Born on the mean streets of New York and schooled in the slums of Brooklyn, Eric is the son of an advertising executive of the Mad Men era. Refusing to follow in the sellout family footsteps, Eric left home at 18 to forge his own path of poverty and struggle, seeking life experience fodder for his writing. After a string of menial jobs ranging from electrician assistant in the subzero wastes of upstate New York to a brief stint as a Carvel Ice Cream cake painter in Guido-rich New Jersey, Eric took a job building giant satellite dishes on US embassies and consulates across South & Central America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Oceania. After being shot at in El Salvador, tear-gassed (also in El Salvador), receiving death threats in Colombia from the DEA agents that the show "Narcos" was about, and having a nervous breakdown in Mexico City, he retired from embassy work. He then spent 20 years in the neurotic world of commercial casting in Los Angeles. He now has plenty to write about.