Book Title: LOVE BITES
Character Name: Hanna Harvey
How would you describe your family or your childhood?
Do I have to?? Kidding! Mostly. Seeing as my dad was tragically un-alived in a super-sus car accident before I’d even hit puberty and my mother is probably mentioned in least five chapters of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, my Oma—grandma, if you don’t sprechen Deutsche, was my whole world. If only I hadn’t been so blinded by her exceptional potato salad that I failed to realize she kept a rolling pin by the kitchen door for more than just fending off her many would-be suitors.
What was your greatest talent?
Emotional support snack acquisition, without question.
Significant other?
Define significant. If we’re talking significant as in: I significantly want to launch myself at my annoyingly attractive, infuriatingly secretive, potentially non-human boss like a Velcro koala, then…yes?
Biggest challenge in relationships?
You mean other than the tendency to launch myself at probably paranormal paramours like a Velcro koala?
Where do you live?
In a perpetual state of regret about my late-night cupboard raids, mostly.
Do you have any enemies?
Overhead lighting, non-elastic waistbands, and at least one slightly unhinged entity harboring stalking tendencies and blood grudge.
How do you feel about the place where you are now? Is there something you are particularly attached to, or particularly repelled by, in this place?
Disappointed that my post-divorce converted Victorian crash pad in Georgetown, CO didn’t come with better locks. Attached to: the claw foot bathtub. Repelled by: the cold piles of cat vomit I seem to have an uncanny ability to find with my bare feet in the middle of the night. It’s a gift!
Do you have children, pets, both, or neither?
Three feline life partners of varying sass and maladaptive behaviors.
What do you do for a living?
Wrangle an endearingly ragged pack of artists as the recently hired assistant at an art gallery/oddities shop/danger den owned by Mark Abernathy.
Greatest disappointment?
That all of Abernathy’s shirts don’t come automatically sleeveless. Because: forearms. le sigh
Greatest source of joy?
Art. Also, a nice room temperature Cambozola cheese with orange fig spread and a good crostini.
What do you do to entertain yourself or have fun?
Wandering the dairy aisle of the local Whole Foods.
What is your greatest personal failing, in your view?
Oooh, that’s a toughie. There are so many to choose from! I’d say impulse control around snacks. Whether carbs, or a certain detective with hazel eyes and hair the color of brown sugar fudge.
What keeps you awake at night?
A generalized anxiety disorder. But also, keeping my cats in kibble if my new boss is indeed making his lady friends disappear.
What is the most pressing problem you have at the moment?
See Question #14.
Is there something that you need or want that you don’t have? For yourself or for someone important to you?
An unlimited cheese budget, several weeks to dissociate while watching Golden Girls, and a job that doesn’t require regularly manufacturing alibis.
Why don’t you have it? What is in the way?
Luck? Fate? The stars? Or maybe just the Universe deciding that bountiful charcuterie and two delicious examples of the (maybe) human male species is far too much for a girl to ask…
LOVE BITES by Cynthia St. Aubin
Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery #1
Love Bites is the first book in a snarky supernatural mystery series with a heroine who has her priorities in order: Solve the murder, save the day, but most importantly—feed her cats.
A girl’s gotta eat—and so do her three cats. Recently divorced art history grad student Hanna Harvey has just fibbed her way into a job as the assistant to dangerously drool-worthy art gallery owner Mark Abernathy.
For Hanna, working in the field she desperately loves provides the perfect opportunity to begin putting her life back together. Soon her cheese budget is in the black and her feline life partners are no longer eyeing her like a six-foot can of Fancy Feast.
But when her boss’s lady friends start turning up dead, Hanna finds herself in the crosshairs of a murder investigation. Even worse, hunky homicide detective James Morrison fears hers might be the next body he discovers.
With the “help” of the gallery’s quirky cast of resident artists, Hanna will have to hunt down the truth about Abernathy’s dark secret—before it hunts her.
Mystery Woman Sleuth | Romance Paranormal | Romance Fantasy [Tor Books, On Sale: September 9, 2025, Trade Paperback / e-Book (reprint), ISBN: 9781250407115 / ]
Buy LOVE BITES: Amazon.com |Kindle Unlimited| BN.com | Powell’s Books | Books-A-Million | Indie BookShops | Ripped Bodice | Walmart.com | Target.com | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR
About Cynthia St. Aubin
Cynthia St. Aubin wrote her first play at age eight and made her brothers perform it for the admission price of gum wrappers. A steal, considering she provided the wrappers in advance. Though her early work debuted to mixed reviews, she never quite gave up on the writing thing, even while earning a mostly useless master’s degree in art history and taking her turn as a cube monkey in the corporate warren. Because the voices in her head kept talking to her, and they discourage drinking at work, she started writing instead. When she’s not standing in front of the fridge eating cheese, she’s hard at work figuring out which mythological, art historical, or paranormal friends to play with next. She lives in Colorado with the love of her life and three surly cats.
No Comments
Comments are closed.