Nicholas Angelo Pollotta Jr. was born on the 26th August, 1954, in Saddle Brook, New Jersey to Mildred and Nicholas Pollotta (Sr). His father owned a construction company where he grew up with his older sister, Lucia.

In high school a teacher, Peter D. DeLellis gave him a tattered paperback copy of the SF anthology, "The Worlds of If" by Robert P. Mills. That was the end of Nick's dream of becoming a mechanical engineer, and he immediately turned to writing.

At a local coffee house, The Grotto, he met stand-up comic, and life-long friend, Rich Overton, for whom he first wrote jokes, and eventually performed with on the nightclub stages of Manhattan. Under the stage name of 'Nick Smith', his own career as a comic ran just slightly less than four years when Nick departed from show biz after leaving the stage to physically throw a particularly annoying heckler out of a Brooklyn club. Moving to Philadelphia, he discovered fandom and (still using Nick Smith) wrote the hugely successful "Radio Adventures of Phil A. Delphia" to help promote the Philly in '86 bid for a WorldCon (sadly, they lost, anyway), as well as the semi-legendary "You Say…Yamato!" a satire on the Japanese cartoon show 'Starblazers' where Nick replaced the original dialogue with his own twisted material.

His first professional sale was a series of gaming cartoons to The Dragon magazine in 1985. Soon after that came his first book, a SF/Humor novel, "Illegal Aliens" , written in collaboration with Hugo Award winning cartoonist, Phil Foglio, and using his own name for the first time. This was closely followed by his first solo novel, "Bureau 13", which became a trilogy, and then he was off to the races.

Now with over 50 sold novels (under a wide variety of house names and pseudonyms), Pollotta has written articles about writing for "Mystery Scene" magazine, "Science Fiction Chronicle", and has humorous short stories in several anthologies; "How to Save the World" (DAW Books), "The Game's Afoot!" (St.Martins), "Time of the Vampire" (TSR Books) , and "Secret Societies" (DAW Books).

Pollotta still enjoys nothing better than performing live on stage. He has been married to Melissa Hutchings since 1995, and they have two cats, named Piewacket and Get-Off-Me-Ya-Bastard!

TRADE MARK:
Uses a lot of military ordinance in his SF and Fantasy novels.

Has a reoccurring character, "Abduhl Benny Hassan', in every one of his novels, often deeply hidden in the text, sometimes only a set of initials, but always there.

TRIVIA:
A fanatical golfer.
Almost became a lawyer.
Once spent a summer working on an Amish farm.
Is a Freemason.
Used to chew, but not smoke, a pipe.
Nearly died of toxic metal poisoning at the age of 13.
Worked as an armed courier for IBM for ten years, but never once got to shoot anybody.
Collects old radio programs.
His wife, Melissa Hutchings, was a wardrobe mistress for Six Flags Amusement Park.
Once got into a bar fight with Hells Angels, and spent the weekend in jail.
Still performs comedy live-on-stage at SF conventions with The Gunderson Corporation Radio Players.


FAVORITE AUTHORS:
Conrad Richter, Robert B Parker, Lois McMaster Bujold, Robert Heinlein, Oscar Wilde, Sir Walter Scott (of which he is a very distant relative)

FAVORITE COMEDY WRITER:
Richard Curtis (BlackAdder, Vicar of Dibley, etc.)

PERSONAL QUOTE:
"Without humor, there is no civilization."