It’s HERE!!!!

After a year of hard work, more edits than I care to remember and several sleepless nights, here is my new novel – all sparkly and shiny and utterly gorgeous!

The first copies arrived yesterday and it was an absolute thrill to open the package from HarperCollins to reveal the finished article. I love it. I was a little concerned after all the headaches and edits that I wouldn’t be as excited this year to see the books as I was when I first saw Fairytale of New York last year. But actually it was better.

I picked up the package from my local post office after I’d missed the delivery the day before – so had hardly slept the night before because I knew that they were sitting waiting for me to see them. After I’d collected the package, I hurried back to my car to open it. I wanted that moment to be just mine: a brief moment of selfishness after a year of working with a team of people to bring my book into being. And it was lovely.

I’m not ashamed to say that I am immensely proud of Welcome to My World. I’ve worked harder on this than I have on anything else in my life so far, and I hope it shows. More than anything, I know it’s a cracking story with a unique viewpoint and I hope that people will love it as much as I do.

This time, I have colour printing on the inside front cover, too (so exciting) – complete with my own branding strap-line! In my day job I have to write these kind of lines for a living, but it’s completely weird to have one written about me… So you can now officially ‘Escape with Miranda’ – and even though the wicked part of me would love to have a photo of me as a convict in a Prison Break jumpsuit accompanying that message, I’m actually quite chuffed about it!


But the best bit for me is that I now have a ‘By The Same Author’ page. It underlines how amazing this whole adventure in my life really is – something I need to remind myself of every day. I feel so incredibly lucky to be in the position of having created two novels and, with all the issues and hard work and worries aside, I know I am living the dream of being a published author. It proves that it is still possible for new authors to be published – despite all the doomsayers, economic downturn woes and concerns about the state of the publishing industry.

In my acknowledgements, I’ve thanked you – my authonomy chums – for your immense support and belief in me. And I’ve said, ‘Here’s to many more authonomy successes’ – because I truly believe that there are amazing books on the site that will be discovered and writers that will get to experience the tremendous honour of seeing their books for sale. Keep believing – because the next person writing here about the thrill of seeing their finished novel for the first time might be you…

M xx