Born in the mountains of rural Appalachia, he grew up in the coal mining town of Bluefield, West Virginia. With five brothers and five sisters, he was the tenth of eleven children. "If you ever watched the Walton's," he says,"then you probably have an idea of what my own childhood was like. I grew up in a loving family environment that was financially poor, but rich in love. We didn't have a lot, but we cherished what we had."

As a child, Nicholas dreamed of becoming a writer, and even aspired to be a journalist. As an undergraduate he was the Sports Editor for the college newspaper, and also the Editor for the college yearbook. Ultimately he chose a Business degree over a Journalism degree, but his passion for writing remained untouched.

Armed with a Bachelors Degree in Business Administration, he embarked on a successful career and moved to Florida where he worked for a wide range of companies: a distributor, a non-profit agency for the developmentally disabled, and an entertainment company. Later he was the co-owner of a successful television entertainment production company.

In 1996 he moved to Northern California, and presently resides in San Francisco. There he was the CFO for a software company and General Manager for a digital equipment distributor. It was also where he met his Ukrainian born wife Natasha.

The Silicon Valley and his own interaction on the internet gave him the inspiration for his first novel. "My first friends in California were people who I originally met on the net," he says. "I found the internet to be a great way to interact and to explore the world around me. I use it for shopping, for dinner reservations, for map directions, for job searches, for music, and for keeping in touch with friends and family. I also saw the inherent potential for good and evil that plays out every day in the cyber-world, and it was that ambiguity that I decided to write about. What if someone used the internet to stalk a victim? Or what if someone abused the power of the net? The consequences could be profound."

Nicholas is already working on his next novel, Harbour Island, which is about the dark side of the television entertainment business. Set in Tampa and Los Angeles, it is another suspense thriller which follows the rise and fall of a young entertainment executive.