Nicole grew up in Upper Gul-lies, New-found-land, with her five sib-lings and par-ents, John and Nancy Lun-dri-gan. She attended Queen Eliz-a-beth Regional High School in nearby Fox-trap. Dur-ing her final year at QERHS, she enjoyed a semes-ter of school in Amiens, France where she lived with a Baron and Baroness in the Chateau de Prouzel.

After high school, Nicole moved to Fred-er-ic-ton, and earned a BSc from the Uni-ver-sity of New Brunswick. The sum-mer after grad-u-a-tion, she resided in the small com-mu-nity of Morawhanna, Guyana, where she helped to rebuild a school-house, vol-un-teered with a doc-tor bring-ing health-care to remote vil-lages, and assisted in a sea tur-tle con-ser-va-tion pro-gram on Shell Beach. Upon return-ing to Canada, Nicole attended Saint Mary's Uni-ver-sity (Hal-i-fax) and received a BA (hon-ours) in anthro-pol-ogy. Dur-ing her time in Hal-i-fax, she worked on an archae-o-log-i-cal dig which involved the removal and analy-sis of skele-tal remains beneath the Lit-tle Dutch Church. In 1996, she moved to Ontario, and com-pleted an MSc from the Uni-ver-sity of Toronto with a focus on phys-i-cal anthro-pol-ogy. Her main area of inter-est was under-stand-ing the con-di-tions affect-ing the degra-da-tion of DNA in post-mortem skele-tal remains.

Shortly after grad-u-a-tion, she began free-lance writ-ing and her work has appeared in a vari-ety of pub-li-ca-tions, includ-ing Reader's Digest, Moth-er-ing: The Nat-ural Fam-i