Wilding grew up in Sydney and left school at the age of fifteen. She worked in a variety of office jobs including personal assistant, ran her own domestic products business from home, studied classical guitar, commercial art and acting and became a professional entertainer in the 1960s. She performed as a cabaret singer under the name 'Linda Gaye' before concentrating on writing in 1981. Wilding was the inaugural president of the Romance Writers of Australia organisation and published a number of very successful works in the romance genre. Her work has been translated into several languages including Japanese, Greek, French, Portuguese, and others. Her work has been published in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and New Zealand.