Draft:Eric Van Asch

Erik R. Van Asch (born March 15, 1970) is a U.S. based writer and author.

During his writing career, he has authored and co-authored books, poems, short stories, flash fiction, and a devotional for writers. He has notably participated in the annual November National Novel Writing Month challenge, first participating in 2005. In Van Asch's own words, "Writing 50,000 words in 30-days has really demonstrated that writing a novel (and other types of writing) is a doable activity".

Van Asch has been published in such foundations as Dreamscape Press, The International Library of Poetry, The International Poetry Publication (a completely separate organization), eZine, and a compilation by Robin Bayne. However, he typically self-publishes (with and without other authors).

Much of Van Asch's work is rooted in the science-fiction genre, but he has also published fantasy. His stories often take place in foreign worlds, and involve revelations of secrets and themes of morality. He's also occasionally used the pen names "Mason Moore" and "Ron Ash".

List of Works

Van Asch's first published work was the poem The Hateful Rain (2003). It was published in the vanity press, The Colors of Life, by The International Library of Poetry. The second writing he had published was also a poem: Today I Wake (2004), also published in the vanity press, Voices Net 9 Vol4, by The International Poetry Publication. His first published short story was Barding My Time (2005), a fantasy story and contest winner. It was published in the speculative fiction ezine, "Deep Magic" in June of the same year.

In 2005, Van Asch also began what would later become a tradition of writing in the annual National Novel Writing Month challenge that takes place in November. The non-profit organization (commonly known as NaNoWriMo) was founded in 1999, but shut down in 2025. The idea of the challenge, though, was continued by the community and rebranded as NaNoWriMo 2.0.

His next published work was Free At Last (2006), an inspirational short story published in Broken Lives, Mended Spirits by Bayside Church in Granite Bay, CA. In 2008, Van Asch wrote Burning the Bacon, a devotional for writers that was published in Words to Write By, a compilation by Robin Bayne.

He apparently took a break from publishing his writings for a while, but resumed in 2013. On March 4, 2013, Van Asch self-published the anthology "SECRETS: Science Fiction Short Stories Book 1" with co-authors Mark Fetterolf and Anthony Pendleton. In "Secrets", Van Asch included two of his own short stories: The Waters and Reaping the Whirlwind. He summarizes The Waters as "Colonist guard a truth from all outsiders. To what lengths will each side do to protect a secret or to reveal it?", and Reaping the Whirlwind as "Bad people sometimes do bad things to hide a crime. In many cases someone is bound to find out and others are bound to get caught".

Later that year, on October 23, 2013, his flash fiction story Portal was published by Dreamscape Press in the anthology "100 Worlds".

He published another story later that year, too, making 2013 his most active year for published writings. On November 20, 2013, he self-published the anthology "LOST: Science Fiction Short Stories Book 2" with co-authors Susan Brookshire, Mark Fetterolf, Travis Gruber and Anthony Pendleton. This anthology featured Van Asch's sci-fi short story My Brother's Keeper, which he summarized as "When one brother severs all ties to family, it’s another brother’s responsibility to cross the cosmos and bring the long, lost sibling back home again".

He has not since published any more of his oeuvre, but his writing blog shows that he has still continued authoring short stories and other narratives.

Writing Blog

Erik R. Van Asch runs a writing blog on the website https://beingawriter.wordpress.com. The furthest back post is from 2012. On February 20 of that year, he released his first post. In this first post, he states "The forces of the universe have been bombarding me with the need and calling to get back to writing", which explains his large output of published work the next year.

However, it seems that Erik started this blog prior to 2012, because his first post includes the following: "I’m resurrecting this blog and I’m going to attempt to blog at least 3-times a week". This implies that he had been posting before, but had abandoned it. But this post is the furthest back one accessible on the website, and is labeled as post #0001.

Van Asch explains his reason for running this blog in the first post: "As I work through my own journey of writing for publication, I hope the information here will be entertaining and educational to all".

His blog contains motivation. exercises, and answers for writers, segments of his work, NaNoWriMo thoughts and progress, personal experiences, and tons more, considering it's been around for almost fifteen years! Van Asch tended to post on it either very frequently while inspired to do so, or very "non-scheduled", probably due to business (rather than aversion).

On November 6, 2025, he posted "0135 – Blog Series Finale!", where he discusses his blog and his reasons for taking breaks. Most importantly, he announces his blog's "retirement". He says "Overall, I personally no longer need to blog for me. I’m going to keep this blog site available, if anyone needs to reference old posts or grab one of the free tools I’ve uploaded over the years". He compared his blog to a TV show, and said that he may "reboot" it later. He has since made a few posts over the years, but has not restarted posting as frequently as he did before.

Career

Education

Erik R. Van Asch graduated from James Logan High School (Union City, CA) in 1987. From 1990-1992, he attended Mt. San Antonio College, where he got an Associate of Arts degree in Liberal Arts. Then from 2006-2007, he got certified as a database analyst.

From 2014-2024, he worked on becoming a first-generation college graduate, and succeeded when he got his bachelor's degree in Business Administration in Management. He's currently working as on his master's degree in business management at Fort Hays State University.

Jobs

• From 1996-1999, Van Asch worked at Intel in Santa Clara, CA and then in Folsom, CA.
• From 2000-2004, he worked as the support program manager at Hewlett Packard. This job consisted of directing several teams for technical support, managing procurement applications across global sites, designing and negotiating new support SOW / contracts, and more.
• From 2004-2005, he was a technology specialist at Practicewares Dental Supply. He provided deskside support, network administration, and project management for the tech dept; he notably ran a project to redesign the flow of goods onsite.
• He worked for 13 years at Pearson, from 2005-present. He occupied many positions throughout his time: helpdesk supervisor, tech support project manager, tech support "support options" manager, business intelligence lead, and global manager of reporting and analytics. In 2017, Pearson sold the learning services/K12 dept., and Erik left with it, becoming the manager of system operations for that.

Licenses and Certifications

Van Asch was issued a Database Analyst - SQL from Folsom Lake College in June, 2007. He received a Six Sigma Yellow Belt from Six Sigma in November, 2008. He was issued Knowledge-Centered Support Fundamentals v5.3 from HDI in August of 2014, and in December of the same year, he received the Professional Scrum Master I certification.

Personal Life

Family

Erik Van Asch married his wife, Cathy, on November 20, 1993. They have four kids, including daughter Kaya, son Ethan (April 19, 1998), son Connor, and son Brayden Van Asch (May 3, 2002).

Erik's father, Ronny Van Asch was born on December 28th, 1940. His mother, Sandra Van Asch, shares an appreciation of visual/fine arts with Erik, having an affinity for sketching and drawing.

The Van Asch family tends to, logically, be private about themselves, but information implies that Erik might be an only child.

Religious Views

Van Asch is a public Protestant Christian. During 2006 -- and likely 2006-2011 -- he attended Bayside Church in Granite Bay, CA. From 2011-2016, he attended and volunteered at Pathway Fellowship Church in Orangevale, CA, where he participated as a leader and board member for the church. Beginning at latest in 2018-present, Van Asch has attended Sunrise Community Church in Orangevale, California, where he serves in the men's ministry, marriage ministry, and as the chairman of the elder board.