Top Honor for Time-Twisting Romance

With a tongue-in-cheek style and a decidedly nerdy bent, romance novelist Angela Quarles 89C is shaking up the genre with a mounting number of writing awards and a growing international fan base. In July, her third novel, Must Love Chainmail, won her a 2016 RITA award in the Paranormal Romance division from the Romance Writers of America, the organization’s highest award of distinction in published romance.

Quarles is only the second self-published author to win a RITA and the first self-published author to best renowned romance novelist Nora Roberts, who was also a finalist in the Paranormal category.

In each novel, Quarles includes a paranormal aspect, a what-if element “that can’t actually happen in real life.” Her ideal reader is “Someone who loves history and its nuances, but also doesn’t mind the occasional jaunt into modern times,” she says. “Above all, my reader has a fun, quirky sense of humor.”

Quarles earned her Emory degree in anthropology and international studies with a minor in German, followed by a master’s degree in heritage preservation from Georgia State University.

A self-professed technology and research geek with a talent for understanding history and human nature, Quarles published an e-novella, Beer and Groping in Las Vegas, in 2012, and self-published her debut time-travel romance novel, Must Love Breeches, in late 2014 in both e-book and paperback format. The book rose to the USAToday best-seller list and was followed by a quirky steampunk novel Steam Me Up, Rawley, which earned recognition by Library Journal as the Best Self-Published Romance of 2015. Her latest novel, Must Love Kilts, was released as an e-book in July.