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 my ode to the girls I worked with in Juvenile Justice — girls I tried desperately to help in a system where helping them was nearly impossible. I poured my heart into that job, and I know a few of them won’t forget me. I’ll never forget them. The novel is the most commercial of my four books (it was edited within an inch of its life), and it’s the one readers tend to love most.
When my small publisher went out of business, I found myself on my own — creatively and personally. In more ways than one.
My second book, Lady Guadalupe and the Sno‑Kone Hut, grew out of heartbreak and betrayal. After I was published, the critique group I’d been part of for over ten years turned against me. These were people with advanced degrees like I’d scraped together later in life, people I’d worked hard to stand shoulder‑to‑shoulder with. Their hostility was subtle, intellectualized, and devastating. We had been writing a collaborative novel as a group, and I ended up finishing it alone. My heroine, Jolene, reads Tarot cards and lives in mysticism — the only way I could process the cruelty of people who should have known better. The book became my manifesto on short‑sighted unkindness.
My third novel, Bounty: A Love Story, is an old‑fashioned romance set in 1953. I’ve always been fascinated by transformation and identity — people becoming someone new — and that fascination shaped the story, though I can’t tell you exactly where the idea came from. Readers say the beginning is slow, but if you push past those early chapters, you’ll fall in love with it. I painted the cover myself. In fact, I painted all my covers except Lady Guadalupe.
My final book (so far), Lonely Man With Fat Cat Seeks Suitable Girlfriend, is my least commercially popular — and the one I adore without reservation. I wrote it while recovering from a concussion, and I don’t care what anyone says: I love this story. Some claim it lacks tension; I think it’s a lark. It might be the coziest cozy on the market if you enjoy a lazy, laugh‑out‑loud tale with characters who feel like old friends.