Erik Arneson is a prominent political staffer in Pennsylvania, serving as Chief of Staff for former Pennsylvania Senate Majority LeaderChip Brightbill and as Communications and Policy Director for current Majority Leader Dominic F. Pileggi. A graduate of Temple University, he studied radio, television, and film and worked at WRTI, the college's radio station. While in college, he developed a subscription-based play-by-mail fantasy professional wrestling league called the "Global Wrestling Federation." He then became a disc jockey at WJTL, a Lancaster-based Contemporary Christian radio station. In 1993, he became a reporter with the Lebanon Daily News. In 1996, he was hired by State Senator Chip Brightbill. The political newspaper The Insider said that he has "hitched his wagon to a rising star when Brightbill was a rank-and-file senator" as Brightbill rose to a leadership position within the Pennsylvania Senate. After Brightbill's defeat following the 2005 Pennsylvania General Assembly pay raise controversy, Arneson began working for the new Majority Leader, Dominic F. Pileggi. In 2003, he was named to the PoliticsPA "Sy Snyder's Power 50" list of politically influential personalities. In 2003, he was named to the PoliticsPA "Power 50" list. He was named to the PoliticsPA list of "PoliticsPA Rising Stars." In his spare time, Arneson edits the board/card games section on About.com and is an editor for the flash fiction webzine Shotgun Honey. His short story "The Murder of Ernest Trapnell" was published in the Fall 1998 issue of Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine and was nominated for a 1999 Derringer Award by the Short Mystery Fiction Society. His crime fiction short stories have also been published in the anthologies Otto Penzler's Kwik Krimes, Shotgun Honey Reloaded: Both Barrels Vol. 2 and Off the Record 2: At the Movies, the magazines NEEDLE: A Magazine of Noir and GRIFT, and the websites Shotgun Honey, Out of the Gutter Online, BEAT to a PULP and Near to the Knuckle.
