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Welcome to the Website of Author

Vera Jane Cook & Olivia Hardy Ray

Inspired By History

I have been in love with literature for so long, in love with writers that bring music and mood to the written word. That is what gave birth to Olivia, I’m sure. It is just something about the Victorian Age that mesmerized me with all that atmosphere – fog and mist, tophats and hints of the supernatural.

My own southern history inspired me to write southern fiction but always being a Yankee at heart. My old country houses under Birch and Willow trees were the inspiration for my women’s fiction. The theater, of course, inspired my novel, Faith Among Friends and At the End of a Whisper, which will be published soon. I think we find what inspires us in life and then we absorb it, internalize it and are held captive by it forever.

Award Winning

Southern Fiction Novels

I am an award-winning hybrid author of southern and women’s Fiction The first novel I ever wrote, Dancing Backward In Paradise, won an Eric Hoffer Award for publishing excellence and an Indie Excellence Award for notable new fiction, 2007. The Story of Sassy Sweetwater and Dancing Backward in Paradise received 5 Star ForeWord Clarion Reviews and The Story of Sassy Sweetwater was named a finalist for the ForeWord Book of the Year Awards. I have published in ESL Magazine, Christopher Street Magazine and I have also written early childhood curriculum for Weekly Reader and McGraw Hill.
Eric Hoffer
Award
5 Star Foreword
Clarion Reviews
Finalist for the Foreword
Book of the Year Award

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Vera Jane Cook & Olivia Hardy Ray

Reviews

Blog

Book Reviews, film and television reviews, food and wine and general musings from within……

It’s Coming, Spring Maybe

It’s change, I think. Something deep in my conscious is flirting with me, telling me to hold on. When I feel an uncomfortable dark cloud hovering above my head, when other people’s opinions are bringing me to my knees and when I want to scream ‘shut up’ something stirs. It’s sort

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Beyond Turbulence

There is something so compelling about a turbulent sky. I don’t wish to avoid it or pray for its absence. It instills in me a powerful sense of being alive. It promises a brighter future, it teases me with its secrets. Turbulence is as old as time and as young as

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Elegance Gone

I was channel surfing the other day, which is something I find myself doing a lot, especially now during this awful pandemic.  I found a real gem on television called “Always at the Carlyle”.  Written and directed by Mathew Miele.  I was charmed and enchanted by this documentary of days gone

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The Darlings

The Darlings are drowning in illusions within the serenity and tranquility of a small southern town. Secrets shatter the everyday world of Deborah Darling as the truth evades her.