Mari Donne was born and raised in New Jersey, but after more than 20 years in the Midwest has finally learned to relax and enjoy the slower pace of life. Although the appeal of tractor pulls still escapes her, she loves many other things about her adopted state of Iowa, not least that it is the first in flyover country to legalize same-sex marriage. Fascinated by books and stories from an early age, Mari always wanted to be a novelist, but fell victim to the dreaded demon of Practicality. She worried that years of producing mundane, reality-based prose in an office environment would make it impossible to go back to fiction writing. But when she finally tried, she found it immensely liberating to be allowed to just make stuff up. Even more thrilling was the discovery that fantasizing about hot men was actually part of the job description instead of just a way to survive boring meetings. Mari and her husband have two grown children and are empty-nesting happily together.

Ari McKay is the professional pseudonym for Arionrhod and McKay, who collaborate on original m/m fiction. They began writing together in 2004 and finished their first original full length novel in 2011. Recently, they’ve begun collaborating on designing and creating costumes to wear and compete in at Sci Fi conventions, and they share a love of yarn and cake. Arionrhod is an avid costumer, knitter, and all-around craft fiend, as well as a professional systems engineer. Mother of two human children and two dachshunds who think they are human, she is a voracious reader with wildly eclectic tastes, devouring romance novels, military science fiction, horror stories and Shakespeare with equal glee. She is currently preparing for the zombie apocalypse. McKay is an English teacher who has been writing for one reason or another most of her life. She also enjoys knitting, reading, cooking, and playing video games. She has been known to knit in public. Given she has the survival skills of a gnat, she’s relying on Arionrhod to help her survive the zombie apocalypse.

Having been, at various times and under different names, a minister’s daughter, a computer programmer, the author of paranormal mysteries, a game designer, an organic farmer, an avid hiker, and a profound sleeper, Eli is happily embarking on yet another incarnation as a m/m romance author. As an addicted reader of such, she is tinkled pink when an author manages to combine literary merit, vast stores of humor, melting hotness and eye-dabbing sweetness into one story. She promises to strive to achieve most of that most of the time. She currently lives on a farm in Pennsylvania with her husband, three bulldogs, three cows and six chickens. All of them (except for the husband) are female, hence explaining the naked men that have taken up residence in her latest fiction writing. Her website in www.elieaston.com You can email her at eli@elieaston.com COMING SOON: See what's in the pipeline here: http://elieaston.com/work-in-progress/

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.

Danni Keane lives in the depths of English suburbia, where she likes to divide her time equally between writing, daydreaming and napping. Having never really grown up, Danni fits right in at her day job, working with children. She spends her days avidly listening to the whimsical imaginings of five-year-olds, and then rushes home to shamelessly plagiarise their ideas. However, she has yet to write a story about an exploding ghost banana. Maybe one day... She loves to read and write all different types of stories, but her favourite characters usually have one thing in common: they are ordinary people with extraordinary dreams.