Mande Matthews is a #1 international bestselling author of fantasy fiction and an award-winning artist. She read her gateway fantasy novel, The Sword of Shannara, at thirteen and has since been hooked on all things magical, birthing her life-long quest to create enchanted worlds with both words and images.  Mande lives in the realms of imagination where she occasionally surfaces to face the real world aided by her minions: a husband who plays the dog drum (the belly of their border collie), and a menagerie of furred, feathered and mostly magical friends.