One of her rejected screenplays became the basis for a popular series of novels about a family of private investigators, the Spellmans.

[1] During the 1990s she had many low-paying jobs, including work in a private investigation firm, and spent a lot of time writing and re-writing a Mob comedy called Plan B.

At that point, Lutz realized that "the story really needed more space to be told properly," and decided to write it as a novel.

[4] She began the novel while still living in California in 2004, then decided to move into a relative's family vacation home in upstate New York to work on it full-time.

[17] In 2011, Simon & Schuster published Heads You Lose, a stand-alone comic crime novel written by Lutz with her friend and former romantic partner David Hayward.