American-born Candice Proctor is the daughter of the late Lt Col Raymond L Proctor and his wife Bernadine Wegman Proctor. Her father was the head of Air Force Intelligence in Spain and Africa, and they lived in Spain for several years when Candice was a child, before moving to Oregon, USA. In 1975 she graduated Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude with a BA in Classics from the University of Idaho, then attended the American School of Classical Studies in Athens for a semester. She lived for a while in Sydney, New South Wales, in the late 1970s and worked on an archeological dig in Victoria, before travelling through Asia and working with the Winchester Rescue Archaeological Unit in Winchester, UK.
Proctor then travelled in Europe for six months, working with her father, before returning to the USA where she completed an MA and PhD in history. This involved a year of research in France (1981). Proctor taught in the US for a few years as a lecturer at the University of Idaho and was Assistant Professor at Midwestern University in Texas. She lived in Colorado and then in 1986 moved to the Middle East. It was at about this time that she began her writing career. In 1990 Proctor moved to Adelaide where she was a partner in two businesses; in 2000 she returned to the US to live.
As well as her fiction she wrote Women, Equality and the French Revolution (1990), based on her doctoral dissertation. Proctor has published numerous novels but only those with an Australian setting or character have been listed in AustLit.