SpecRom Chats with Paula Guran of Juno Books
INTERVIEWER: Joyce Ellen Armond

It's a joy to read speculative stories featuring strong female protagonists and complex romantic relationships. I think it's a triumph that our stories are finding niches all over the literary spectrum. Prime Books/Wildside Press launched its JUNO imprint in 2006. JUNO editor Paula Guran thoughtfully answers some questions on striking a balance, finding a path, and overcoming different kinds of challenges in a quest to publish great stories both in and out of traditional genre expectations.

SPECROM: What path led you from being DarkEcho, horror diva, to Paula Guran, champion of female-centered and romantic speculative fiction?

PG: To me, it doesn't seem to be that much of a jump. I probably first heard the term "paranormal romance" within weeks of getting into doing a horror-writing workshop in 1994. (Naturally writers were being told it was "dead" just as they'd been told since 1975 there was no market for vampires.) And, as an "horror expert", I could see connections in paranormals to vampire fiction, the dark elements involved in much paranormal, and sexuality in horror in general. Plus, I edited and was interested in "dark erotica", so there was another overlap.

Directly, however, I've been reading paranormals for years. I received some as a freelance reviewer, but really had nowhere to review them. I sort of "noted" them as a trend and kept my eye on them. The real "education" came from reviewing for "Publishers Weekly". At one point or another, I seemed to start getting assigned about every "vampire romance" being published. I think most of the PW reviewers didn't "get" why these books were so popular and probably didn't want to review them. I probably wouldn't have thought to read them myself, or at least so many. But, since I was getting paid to do it...

Anyway, I tried to put myself in the place of the intended audience (rather than the lofty realm of effete literary snobism) and it was easy to see why they were popular. The best of them were good "yarns", usually humorous, had compelling characters, and were entertaining. Some were extremely flawed, but were still "good reads." Of course, some were dreadful and some of the dreadful ones sell quite well. It was also fascinating to see the level of explicit sex that was being accepted as "mainstream".

I probably have had a chance to read a much broader range of paranormals than most people in publishing. I read enough I was aware there WAS a range, for one thing.

As I've related elsewhere ( http://www.juno-books.com/paradox.html), when the idea to do a "paranormal romance" imprint came about for Wildside they really didn't have much of an idea of what the stuff was. No one was all that interested in definitions, so they just let me start compiling BEST NEW PARANORMAL ROMANCE and acquiring books for Juno.

SPECROM: What can a reader expect from a Juno Books title in terms of sf/f/h elements? Love stories? Female protagonists?

PG: Right now: Anything. Everything. In order to rapidly fill out the first two-thirds of the 2007 list (and with a limited budget) I really went after a lot of different types of books. Several of the first books were bought on the basis of a proposal and what finally resulted may not have been exactly what even the author expected at first.

The one consistent theme is that the emphasis is on a female protagonist. There are a couple of books with fairly equal male and female protagonists, but even there the tilt is toward the female if you were doing an analysis by percentage.

SPECROM: Why do you think love stories are so powerful when paired with science fiction, fantasy and/or horror?

PG: Love -- or at least human relationships -- are a pretty basic part of being human. You might even say THE basic. I mean, how could that NOT be powerful?

SPECROM: What have been your biggest rewards and challenges being an editor at Juno?

PG: I haven't had time to think about it! I guess I find it both rewarding and challenging to work with the writers. And, since many of them are in the very early stages of a career, I feel I am doing far more "real editing" than you would in many environments.

SPECROM: Are there any speculative or romantic elements in the stories you receive that can be cataloged as submission killers?

PG: The biggest problems have come from people who have different definitions than I do, so that's hard to say. I have received submissions that were way off-base -- male protags with a supporting female character, for instance, but it is still HIS story. Or women who are, essentially "evil" or stereotypical femme fatales.

Other than that, I think it is probably too early for me to rule out anything specific.

SPECROM: Juno guidelines suggest you are iffy on submissions with humor. Could you give any examples of stuff that makes you laugh, or alternatively, stuff you just don't think is funny, as a guide?

PG: Humor is hard for most people to write, so I guess I am cautious about encouraging it. Charlaine Harris and MaryJanice Davidson are, of course, prime examples of funny stuff.

But, more broadly, what do I laugh at? I love P. G. Wodehouse. Then there's Douglas Adams and Terry Prachett. As long as we are on Pratchett, let me mention Neil Gaiman & Pratchett's GOOD OMENS. And as long as we are on Gaiman he co-wrote a funny little book A WALKING TOUR OF THE SHAMBLES with Gene Wolfe (with illustrations by Gahan Wilson who is also wonderful). Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Roger Zelazny's A NIGHT IN LONESOME OCTOBER, Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books, Connie Willis's TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG...

SPECROM: Are there any facets of sf/f/h that you aren't seeing enough of at Juno? Anything high on your editorial wish list?

I am particularly interested in books similar to JADE TIGER, MATTERS OF THE BLOOD, CHASING SILVER, and DANCING WITH WEREWOLVES -- kick-ass heroines, contemporary fantasy, crossing with mystery, suspense, adventure, etc. with series potential.

I'm also looking for good fantasy -- well-crafted world, character-driven -- like AMBERLIGHT that just happens to feature a woman or women. I think some of our books, like BLOOD MAGIC, may surprise people because it is a decidedly female-oriented book, but there's nothing like "romance" really in it.

I'm still looking for what works best for us. I think we have some good books on our 2007 list that, through no fault of their own, are not the type of books we'll buy in the future simply because we are finding a more distinct focus.

I think there are a lot of cross-genre areas that aren't yet being explored that I hesitate to mention. I mean, let's face it, everyone is looking for something "new". I have some ideas I'd love to see writers develop. (That sort of development of "product" is common in comics and romance, of course.)

I also think if I start talking about them some savvy editor with lots more money than I have will suddenly have the same idea.

But really, I hate to talk about "new ideas" because I'm not sure that's what we are talking about anyway. There's a quote from an old "Cheap Truth" (Bruce Sterling's little pot of sometimes facetious ferment from the mid-80s): "The only thing we have to offer new...is our individual selves. The most revolutionary act we can perform, as writers, is to cross genres, graft idioms from other kinds of work onto the SF subject matter. Style IS content."

Content is more than style, of course, but if you start looking at the best new fantasy or SF, the new is the old cross-bred from more recent gene pools. So maybe that's what we are all looking for and perhaps that has a lot to do with those "ideas" of mine.

SPECROM: Your guidelines say that while Juno publishes books focused on female protagonists and their adventures, it's not a bad thing if the stories appeal to men, too. In that context, would you care to comment on this quote from the UK Independent, concerning the resurgence of the horror genre and the popularity of paranormal romance?

"Horror expert Steve Jones says that "Para Porn" represents a new genre, though he regards it disdainfully as women's fiction rather than horror. "It's aimed at a different audience to traditional horror," he says, with the hint of a sneer."

PG: I can't really place that quote in the context of men liking fantasy. I mean, obviously, men like fantasy.

But as for the quotation, I think Steve is right that paranormals are a new genre. If you've read the introduction to BEST NEW PARANORMAL ROMANCE, you'll know that's my current theory.

However, *if* he is calling *all* paranormals "porn" -- and that is a very poorly done, inaccurate article overall so you'd have to ask him -- then I don't think Steve has read much of it. If he had, I think he is too intelligent to call it all "porn". Jo Fletcher, a good friend of Steve's, is also quoted in that article. Jo is the editorial director at Gollancz and they are doing UK editions of Charlaine Harris, Kim Wilkins, and Elizabeth Vaughan, so Jo could probably give him some tips on what to read.

Jo's has referred to "paranormal porn" ( http://www.uksfbooknews.net/2006/11/29/gollancz-to-launch-raunchy-new-romancz-imprint/) herself, but I think, in context, you can see she did not apply it to ALL paranormals.

As for audience, who IS the "traditional horror audience"? If you look at horror as part of literature, then most everyone who reads reads some type of horror. So, sure, all publishers are trying to appeal. If you are talking about people who buy genre horror, there just aren't that many of them, so why would anyone be targeting them?

Mostly I hope he was misquoted as it would be sad for any horror professional to make the same mistake so many folks do with horror -- assume it is all worthless crap because they've run into some worthless-crap horror.

Besides, I've always learned a lot from Steve. He knows that a focus on women is a great marketing tool. I think, of all his anthologies, one of (if not *the*) best-selling is THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF VAMPIRE STORIES BY WOMEN -- a wide variety of stories unified by nothing but the authors' sex and the subject that appealed to more than the "traditional horror audience".

(Editor's Note: I hope he was misquoted as well. It's past time to bring down the higher walls separating the genres. We are, after all, storytellers together.)