I’m so pleased to welcome author Angela Quarles today. Angela writes romantic comedy with a hint of the paranormal and witty steampunk. Like me, she’s a Browncoat (Firefly fan…love, love, love Nathan Fillion!) and the fact she mentions Star Trek and Monty Python in her blurb makes me like her even more! Welcome, Angela!

Please tell us a little about your story:

Sure thing! It’s BEER AND GROPING IN LAS VEGAS, an erotic geek romantic comedy with a touch of the paranormal by way of a wish-granting djinn. (Can I get one?) It’s a novelette, so if you’re looking for a quick but fun read, this might be just for you. Here’s the blurb:

Can a djinn and a magic slot machine bring two geeks together?

Riley McGregor is a geek trapped in a Good Ole Boy body and as owner of a microbrewery, smart chicks never look at him twice.

Rejected by a geek who wanted to “trade up,” Mirjam Linna would rather immerse herself in work than be the girlfriend-of-the-moment. Stranded in a Vegas hotel, she makes a wish—a night of hot sex with the man of her dreams. It’s granted. She agrees to dinner, but afterward, she’ll say thanks, but no thanks, and see what’s on the SyFy channel. But when they meet, they’re surprised to find they had a shared connection in their past. Sparks fly as these two learn to be in the moment, be themselves and find love.

Fans of Star Trek, Star Wars, Monty Python, Firefly and Marvin the Martian will enjoy this romantic comedy.

Tell us a little about what you are working on or have coming out?

I’m in the research/brainstorming phase for a sequel to MUST LOVE BREECHES, my time travel romance, and all I can say right now is that it will be another time travel set in the past. How’s that for vague? LOL. I don’t want to say more as my agent and I are still working that out and I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep. Meanwhile, I’m revising my NaNo draft from November, which is a meta fiction romance called NOT ANOTHER DARCY, which is about an indie bookstore owner who helps train literary manifestations that come to life in her store.

What makes a book a keeper?

Hmm, this is a multi-pronged answer for me. I’m assuming one you mean what I’d like to read over and over again, but I also just keep books because I love books and love having them around me, so pretty much any book I buy is going to be ‘kept’. But in the spirit of the question, I’ll pick up a book again if the characters have become like old friends and I want to relive the time with them. Also if I know I can learn/see more on subsequent readings. I’ve also reread some to better learn some techniques I’m working on.
Do you have any guilty pleasures?

Besides books? I’d probably say computer games. The guilt comes from the amount the game costs plus the hours and hours spent playing. I have an addictive personality and so I have now learned to “schedule” this time for when I can afford it time-wise. The last time I indulged was just after I signed with my agent—I felt like I deserved the break—and I spent a very fun week or so playing the dystopian steampunk game Dishonored. But back in the early days it wasn’t unusual for me to turn down social events and hole myself up for a weekend and just living and breathing a game to where the next thing I knew, the birds were chirping outside and a pallid light was infusing my room as the sun’s come up. But doing it occasionally I have justified in my mind, since it’s only about once or twice a year and it’s a great mechanism for me to wipe my mind clean.

If a movie was made based on your story, who would you cast as the hero and heroine?

For Riley McGregor in Beer and Groping in Las Vegas? Hmmm. Maybe a short-haired Joe Mangeniello.

For Mirjam, I’d pick my cousin, Lauren Benz Phillips currently with a small part on NBC’s Go On 🙂 In fact, a friend of mine thought the model on the cover looked like Lauren!

Where can readers find you on the web?

They can find me here: website | blog | twitter | facebook | goodreads | pinterest

Book can be found here: Amazon | B&N | ARe | BookStrand | trailer | goodreads | shelfari
Bio:

Angela works at an independent bookstore and lives in an historic house in the beautiful and quirky town of Mobile, AL, with her two matched gray cats, Darcy and Bingley. When she’s not writing, she enjoys the usual stuff like gardening, reading, hanging out, eating, drinking, chasing squirrels out of the walls and creating the occasional knitted scarf. She’s had a varied career, including website programming and directing a small local history museum.
She’s an admitted geek and is proud to be among the few but mighty Browncoats who watched Firefly the first night it aired. She was introduced to the wonderful world of science fiction by her father, by way of watching reruns of the original Star Trek in her tweens and later giving her a copy of Walter M. Miller Jr’s A Canticle for Leibowitz as a teenager. She hasn’t looked back since.
She has a B.A. in Anthropology and International Studies with a minor in German from Emory University, and a Masters in Heritage Preservation from Georgia State University. She was an exchange student to Finland in high school and studied abroad in Vienna one summer in college. She recently found representation with Maura Kye-Casella at Don Congdon, Assoc.