Christina Engela is an author and emerging academic from South Africa with a rich background of lived experiences, including growing up in apartheid South Africa, military service, becoming a computer technician, being transgender, and expressing herself through human rights advocacy and in mixed media, especially writing. She jokingly calls herself a “Jacqueline-of-all-trades”.
Born in 1973, Christina has (so far) been a lifelong resident of Nelson Mandela Bay, a coastal metropolis known interchangeably as “the Detroit of South Africa”, “the Windy City” – or, as it was once famously described by a colorful radio DJ: “the armpit of South Africa”. There she lives in a part-time haunted Victorian, where her wife Kay and four happy kitties compete for her attention and distract her from writing, but for all the right reasons.
Her lifetime of oddly disturbing interests and diverse accumulated experiences have produced a mixed portfolio of over 40 books in fiction and nonfiction, two YouTube channels – and seven papers in the field of Religious Studies that influenced scholarly perceptions of Satanism and the “Satanic Panic” in South Africa to the extent that she received Recognition for Prior Learning (RPL) – and a study bursary from the University of the Western Cape through the Desmond Tutu Center for Religion and Social Justice. In March 2025 Christina embarked on her Ph.D. journey. In spite of her scholarly achievements, her first love remains storytelling, and she looks forward to resuming that thread of her life once she has completed her studies.
Books
Christina Engela started writing in 1976, at about the same time she could first hold a wax crayon. Her dad was a writer, and as the old saying goes, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree! After finishing her first novel in 2003, she encountered numerous obstacles in the cliquey and essentially closed traditional publishing industry – and took matters into her own hands by venturing into indie publishing. Since 2005 however, she has published over 40 titles in fiction and non-fiction, through a combination of self-publishing, and at times, through various traditional small presses. In 2022, after a range of experiences in publishing – both good and bad – her last publisher, Brandon Mullins (CEO of Moon Books Publishing) suddenly died, and she once again struck out as 100% indie. Her books are available as eBooks and paperbacks, with some titles also available as audiobooks through Peever Publishing on Audible.
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NON-FICTION:
What The Critics Say
“Christina Engela is a South African editor and author of horror, fantasy and science fiction novels. Her books are never short of suspense, adventure and humor, while her colorful characters and thought-provoking settings take readers into another world, making her one of the most gifted and creative storytellers. A firm supporter of the LGBT community, Christina believes that Sexual and Gender Minority characters aren’t reflected enough by authors due to a number of reasons. As such, Christina’s writing isn’t stereotypical, and her characters aren’t stereotypes, regardless of their sexuality or gender.” – Booksradar, June 21, 2021.
“Overall I have very much enjoyed reading the books in this series. They are fun, quirky, imaginative and their biggest quality is that the style and the way they read is very much accessible to pretty much anyone. I highly recommend the Quantum series to everyone! 5 Stars – Fun and powerful. Have you read the Quantum Series? You should!” – Lee Hall, UK writer & reviewer, January 6, 2020.
“Like many of us, Engela has been frustrated with the representation of LGBT characters in mainstream fiction, where gay characters are often nothing more than superficially portrayed plot devices or worse, the object of satire and ridicule. Engela’s work breaks the trend. In her stories, a gay man may be the anti-hero or villain, but not because he is gay. A transwoman may fall in love with a cisgender straight man, and their relationship doesn’t revolve around her gender identity. LGBT characters, in Engela’s work, follow narrative arcs that occasionally intersect with their sexual or gender identity, but are more often driven by the human characteristics shared by all people—hope, fear, ambition, humor, and love.” – Focus Mid-South Magazine, 2017.
How to pronounce “Engela”? (Click here to listen to the German pronunciation.)
Christina’s books are available in Kindle/eBook, paperback and audiobook formats here:
Catch me on my 
channel!
