Mari Donne
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.
“How am I supposed to know what you want when you never ask for anything? You just give all the time, you're always there, and when I ask, you give. You give even when I don't ask." Jamie's response to Mark's news”
“I loved sliding into him as he lay on his back so I could watch his face while we moved together. On those nights I could coax him out of the harsh world and its problems into a safe place inhabited by just the two of us. For a brief time, my arms really were strong enough to protect him. Nothing else had ever made me feel so powerful or righteous. Some people say gay sex is wrong because it has no purpose. I pity them, because they’ve clearly never found with another person what Jamie and I shared in those moments.”
“Locavore?" But before he could answer, I figured it out. "Someone who eats food produced locally? As opposed to locovore, someone who eats crazy people?”