Jeannie Novak was born in San Diego, California. At the early age of 5, she began playing piano and taught herself how to read music. At age 8, she began taking piano lessons. In addition to composing, she loved sight-reading her teacher's popular sheet music and performing jazz variations on classical pieces at all her recitals. By age 12, she was a professional piano accompanist, studio musician, musical director, choreographer, and performer.

Jeannie continued to study music at UCSD and UCLA while supporting herself by working as a professional backup singer, piano instructor, and runway model. Wanting to learn more about the entertainment business behind-the-scenes, she also worked at a major record label, film studio, and television production company--in addition to participating in the UCLA Certificate Program in Film Scoring.

During her studies at UCLA, Jeannie became intrigued with human-computer communication and acquainted herself with the Internet. She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from UCLA with a BA in Mass Communication in 1992, earning highest honors in her department for her thesis, "Gender Role Representation in Toy Commercials" and recognition for her work in game design and collective behavior. Jeannie later graduated with honors with an MA in Communication Management from USC, where she focused on massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) as online distance learning applications.

In late 1993, Jeannie realized that the newly developed World Wide Web was destined to become a global promotion and delivery system--empowering independent creative professionals and allowing them to promote themselves, distribute their work, and make industry contacts. Early in 1994, she founded Kaleidospace, and she designed and programmed the Kspace web site. (The company and site were renamed Indiespace in 1999.) Now the home of over 750 independent artists, musicians, filmmakers, authors, and game developers, the site was the first to sell an independently-produced CD online -- and it was one of the first to promote and distribute interactive entertainment online.

Since launching Indiespace, Jeannie has written several books focusing on Internet technology, entertainment and game development: Creating Internet Entertainment, Internet World Guide to Maintaining & Updating Dynamic Web Sites, and Web Developer.com Guide to Producing Live Webcasts. Jeannie's fourth book, Game Development Essentials, was released in 2004 and is the first in a series of books that cover all aspects of the game industry. Jeannie is lead author and series editor of this series and will be releasing several books with co-authors over the next few years.

Inspired by a stargazing expedition to the mountains at the Star Hill Inn astronomers' retreat near Sapello, New Mexico, Jeannie assembled Reign of Fire--a solo piano CD collection of nocturne-like "Cinematic Classical" works that integrate the lives of individual stars with the stages of human experience. Reign of Fire was the first CD release from Indiespace Recordings.  One piece from the CD ("Mizar") is included in the Indiespace Recordings Compilation (V1). Jeannie is also a film composer and music supervisor for several independent films and launched Indiespace Music Licensing & Supervision in 1998.