Although she neither studied literature nor attended any writing programs, Lansens decided to attempt a noveleventually titled Rush Home Roadchronicling the relationship between a black grandmother in an Ontario trailer park and the abandoned white girl she adopts.  The writing went surprisingly fastthe first draft took her about a year.  I had read in some book that five to ten thousand dollars would be an average advance on a good book, Lansens recalls.  And that was if, as was my dream, it was published at all. 