Kara Allison Stambach majored in Film and minored in Screenwriting at Emerson Performing Arts College in Boston (and then Europe) from 1997 to 1999. She transferred to the University of Maryland at College Park, where she received her Bachelor of Arts in Film, Mythology, and Japanese in 2001. She graduated in 2004 from the Johns Hopkins University with a Master of Arts in Fiction Writing. Kara began her writing career as an Acquisitions Editorial Assistant at Lippincott, Williams, and Wilkins in Baltimore. She then spent almost three years as a Novels Editor at TOKYOPOP, Inc. in LA. Currently, she is a Game Designer and Editor at Icarus Studios in North Carolina. In her spare time, she volunteers at animal shelters, ballroom dances, fences saber, and studies ninjutsu. Kara is very grateful to her grandmother, for introducing her as a child to the magical realms bound within books, and to her mother, for teaching her the power of words.