Karen Sandler was born in Gardena, California to a
Jewish family, the daughter Samuel Stier and Barbara Joan (Russo) Stier, and raised nearby, in
Hawthorne. After receiving a B.A. in mathematics with a minor in physics in 1976 from
California State University, Dominguez Hills, Sandler worked as a software engineer at
Rockwell International in
Downey, California on the
Space Shuttle project. In 1978 she became a member of the technical staff at
Hughes Aircraft Company, working with communications satellites. In 1979, she completed her M.S. in computer science at
UCLA. She married her husband, Gary Sandler, in 1981, and later had two sons. The family moved from Southern to Northern California in 1993, at which time Sandler became a stay-at-home mom. While raising her two boys, Sandler wrote in her spare time, completing three romance novels before selling her first (
Just My Imagination) to
Kensington Books. One of the pioneers of
electronic publishing, Sandler saw her first
electronic book,
Eternity, published by Hard Shell Word Factory in 1998. She's a member of
Authors Guild, the
Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. ==Bibliography==