Her success began in 1991, this was because of when of her students came back to her with a crumpled up application from the Ebony magazine. She entered a short story contest that the student challenged her to do and she won five thousand dollars. Once she won this it gave her an idea in her teaching career. She was working on a novel she was writing for the young adults and she thought why not she try and get her book published. She sent out her first book Tears of a Tiger to twenty-five publishing companies. Twenty-four out of the twenty-five companies said no to this but one of them, the publisher Simon Pulse said yes to her manuscript. For the next year and a half while she was still teaching her students went through the publishing process
