to earn that title?
Does this mean I won't be getting the "Sexiest Man Alive" title again this year? I think I heard you can't win both awards.
Well sure, I earn the title because for some reason there are an awful lot of people out there who believe that there is nothing wrong with taking someone's work, stripping off his name and copyright, changing a few of the words, and then sending it out to all his friends and relatives saying,
"see what I wrote?" It is a pain to have to contact individual web sites and joke lists and advise them that a column is mine, but I don't know what else to do. I've written over 1,000 sites about my
"Chili Judge" essay alone. (www.wbrucecameron.com
if you want to see a copy of the original.)
Does it bother you when your columns are reprinted without your
permission? How do you deal with it?
Well, it bothers me, and I write the sites and the lists, but it is frankly exhausting. I understand that most people don't know that it is my essay, though it does bother me that people don't seem to question the origin of a 700 word essay... do they think Al Gore wrote it when he was coding the internet, or what?
How did you sell your book, 8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage
Daughter?
That one went out on a proposal. My agent really put me through the paces, it took a year to write the proposal to her liking, which is less time than it took to write the book.
It's already become a huge success, hitting #14 on the New York
Times Bestseller List this week. To what do you attribute its success?
My mom bought a LOT of books.
You've also had some great publicity-- including an interview on
CNN, the CBS Early show, and television in 13 cities. How did this happen? Are you primarily
responsible for publicity, or is the publisher?
It happened because it must have been a really, really slow news day. Actually, copies of my book went out to every single television and radio station in the cities on my tour, and then the producers called and requested interviews.
How does your family feel about your book?
They are very happy for me. My daughters have awarded themselves the "I deserve a new car" award for driving their father crazy enough to write a book about them.
You do a lot of public speaking. How do you get these gigs?
People call me or e-mail me. I have a speaker's agent, but she pretends to have brain damage when I call her and hangs up as soon as she recognizes my voice. So I just field e-mails from people who say,
"we had a REAL speaker, but he cancelled, so we'd like to have you."
What's one thing you wish you'd learned earlier about writing?
Here it is: I was focused for 25 years on getting PUBLISHED. That's all I could see. What I should have been focused on was writing a book for the public to want to buy. That little shift in perspective made all the difference.
Where can people find your book?
I guess I'd stay away from butcher shops and shoe stores. Most bookstores have it in stock, though we ran OUT of books in June and had to print up a new batch. You can buy it off my web site, and anyone who wants an autographed copy can write me and I'll arrange for one.
Is there another book in the works?
I hope so. In fact, I've invited anybody who would like to contribute their ideas to visit my web site and give me some feedback at
http://www.wbrucecameron.com/pages/book/menstories.htm!
ORDER
8 SIMPLE RULES FOR DATING MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER HERE.
