Nicola is a USA Today, Borders and UK Bookscan bestselling author as well as being shortlisted twice for both the US Romance Writers of America RITA award and the UK Romantic Novelists' Association Romance Prize.

Nicola developed a passion for history at an early age and nurtured it through reading and watching BBC costume dramas with her grandmother. She went to school in the dower house of the stately home Harewood House in Yorkshire where she studied subjects as varied as Anglo Saxon and ballroom dancing. She went on to study Medieval History, graduated from London University with an honours degree and worked for many years in university administration, her final job being as an Assistant Academic Registrar before she gave it all up to be a full time author. Later she returned to college in Oxford to study for a Masters degree at Ruskin College. Her dissertation on heroes and hero myths was awarded a distinction. She was a speaker at the Oxford Literary Festival on the changing face of literary heroes during the 20th century.

Nicola has a "second life" as a guide and historian working for the National Trust at the beautiful seventeenth century hunting lodge, Ashdown House and she is a speaker on the history of Ashdown and the Craven family. She is also a member of the Romantic Novelists' Association and a mentor for their New Writers' Scheme, which critiques manuscripts for aspiring authors. Nicola has run several courses and workshops on creative writing and was Wiltshire Libraries Writer in Residence in 2008. She loves the excitement of historical research and the friendships that the romance writing community has brought her.