Kring says he was just a dreamy, spacey kind of kid growing up in the working-class town of Pittsburg.

"I was a late-bloomer, just trying to figure out the meaning of my own life," Kring says. "I graduated from the only unaccredited high school in California. So I guess I didn't really graduate, at least officially."

He says he didn't do anything in high school that would have attracted much attention and because he couldn't qualify to go directly to a four-year university, he had to first attend junior college.

At Allan Hancock Junior College in Santa Maria, the closest thing he had to a theater experience was being the photographer for the college's Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts.

"I once had to walk across the stage and everything went black from the time I started the walk until I got to the other side of the stage," Kring says of his first and only experience treading the boards. "I don't even remember the name of the production."
He went on to UC Santa Barbara and then got into the prestigious USC Film School.

Despite a somewhat rocky start, Kring certainly made his mark on television, albeit in a slow, quiet kind of way. In 1982, he began a stint as a writer on "Knight Rider," graduating to such series as "Providence" before creating the solid series "Crossing Jordan."

"The truth is, I thought I was a huge success when I started making a living as a writer instead of waiting tables. There's not much else I can do besides writing. I can't even pound a nail," Kring says. "When I got my own show on the air, 'Crossing Jordan,' I thought I had died and hit the lottery already."