Women's Fiction Author
"Character-driven stories from the heart of a rebel."
Books
Three parts love, two parts grit, the perfect recipe for making a family. Rae Green believes in the power of a good recipe, not only in the kitchen but in life as well. She invests in preparation, hard work, and independence — until the night a stranger calls to ask if she is willing to take custody of her two nieces. The children are virtual strangers since their drug-addled mother banished Rae four long years ago, but with her sister's incarceration, she agrees. Rae's well-ordered life goes into the toilet, accompanied by everything she thought she knew. With Melissa, a disturbed five-year-old, and newly adolescent Torey, the drama queen from hell, in tow, Rae stumbles into romance and a desperate need to heal her nieces from their past. And maybe, along the way, figure out how to heal herself as well.
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Jolene Gibson has been alone for a long, damn time, but she never noticed, what with keeping Gibson's Bait and Tackle going, reading those Tarot cards of hers, and making cures for folks. No one suspected she spent time with her secret boyfriend, Lyman Pettigrew, too. And, if asked, she couldn't have said why she kept messing with him. Neither Lyman or Jolene had an inkling of the changes coming their way — a miracle impacting them and everyone they knew. Welcome to Magnolia, Virginia, a sleepy little town about to wake up.
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It's 1953. Somehow, Tom talked Netty into marrying him two weeks after they meet. Three months later, instead of getting comfortable with each other confusion multiplies like mushrooms after a month of rain. Netty and Tom hope a cross-country trip to Tom's home in Lexington, Virginia, will change things, but what they don't know is another journey tags along; discovering what each has to learn before pledging themselves to another. With heart and humor, you're invited to join them.
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Being a weird duck can be challenging, but a long time ago, Gus quit apologizing. Always a whiz at computers, he's made a good life for himself and his cat. And except for a minor, three-year glitch with an ex-wife, he lives as he wants, or, at least until Enid came along. She was only a waif, nine years younger than his thirty-one years. So how did this wisp of a young woman drag him into a mystery at the mansion where she worked, involve him with three kids totally unrelated to either of them and bring in a cacophony of new voices so loud he couldn't hear himself think? For the first time in his life, Gus didn't know what he thought. Did that have something to do with Enid too?
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About
I have a checkered past. I may look like a grandmother, and it's true I'm crazy nuts about my grandkids, but something else lurks inside, and it's the heart of a rebel.
I'm also a bookworm, and since learning to read, nothing kept me from it. Marriage and becoming an unconventional mother raising two terrific kids, nor my many jobs or becoming an adult student and eventually earning a master's degree.
While searching for the right occupation, my reading slowly morphed into a writing hobby, which then became something approaching an addiction. Eventually, I succumbed to the only career I ever wanted and became a writer. Better late than never, I arrived.
Blog
Elvy Howard is my pen name — chosen half out of nerves, half out of the wild notion that my first book might make me famous. (Yes, delusions of grandeur. I own them.) I’d won second place in a Romance contest, which drew some attention, and that momentum became Love on the Half‑Shell. Half‑Shell is […]
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I’ve been a jack-of-all-trades my entire life. While flip-flopping between interests and obsessions with abandonment, reading and writing always took center stage in my life. When asked at age five what I wanted for a present, my heart’s dearest desire was a book I could read by myself. I’m getting to know this five-year-old and […]
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Newsletter
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Contact
Book clubs have enjoyed my company pre-pandemic and beyond. I'm told I'm funny, personable, and older women seem to have a good time with me. I'm also available for speaking events.
Available anywhere, anytime — connect from the comfort of your living room.
Happy to visit book clubs within a 50-mile radius of Powhatan, Virginia.
Available for panels, library events, and literary gatherings.