Michael's Writings

I've written numerous articles, most of which were written for California Sports Car, a racing magazine published by Cal Club, the Southern California Region of the Sports Car Club of America.  Back during the 1980s and early 1990s, I covered SCCA club racing at Riverside International Raceway and Willow Springs International Raceway.  It was a blast.  At the time, I was also freelancing as a motorsports photographer, and when I wasn't covering races, I was burning through rolls of film.

In 1989, I wrote the first edition of my book on cameras.  It went through a progression of names, but it is most widely known now as McBroom's Camera Bluebook.  The 6th and final edition was published in 2000.  It is out of print now, but still available from Amazon.com and others.  My book is much more than a price guide.  It has a wealth of information on cameras that were worthwhile photographic tools, both new and used, up to the year 2000.  Also included were lenses, flashes, and a rather comprehensive listing of accessories.  I'm proud of the job I did with that book, even though it was an enormous amount of mind-numbing work.  But ultimately the market changed so drastically, with the shift from film to digital and the rapid and continuing obsolescence of digicams, that I realized I could no longer keep up any more.  In contrast to other price guide publishers, I didn't have a large staff of folks working for me.  It was just me, with occasional help from my wife.

I have always been a big fan of fiction.  I read a lot -- somewhere between 50 and 100 books a year, most of which are fiction.  Fiction, in my humble opinion, is much more difficult to write than non-fiction.  With non-fiction, the goal is to report on some segment of reality in an interesting manner.  With nonfiction, the writer is having to invent a seperate little (or big) reality that must look and feel real to the reader.  A much greater challenge, but a very rewarding one.  It's also harder to get published as a fiction writer, as well.  Competition is fierce, and the quality of the better competition is quite high. 

I've had many false starts at attempts to write novels.  I managed to complete one, but it was, in my opinion at least, not very good, and is one book I hope never to see published.  Still hasn't stopped me from trying, though.  I'm currently about 40,000 words into another piece of "speculative" fiction.  Not quite scifi, not really fantasy.  At the point of this writing, I'm not quite halfway through the story.  I'm figuring it's gonna take about 100,000 words to do a decent job on it.  When I finish the book and find a publisher, look for info on it here.

The topic of my master's thesis was on human evolution and the biological evolution of language.  I believe I uncovered some important evidence that nobody else in the linguistics, or cognitive science, or paleoanthropological communities have, related specifically to language development in humans, and I plan to write a book based on my thesis.  A book-length project on the subject will allow me to go into the depth that it deserves.  When that happens, I'll put up the news here as well.

Writing Sites and Forums:

If you're a writer or have an interest in writing, you might find the following list of writing sites helpful.  I've assembled it from places I've visited and from lists others have recommended.  I have personal experience only with a few.  At the very least, it should take you a while to get through.  Enjoy.