Rossner worked as a secretary at various jobs while continuing to write. She gave up a job at "Scientific American" because her interest in the work interfered with her writing. She went to work instead in a real estate office (where she was "bored out of mind" and finished her first novel, "To the Precipice". This story of a young woman who married her way out of poverty was published by William Morrow in 1966 to positive reviews. As Thomas Lask presciently noted in his review for "The New York Times", "[Rossner is a lady we will hear from again."