He spent most of his early life in Boulder, Colorado, and moved to Washington's Olympic Peninsula in 1973 when Colorado became so crowded you almost had to stand in line to go fishing.  

  His first publications were articles in Private Pilot magazine more than twenty years ago.  Inspired by his success, he wrote a novel based on commuter airline flying and sent it off to Scott Meredith Agency for evaluation.  Meredith didn't think it was a novel.  Weak on plot.  The manuscript gathers dust.  

  In 1986, Eric's story "Rhonda" won first prize in an annual contest sponsored by Peninsula College's Tidepools magazine and the Port Angeles newspaper, Peninsula Daily News.  "Rhonda" grew out of a writing exercise in Lawrence Block's "Write For Your Life" seminar.  Anton Wishik, then the paper's managing editor, was one of the contest's judges.  He invited Rush to write a weekly column based on the writing in that story and on a couple of pithy (a polite word for smart-ass) letters to the editor.  

  Undeterred by rejection of the airline novel, Eric wrote a private eye novel a few years later and sent it off to Scott Meredith Agency.  Weak on plot again.  Eric began to think maybe he should stick to non-fiction.  The manuscript gathers dust.  

  Fourteen years is a long time to write a personal column off the top of one's head.  Eric occasionally felt burned out throughout that time and often considered quitting, but people would tell him how much they enjoyed reading his column, even when they disagreed with him.  So he stayed with it until thinking up topics became a full-time job.  Then, a couple of years ago, he quit.

  Meanwhile, he's having another go at writing a novel and simultaneously writing a non-fiction tragi-comedy about the trials and tribulations he and his wife went through while building their house a few years ago.  

  His first book, Light & Dark, is a selection of his newspaper columns published in 1999 by Western Gull Publishing, Book Division of the Peninsula Daily News.  Western Gull publishes books of local interest and does not distribute nationally. Ordering information appears elsewhere on this web site.  

  Rush writes when he's not working, or reading, or hunting, or fishing, or building model railroads, or goofing off.  Maybe that's why it's taking him so long to get started...