When she was 17, Heyer began a serial story to amuse her brother Boris, who suffered from a form of haemophilia and was often weak. Her father enjoyed listening to her story and asked her to prepare it for publication. His agent found a publisher for her book, and "The Black Moth", about the adventures of a young man who took responsibility for his brother's card-cheating, was issued in 1921. According to her biographer, Jane Aiken Hodge, the novel contained many of the elements that would become standard for Heyer's novels, the "saturnine male lead, the marriage in danger, the extravagant wife, and the group of idle, entertaining young men". The following year, one of her contemporary short stories, "A Proposal to Cicely", was published in "Happy Magazine".