In England, she is likely best known as the widow of Vivian Stanshall, musician, lead singer of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, songwriter, author, radio broadcaster and wit.

In April 2013, the first of her Sam Russo Mysteries was published, part of a noir series set in and around New York City in the late 1940s.

The young mother finally named the child "Pamela" when required to by the US Vital Records Office, then put her baby in foster care while she worked at many jobs during the last of the war years.

Within two years Kelly, briefly assuming care of her child, left New York to resettle in Marin County, California, near her older married sister, Rosemarie Anderson.

In Marin, Anderson cared for Pamela, until she left for Samoa, then to Texas with her own child and new husband, recently returned from World War II.

[5] Kelly met and married a US Navy sailor named Clifford Longfellow, claiming Pamela again at the age of four.

Over the next several years, the family moved frequently, as he was assigned to New York's Brooklyn Navy Yard, Hawaii's Pearl Harbor, Mare Island and Long Beach in California, and Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia.

Between duty stations, the family lived with her adopted grandfather, Lindsay Ray Longfellow, at his home in Larkspur, California.

[5] Determined to become a writer, she spent time with painters, poets, and musicians in Sausalito, and discovered what remained of the Beat Generation in North Beach.

[5] Not understanding her experience then and suffering panic attacks, she voluntarily entered the State Mental Institution at Napa, California.

In 1964 she acted in her only movie, Once a Thief (starring Alain Delon and directed by Ralph Nelson), in a part written for her by her close friend, the film's screenwriter Zekial Marko.

She moved to Montana, where she lived and worked for a year on a ranch on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation as a member of VISTA.

She also helped Stanshall with the script for the film version of Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, which starred Trevor Howard.

China Blues was subsequently translated into Spanish, Swedish, Hebrew, Czech, German, and optioned by Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown.

[13] Longfellow's second book Chasing Women (1993) was a comedy murder mystery set in New York City immediately after the Great Crash of 1929.

The process of attempting to adapt her novels as films taught Longfellow a great deal about the mainstream movie business.

From mid-1990, when she was very ill with pneumonia, until the death of her husband in March 1995, Longfellow divided her time between a small farm in Brattleboro, Vermont and Stanshall's flat in Muswell Hill, London.

This was a concert showcase of Stinkfoot's songs backed by a full band and selected cast members (including Nikki Lamborn and Vivian and Ki's daughter Silky Longfellow-Stanshall) plus Tony Slattery as narrator and singer.

[20] In 2012 the Horror Writers Association announced that Houdini Heart was on the shortlist for the Bram Stoker Award for "Outstanding Achievement in a Novel", 2011.

In early April 2013, Longfellow published her first three titles in a series of murder mysteries featuring Sam Russo, a Private Eye in 1940s Staten Island, New York.

In late 2017, one half of the team (now part of a production company called Faraway Films) sought out Chasing Women again, having never forgotten it.

In the process of optioning this book for the second time, Faraway Films discovered three other novels by Longfellow (China Blues, Walks Away Woman and Houdini Heart) and asked for and was granted a four-book deal.