Author Gloria Mallette, a winner in the USA Book News Best Book 2007 Awards for African American Fiction, was first published in 1995 by Holloway House with the title WHEN WE PRACTICE TO DECEIVE while she was employed part-time as a Federal Perkins Loan Coordinator at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York. However, by 2000, with five manuscripts and several rejection letters from major publishing houses in her file cabinet, with a nudge from her husband, Gloria stepped timidly out onto the self-publishing track.