Short answers, pulled from the story.
John Eric Holmes (the 16th of February 1930 - the 20th of March 2010) was an American professor of neurology at the University of Southern California School of Medicine and a writer of fantasy and science fiction. He is best known as the editor of the Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set (1977), the introductory rulebook that brought the game to younger and mainstream audiences.
The Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set, published in 1977, was a revised and simplified version of the original Dungeons and Dragons rules by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. Holmes proposed the project to TSR to make the game accessible to younger players and the mass market, drawing on the original rules and three early supplements: Greyhawk, Blackmoor, and Eldritch Wizardry.
Holmes wrote two novels set in Edgar Rice Burroughs's fictional hollow-earth world of Pellucidar: Mahars of Pellucidar, which was authorized by the Burroughs estate, and Red Axe of Pellucidar, which was reportedly blocked by the same authority. Both were officially released by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. in 2022 in hardcover, paperback, Kindle, and audio CD.
Yes. Holmes served as a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps and fought for two years in Korea. His father, Wilfred "Jasper" Holmes, was a US Navy officer, making military service a shared thread across generations of the family.
Holmes created the wereshark monster for Dungeons and Dragons, first publishing it in Alarums and Excursions issue 13 in July 1976, before his Basic Set was released.
The stories were collected in 2017 in Tales of Peril: the Complete Boinger and Zereth Stories of John Eric Holmes, edited by Allan T. Grohe Jr and published by Black Blade Publishing. The collection included four previously published short stories and one previously unpublished tale.