Peter Adam Salomon Keyboard & Camera:

After yesterday’s wonderful guest post from debut author Angela Quarles the celebration of the release of her first book, BEER AND GROPING IN LAS VEGAS, continues with Angela stopping by to answer some questions.

PAS: What did you want to be when you grew up? Are you there yet?

AQ: Not close at all! But then again, it would’ve been impossible to be all the things I wanted to be. At any given time I wanted to be different things, but oddly they all started with A: Actor, Architect, Artist, Archaeologist, Astronaut. I’d actually gone to Emory because a recruiter had misquoted the 3/2 program they had with Georgia Tech. I’d thought I’d settled on architect, but I wasn’t sure and he said, no problem, you can do this program—three years at Emory, two at Tech and you’d have your degree; if you change your mind, you’ll be at a liberal arts school and have lots of choices. So I went. During orientation week, at the one for the 3/2 program we were asked to write on a piece of paper which program at Tech we wanted. The presenter said “Whoever wrote down architect, please see me afterward.” He broke the news that it wasn’t possible to do that yet—I had to either stay at Emory and not get an architecture degree, or plum transfer straight to Tech. Oh, I was so mad at Emory during those first weeks of freshman year. Of course, our senior year, they finally had the option available, but it was too late then. But I’d been right to stay at Emory, I think, because I wasn’t completely sold on the architect idea and I think a liberal arts education is a great way to go for college. I ended up majoring in International Studies and Anthropology with a minor in German. One of the other career paths I’d contemplated was going into the foreign service. After college, another was being a book editor for a publishing company (because a love of books has been a constant thread in my life), but being a writer wasn’t on my radar. I think that’s actually been beneficial now, because I didn’t have this big weight of a dream of Being A Writer held since childhood that frankly would have made me afraid to even start writing. Since I didn’t have this dream since I was little of writing the next Big American Novel, I was able to start on this journey without that burden.

PAS: If you could talk to the 15-year-old Angela for five minutes, what would you tell yourself?

AQ: Have more confidence in yourself, girl! Especially with guys! I didn’t get that easy confidence with guys/flirtation gene…

PAS: Define ‘geek girl romance writer’ for us, please.

AQ: Well, as you might have already guessed, I’m into lots of things. I can get quite obsessed about different topics or activities and be all into it. In other words, I geek out. So when I was trying to come up with a tagline that could encapsulate what to expect from my writing, I came up with that. My first release, BEER AND GROPING IN LAS VEGAS launching today, is more literal in that it’s a romantic comedy about two geeks finding love, with loads of geek references. However, it (hopefully) covers my other projects, where it might be time travel and Ada Lovelace (the world’s first computer programmer) I’m geeking out on, or steampunk, or Jane Austen. The tagline is about to get road tested, so we’ll see if it works

For more on Angela or her new book:

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