Miranda Lee author

Miranda Lee is a best-selling Harlequin Mills and Boon author. Born in New South Wales, Australia, she is the youngest of four children who worked as a computer programmer before she got married and had three children. Her real name is Maureen Lee, but doesn't use it as there is already an author by that name.

Her older sister, the Mills and Boon author Emma Darcy, encouraged her to start writing romances. Success didn't come immediately - her first book wasn't published till 1990, and came after many false starts. However, once she had cracked writing, she soon became a massive success, publishing over 70 novels. She is one of Mills * Boon's most popular authors. She's a natural writer - her books flow and are page-turners. Her business grew to the extent where her husband gave up his job to manage their household and the business side of things while Miranda wrote.

Miranda Lee novels are all set in Australia, usually in urban settings, and tend to be very sexy and fast-paced - she writes for the Harlequin "presents" imprint, which features contemporary romance. Occasionally her books get a little too raunchy and verge on erotic fiction rather than romantic fiction. When she gets it right however, her books are enormous fun to read as they don't follow any of the cliches you often find in romance novels. She has also written for the more sexual Mills and Boon imprint "Blaze".

She is clearly aiming to write for the more erotic end of the Mills and Boon market though - an article in the Guardian in 2002 quotes her as saying that 'As long as I've been writing romances the more erotic writers have sold more,'

She doesn't have a website or a blog - she says that maintaining it would take up time she would rather spend writing novels. Click here to read a selection of reviews of Miranda Lee books.

August 5 2013