The first books from Silver Sands were written by company founder Michael N. Marcus. He's also founder and president of AbleComm, Inc. ("the telecom department store"), and a journalist, advertising copywriter and blogger.
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Michael is the author of more than 30 books -- including several bestsellers. He has been an editor at Rolling Stone magazine and has written for many science, music, business, electronics, automotive and general interest magazines, as well as newspapers.

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He's also an award-winning advertising copywriter who has worked on such brands as Pioneer, Acoustic Research, Columbia Records, Maxell, Volvo, Castrol, and Perdue chicken.

Michael has long been a successful and popular explainer. Before the Internet, he was an online adviser on CompuServe, and later on MSN. He is a contributor to many online groups and publications. He has provided the words for more than 50 websites and blogs.

At the urging of a misguided guidance counselor, he went to Lehigh University to become an electrical engineer, and was disappointed to learn that engineering was mostly math -- and slide rules were not as much fun as soldering irons. He quickly switched to journalism.

Michael has written professionally for over 40 years. He was one of the first writers to humanize electronic hardware, describing equipment with emotion, not math. At Rolling Stone, his popular reviews of hi-fi equipment departed from the traditional laboratory tedium, and used humor and slices-of-life to describe the components. His novel approach came from necessity -- because he didn't have a testing laboratory.
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Michael lives in Connecticut with his wife Marilyn, Hunter the Golden Retriever, indoor and outdoor telephone booths, a "Lily Tomlin" switchboard, lots of books, CDs and DVDs, and many black boxes with flashing lights. Marilyn is very tolerant.