Kit wrote his first short story when he was seven years old. When summer camp friend Laura and he started their florid medieval saga they called "The Story" Kit became a regular writer, with mostly wry humorous stories written with like-minded friends. Kit had a stint writing copy for web sites, and he published a nonfiction work in 1991 titles LOVING THE GODDESS WITHIN. Kit had been participating in a collaborative writing group called Ghostletters on Yahoogroups, at one point starting to rewrite "The Story" from an adult perspective. He realized he had a novel in all these tales and published it as AN INVOLUNTARY KING which he published independently in 2008. It was such a successful experience he decided to make historical novel writing a career. Since that book he has continued to write stories, articles, reviews, and more novels, most recently with GLBT themes. He is devoted to using historical fiction to solve the erasure of GLBT history. He became the editor of OUr Story: GLBTQ Historical Fiction for GLBT Bookshelf. Kit is transgender (FTM) and plans to apply the same plans to transgender fiction. He lives in the Seattle area with his husband and their doted upon cats.

For as long as he can remember, Michael Rupured has loved to write. Before he learned the alphabet, he filled page after page with rows of tiny little circles he now believes were his first novels and has been writing ever since. He grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, where he came out as a gay man at the age of twenty-one in the late 1970s. He considers it a miracle that he survived his wild and reckless twenties. By day, Michael is an academic. He develops and evaluates financial literacy programs for youth and adult audiences at the University of Georgia and is Assistant to the Dean for Family and Consumer Sciences Education. He’s received numerous awards and honors over the years and is a Distinguished Fellow of the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education. Michael is also an avid gardener, a runner, and because he loves it and rarely misses a class, is known locally as the Zumba King. In 2010, he joined the Athens Writers Workshop, which he credits for helping him transition from writing nonfiction to writing fiction. Michael writes gay romance thrillers that, in addition to entertaining the reader, highlight how far the gay rights movement has come in the last fifty years. A serial monogamist who is currently between relationships, Michael writes with his longhaired Chihuahua, Toodles, in his lap from his home in Athens, Georgia. To find out what Michael’s up to now, visit his blog: http://rupured.com, follow him on Twitter: @crotchetyman, or send an e-mail to mrupured@gmail.com.

As a self-described disciple of Henry David Thoreau, Robert B. Mc Diarmid is both a writer and an activist. He works very hard to live an uncomplicated life in complicated times. Robert resides in Palo Alto, CA with his husband David. An avid cyclist, he has participated several years in AIDS Lifecycle, a 550-mile bicycle ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles and the Friends for Life Bike Rally from Toronto to Montreal, Canada. In the spirit of giving back to the community, the entirety of his royalties are donated back to HIV/AIDS charities. Robert is the author of four books "The House of Wolves", "Brief Moments", "The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Getting Over Yourself" and "Milton and the Morning Monk." He can be found at http://www.robertmcdiarmid.com

Renae Kaye is a lover and hoarder of books who thinks libraries are devilish places because they make you give the books back. She consumed her first adult romance book at the tender age of thirteen and hasn’t stopped since. After years – and thousands of stories! – of not having book characters do what she wants, she decided she would write her own novel and found the characters still didn’t do what she wanted. She believes that the world is too complicated for her, so she loses herself in stories. The only thing that keeps her going are her children who are the delight of her life. Renae lives in Perth, Western Australia. She is a survivor of being the youngest in a large family and believes that laughter (and a good book) can cure anything. Which is why it's a pity laughter is sometimes scarce on the ground. You can contact her at renaekaye@iinet.net.au.

Okay, some stray books keeping finding their way back to my author profile... I did NOT write 'Cowgirl Romances' or 'High School Conditioning' just to be clear. I'm sure they're lovely books - just not mine! Questions arising from the publication of 'Ace': (1) It's a novel. It's fiction. No, the characters aren't behaving perfectly. Authors create imperfect characters to incite conflict and thus drama in their stories. If you find that concept eluding you, the more savage of my critics are right when they say you won't enjoy this book. If, on the other hand you enjoy complex characters living in real-world circumstances, have a read and let me know what you think! (2) On a more serious note: Asexuality (being 'Ace') is a spectrum, and can intersect with other orientations. It does not exclude feeling romantic or even some sexual attraction for members of the same gender or the opposite gender from yourself (or both). Sexuality in a lot of people is incredibly complex. For more information about this, here is a marvellous resource where your questions will be welcome: http://www.asexuality.org/en/ When you get there, tell them I sent you :)

Edmond Manning has always been fascinated by fiction: how ordinary words could be sculpted into heartfelt emotions, how heartfelt emotions could leave an imprint inside you stronger than the real world. Mr. Manning never felt worthy to seek publication until recently, when he accidentally stumbled into his own writer’s voice that fit perfectly, like his favorite skull-print, fuzzy jammies. He finally realized that he didn’t have to write like Charles Dickens or Armistead Maupin, two author heroes, and that perhaps his own fiction was juuuuuuust right, because it was his true voice, so he looked around the scrappy word kingdom that he created for himself and shouted, “I’M HOME!” He is now a writer. In addition to fiction, Edmond enjoys writing non-fiction on his blog, www.edmondmanning.com. When not writing, he can be found either picking raspberries in the back yard or eating panang curry in an overstuffed chair upstairs, reading comic books.

John Amory is and always will be a hopeless romantic, which he blames on watching too many episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210 growing up. He began writing stories and poems as a child, continuing through high school. He put writing on the backburner for a number of years, during which time he finished both Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees in English. In another life, John is a college professor, as well as an actor/director/choreographer/playwright whose work has been performed in New York City, Philadelphia, Princeton and elsewhere. Feel free to drop a message here or on Twitter to say hi!

Scott lives with his husband in a leafy Sacramento, California suburb, in a cute yellow house with a pair of pink flamingoes in the front yard. He has always been in the place between the here and now and the what could be. He started reading science fiction and fantasy at the tender age of nine, encouraged by his mother. But as he read the golden age classics and more modern works too, he started to wonder where all the queer people were. When Scott came out at 23, he decided he wanted to create the kinds of stories he couldn't find at the bookstore. If there weren't gay characters in his favorite genres, he would reimagine them, filling them with a diverse universe of characters. He'd remake them to his own ends, and if he was lucky enough, someone would even want to read them. Scott's brain works a little differently from most folks - he sees connections where others don't. Born an introvert, he learned how to reach outside himself and connect with other queer folks. Scott's fiction defies expectations, transforming traditional science fiction, fantasy, and contemporary worlds into something fresh and surprising. He also created both Queer Sci Fi and QueeRomance Ink with his husband Mark, and is an associate member of the Science Fiction Writer's Association (SFWA). His writing, both romance and genre fiction, brings a queer energy to his work, infusing them with love, beauty and strength and making them fly. He imagines how the world could be, and maybe changes the world that is, just a little. Scott was recognized as one of the top new gay authors in the 2017 Rainbow Awards, and his debut novel "Skythane" received two awards and an honorable mention.

Lillian Francis is an English writer who likes to dabble in many genres but always seems to return to the here and now. Their name may imply a grand dame in pink chiffon and lace, but Lillian is more at home in jeans, Converse, and the sort of T-shirts that often need explaining to the populous at large but will get a fist bump at Comic-Con. Lillian is a self-confessed geek who likes nothing more than settling down with a comic or a good book, except maybe writing. Given a notepad, pen, her Kindle, and an infinite supply of chocolate Hob Nobs and they can lose themself for weeks. Romance was never their reading matter of choice, so it came as a great surprise to all concerned, including themself, to discover a romance was exactly what they’d written, and not the rollicking spy adventure or cosy murder mystery they always assumed they’d write. Luckily there's always room for romance no matter what plot bunny chooses to bite them, so never say never to either of those stories appearing. Lillian lives in an imposing castle on a windswept desolate moor or in an elaborate shack on the edge of a beach somewhere, depending on their mood. And while they’d love for the heroes of their stories to either be chained up in the dungeon or wandering the shack serving drinks in nothing but skimpy barista aprons more often than not they are doing something far less erotic like running charity shops and shovelling elephant shit. Drawn to the ocean, although not in a Reginald Perrin sort of way, Lillian would love to own a camper van and to live by the sea.