Janet Evanovich — American Writer born on April 22, 1943,

Janet Evanovich is an American writer. She began her career writing short contemporary romance novels under the pen name Steffie Hall, but gained fame authoring a series of contemporary mysteries featuring Stephanie Plum, a former lingerie seller from Trenton, New Jersey, who becomes a bounty hunter to make ends meet after losing her job. The novels in this series have been on the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Amazon bestseller lists. Evanovich has had her last seventeen Plums debut at #1 on the NY Times Best Sellers list and eleven of them have hit #1 on USA Today Best-Selling Books list. She has over two hundred million books in print worldwide and is translated into over 40 languages... (wikipedia)

I took all of my rejection letters - there must have been thousands of them in a huge box - and I went out on the curb and burned them all, crying.
The 'Barnaby' books were always intended to be graphic novels.
Since I can barely write two books a year the best solution seems to be co-author projects. My goal isn't to get another writer to clone me... it's more to produce a book that shares my vision of positive, fun entertainment.
I struggled to learn basic skills, get a grip on markets, find my own unique voice, create story lines and come up to speed with the industry. I struggled for ten years before having any success.
If you want to cry, you're not going to like my books.