Writing has been Karen Sandler's passion since the fourth grade when she vowed she would one day "be a writer." She took a circuitous route to the writing profession, however. She always wrote during her school years--poetry and short stories for the most part--but rather than major in English, she studied mathematics, physics and computer science. After earning a BA in math from a California state college and an MS in computer science from UCLA, Karen worked as a software engineer for nearly fifteen years.