W. Bruce Cameron
W. Bruce Cameron was born in Petoskey, Mich., and for a long time it looked like that would be his most impressive life accomplishment.
When he was 16 years old, the worst thing happened: He sold the very first short story he ever submitted anywhere. The Kansas City Star paid him $50, which sadly remained the most he was ever paid for a story until around 1995, when he started an online column. It was the worst thing because it convinced him the whole “writing thing” was going to be really easy.
In 1998, the Rocky Mountain News began featuring Bruce Cameron weekly in its Home Front section. He is now considered one of its most popular columnists, even more of a reader favorite than the woman who writes about birds, though not as popular as the one who writes about wine, oddly enough. In October 2001, Creators Syndicate began distributing his weekly humor column.
Meanwhile, one column he had written, "8 Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter," became the basis of a book. Workman Publishing put the book into the stores in May 2001, and response was excellent. It hit No. 14 on the New York Times Best seller List and was still on its way up when the first printing sold out.
"8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter" was snapped up by Disney and co-developed as both a feature film and a TV show, the first time anyone can remember such a thing happening. The TV show was a hit, and the screenplay Cameron wrote was moving forward until the tragic death of John Ritter led Disney to reconsider. His latest book, "How to Remodel a Man," is currently under development as a feature film.
In 2006, Cameron won the Robert Benchley Award for Humor, which was judged by Dave Barry. That same year, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists selected Cameron as the No. 1 Humor Columnist in Newspapers with large (over 100,000) circulation.
Cameron has three children about whom he writes frequently in his columns. They hate it. He has a dog and various other pets that belong to his children, but think they belong to him. They don’t seem to mind as much when he writes about them.
