Here I go again...

Here at authonomy, we can't get enough of Miranda Dickinson. Her first book Fairytale of New York was discovered on authonomy, published by Avon and went on to sell well over 100,000 copies. Her second book Welcome to My World is all but ready and waiting in the wings, ready for release this November. Miranda will be blogging for us every fortnight, giving us the lowdown on life as an authonomist turned published author...

It’s been a while since I last blogged and a lot has been happening. I’ve been writing and editing my second novel, Welcome to My World, I’ve signed another three-book deal and I’ve become a bestseller in Turkey!!

This writing journey just keeps getting crazier and crazier. Last year I thought that, once I’d gone through the publishing process once, I would be used to it for the next time around. Not so! If anything, the process of writing and editing Welcome to My World has been scarier than it was with Fairytale of New York - because last time I didn’t really think anyone would buy my novel. This time, with so many people loving my first book, I’ve really felt the pressure to write something that won’t disappoint the lovely people who took a chance on me the first time round. The pressure is all my own doing, but I think that it’s actually helped me to write a better book. I feel so incredibly lucky to be able to write books, so I am determined to never take anything for granted about my writing.

It’s still utterly amazing to me that I have readers in the first place. It’s something I always dreamed about but, if I’m honest, I never thought it would happen for me. It’s only when I receive emails from people who have read Fairytale of New York that I realise it’s actually happening. This has been the best bit of the whole adventure by far. I will never, ever tire of hearing how something I wrote touched someone I’ll probably never meet. It’s such an immense privilege to be part of someone’s history – and better than all the other stuff put together.

The maddest thing has been discovering the vast array of weird and wonderful locations that Fairytale has been spotted in. A lady from my church was on holiday in the Cape Verdi Islands and met a woman by the pool reading my book; it’s been seen in a backpacker’s hostel in Australia, on the tube in London and in my Gran’s library in Ilkley; and my editor bumped into a couple of teenagers reading it on the train from Tokyo to Kyoto earlier this year! How mad is that?

One email I received recently was from a lady in Istanbul, who said that Fairytale was ‘on the bestseller shelves’ there. I wasn’t sure whether this was the English edition or the Turkish edition, so I checked with my editor. I knew that the rights had been sold to Turkey, Germany and Bulgaria, but as the German edition (Die wunderbare Welt die Rosie Duncan) isn’t published until December, I’d assumed that the Turkish edition wouldn’t be ready until early next year. But sure enough, New York Masali was published at the end of May and went into the Turkish top 20. Craziness…

The other big news was that Avon offered another three-book deal a couple of months ago. This took me completely by surprise – I had assumed that any kind of talk about future contracts wouldn’t take place until next year – so when it happened it was amazing. This means that I’ll be publishing one book a year to 2014 – incredible stuff. So far, I have enough ideas for five books – so any suggestions for book six are more than welcome!

I’ve just completed the final edit for Welcome to My World (more on those pesky edits next time…), so the novel is now winging its way to the typesetters. The cover design is fab – I’m chuffed to bits with it. Quite odd to now have a ‘brand’, but that’s one of the many things about this publishing adventure that is taking some getting used to…

Thank you to everyone for your ongoing support – it means so much. It was fab to meet lots of lovely Authonomites at the Festival of Writing in York earlier this year – hope to meet more of you soon!

That’s it for now – more next time…

You can pre-order Welcome to My World now!