For the past year or so, NINC bloggers have provided excellent insight and information on the writing life. My approach as a professional organizer turned novelist is to offer some tips on managing your “real” life so you have time for a “writing” life. Or, at least, avoid a nervous breakdown.

So let’s get to it.

One of the first things I learned as a professional organizer is the importance of making lists. Unfortunately, I am soooo not a ‘list” type of girl. I had convinced myself that making lists took away the “spontaneity” of life. The creativity. The fun.

It didn’t take long to realize that it is definitely not fun to waste precious writing time because I’ve forgotten for the third time to pick-up some necessity at the grocery store. Like toilet paper. Or treats for the soccer team.

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Welcome Paula Guran, the editor of Juno Books (www.juno-books.com), an imprint of Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. Juno features contemporary fantasy with female protagonists. Guran has contributed reviews, interviews, and articles to numerous professional publications. She’s also done some other stuff and won some awards.  Here’s what she had to say:

Let’s start by talking about Juno. How did it get started?

Diamond Comic Distributors expanded into book distribution a few years back and had picked up Prime Books and Wildside Press for national distribution. They were looking for ideas for another trade paperback imprint. Sean Wallace of Prime, John Betancourt of Wildside, and the crew at Diamond-headed by Kuo-Yu Liang-they thought this “paranormal romance” stuff was hot, not that any of them knew much about it. I got involved in early 2006 and things developed into the Juno Books imprint-which wasn’t paranormal romance but rather a broader idea: a variety of fantasy with female protagonists. Wildside/Prime had already acquired a few titles that would fit in with that idea. The plans were for at least 12 books-really they wanted even more at first-a year, so I was to acquire a lot very fast and for very little money.

Our first books came out in fall 2006.

Juno was experimental. We made mistakes, but we had the room to learn from them for a while. Sean oversaw the printing and production end of things. Stephen Segal, who’d actually been hired by Wildside to be managing editor of “Weird Tales” magazine, wound up designing our covers. Both of them worked out of the Wildside offices in Maryland. I’m in Akron, Ohio.

How many hats did you wear before the deal with Pocket?

Just about anything Sean and Steve didn’t do (although we always had each other to consult and also worked together on things): I acquired, edited, and, yes, typeset the books. We did have an outside copy editor. I did publicity, wrote copy, and built and maintained the Web site. I even designed the Juno logo. We were lucky enough to have Timothy Lantz doing many of the covers for us or using his ready-made art if it fit, so I even acted as art director in some respects. We all did marketing meetings with Diamond and the chain buyers.

What kinds of books did you buy?

Everything from reprints of some fantasy books from the eighties to romantic supernatural suspense to Christian fantasy to erotic fantasy to literary feminist novels…and everything in between.

How did Juno do?

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I understand that there are two types of editors:  those who take commas out, and those who put them in.  I seem to have the kind who take them out, happily excising the commas from my dependent clauses, or swapping them for semi-colons willy-nilly.  Most Americans don’t need to think about puncuation much after theyleave high school.  For the writer, it’s an integral part of our lives.

Perhaps because I came to fiction from poetry, I tend to hang upon the slightest thing rather than focus on the overall shape of the sentence.  I add a comma because I want a breath even when it’s not strictly neccessary.  Read more…

I have a new book about to land on bookshelves.  In fact, despite a pub date of July 1st, Happiness Key is already being sold at online booksellers and in a number of stores.   Beside the fact that this can impact an appearance on bestseller lists, it just speeds up a timetable already much too short.  I foolishly thought I had plenty of time to: 1) blog from my characters’ viewpoint and introduce them to my readers 2) promote the contest(s) associated with the novel  3) play with my character quiz on Facebook and 4) make sure my newsletters got to my readers in time to send them stampeding to their local bookstore en masse. 

And did I mention call my children, cook and clean, drag my stubborn beagle several miles a day, weed my struggling garden, pack for vacation, pay the bills, show up at church occasionally so that I, the minister’s wife, won’t be given a visitor’s name tag?  No more, you understand.

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