Life By Design: 
52 Lists, Questions, and Inspirations
for Finding Your Happiness

Has the busyness of living overtaken your most important goals and priorities? Do you grapple with the sense that something is missing? Is the passage of time tick-tocking loudly in your ears? It’s time to take stock and reconnect with who you really want to be — and what you really want to do.

Life By Design is an illustrated journal that assists you in finding or reconnecting with your purpose and creating the life you truly want. Built on a framework of design thinking, Life By Design is a practical, personal workbook that guides you through applying principles of design to intentional life choices.

From career to love to extracurricular pursuits, the exercises in this book help you decide how to innovate and iterate your way to a well-lived life. These aren’t easy questions. You’ll need to dig deep in order to get to what matters most.

By completing one list per week — or the whole workbook in a single weekend — you’ll map out a clear plan to achieve the happiness you deserve and desire.

Published by Castle Point Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2017.

The Power of Quiet:
An Inspirational Journal for Introverts

Revel in your inner introvert with a workbook for taking a step back, quelling the chaos, and embracing your creativity.

Spending quality time alone can help you recharge your batteries, excavate your true feelings, and enrich your everyday experience. This journal celebrates the importance of shutting out the chaos and taking time to reflect. Through a series of creative journaling prompts, The Power of Quiet takes you on a restorative journey of self-discovery.

• More than 100 questions to fill your days with quiet solitude and reflection.
• Encourages self-discovery and the celebration of your most introverted qualities.
• Creative exercises and engaging art help to inspire your natural creativity.

Published by Castle Point Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2018.

Press Pause:
A Journal for Self-Care, Intention,
and Slowing Down

We’re desperate to slow down. Each of us is allotted 168 hours each week, no matter our circumstances. These hours are a non-renewable resource that seems to slip through our fingers at an increasingly alarming rate. Rather than always doing more, how do we focus on the things that matter most? How do we navigate a world that seems to accelerate with every passing day?

Take time to reflect, revitalize, and find a little more time in your day. Press Pause guides you through a journey of self-care with inspiring quotations, journaling prompts, and beautiful artwork on every page.

With journaling prompts and explorations of practical matters as well as the intangible, Press Pause is your quiet, supportive ally in a journey to feeling more at peace, comfortable, authentic, intentional, and happy.

Published by Castle Point Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2018.

About the Author: Miranda Hersey is a writer and editor. She is the author of three illustrated life-design journals, Life By Design, The Power of Quiet, and Press Pause, as well as the forthcoming Midnight Meditations for Moms (April 2021), all published by Castle Point Books/St. Martin’s Press.

Her work has appeared in the Boston Globe, the Boston Globe Magazine, Wild Apples, Sun Magazine, and Bay Area Parent, among other print and online publications. Shortlisted for the Raymond Carver Short Fiction Award, in 2018 she was a finalist in the Rick DeMarinis Short Story Contest and the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards Competition. In 2019, she won the Rilla Askew Short Fiction Prize.

She lives on an island in the Puget Sound, happily overrun with books and animals.