Hi! I’m Eric
Thank you for stopping by!
Writing
Current Project
Ninja Assassin Love Story
a daily comic strip, free online throughout 2024
Kate is the loving mother of Portia and Angel, the definitely-not-teasing-you wife of Joel, and a ninja assassin for the Cleveland mafia.
For one year, we’ll be following the story of Kate’s family—from Portia’s teenage angst to Kate’s midlife ennui; from Kate’s battles with a new crime boss to Angel’s war against having to learn his times tables.
Featuring:
- fencing ✅
- fighting ✅
- torture ❌ (unless you count polka music)
- revenge ✅
- giants ✅
- monsters ❌
- chases ✅
- escapes ✅
- true love ✅
- miracles TBD
by Eric Herz-O’Brien (writer, letterer) & Karla Rosario (penciler, inker, colorist)
Samples
Resume & CV
1-Page Resume
In-Depth CV
Biography
I was raised in New York, Pennsylvania, Hawaii, North Carolina, Virginia, and Northern California. After college in Los Angeles, I headed for the wilds of Vermont, where I stayed more than six years, which is the longest I’ve been anywhere. I spent a year in New Zealand, and wrote this biography while traveling in Brazil—but that was in 2020, the year of COVID and murder hornets, so if you’re reading this in 2021, who knows where I am right now? Libraries and national parks are where I feel most at home. 📚🏞️
I decided I wanted to be a novelist when I was 14 years old, after reading The World According to Garp by John Irving. For some reason, I thought the best way to learn novel-writing would be to write plays, so theater was the majority of my output in my teenage years, culminating in the high school drama department performing my original 3+ hour epic about a composer who talks to a hallucination of Frank Sinatra that’s actually an evil demon only pretending to be imaginary, in my senior year. 🎭
Realizing that collaboration is, for me, essential to making art, I enrolled in film school. I studied all aspects of film production at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film, and Television, graduating with awards, including the $3,000 Jack Nicholson Prize in Screenwriting. 🎓🎥
Since then, I’ve taught, videographed, worked my way up to a management position at a TV station, held all sorts of roles on all sorts of film projects, and had a handful of jobs in website design and web copywriting.
Right now, I’m writing mostly short comic book scripts and short stories. ✍️
Pros & Cons of Hiring Me
Pro
- Reliable: I am on time, I meet deadlines; no matter the stakes, I’ve always proven that I can be counted on.
- Friendly & Respectful: I’m nice, courteous, professional. In the past, doing direct service at a nonprofit, even when working with upset or challenging members of the public, I was always calm and respectful, and found ways to help, alleviating anyone’s anger, making sure everyone was heard and responded to.
- Diverse Knowledge & Skill Set: I have studied and worked in all aspects of film production; worked with Photoshop daily; managed social media accounts and websites; managed people, too; I read a wide range of books and am interested in (and teach myself about) a wide range of subjects; know a surprising amount about codecs and programming; have taught classes and created curricula; migrated and managed databases; even re-organized equipment rooms—to name a few examples, off the top of my head.
- Fast Learner: This is how I wound up with that diverse knowledge and skill set. I can’t say I in any way earned this, but I’m grateful for it: I’ve always had the ability to quickly understand how and why something works.
- Creative: Following up on being a fast learner, once I’ve understood how and why something works, I immediately start thinking of new things to do with it, and how to improve it.
- Proofreader’s Eye: I have an impeccable eye for spelling, grammar, and punctuation. And the flexibility to match a company’s style—for instance, removing Oxford commas, if that’s preferred.
Con
- Recovering Perfectionist: I have learned that if there is not a deadline, I have to give myself one, or I will work on the project until the end of time.
- Quiet: I’m friendly and welcoming, to be sure! But with my colleagues, historically, I haven’t always been the one to start the conversation. Once, I was proud of earning the “ResTV Ninja Award” at my campus TV station, awarded for coming in, doing my work, and leaving without anybody knowing I’d been there—but over time, I’ve realized a person can be too quiet. I have improved a lot over the years, and continue to push this comfort zone.
- Diverse Knowledge & Skill Set: For example, since I’ve worked in every aspect of film production, I have above-average knowledge and skills in lighting, shooting, directing, editing, and some simpler special effects and animating, but I have expertise in none of these.
- Messy Desk: In my defense, I keep my messes to my own space. Shared spaces, I keep impeccably organized. But if I am given my own desk, and its tidiness doesn’t affect other people, I forget to stop it from becoming a disaster.
- Creative: Sometimes, the boss isn’t looking for originality. I have learned to restrain my instincts and follow a straighter line, depending on the situation.
- Proofreader’s Eye: Not everyone always wants to know their hyphen should have been an em-dash. I don’t usually correct people’s writing. But if I see a mistake on something public-facing, that represents the company, I will usually ask the person responsible whether they want to be informed of any errors—and if they don’t care about em-dashes, I don’t bother them.
- Zero Hand-Eye Coordination: If part of the job is drawing, cutting, or folding in a straight line, I am the wrong candidate.
Say Hello
I would love to hear from you!