about justine
Justine Manzano is the geeky author of geeky YA novels. Her fiction is tough on the outside and sweet on the inside, like a hard candy with a gooey center, delivered with sass and snark. A freelance editor, she also serves as an Editor-in-Residence at WriteHive. A proud Bronxite, born and raised, Justine lives there with her writer/editor husband, Ismael, her amazing son, and a troublemaking puppy named Trooper. She and her husband often spend nights sharing the couch as they watch television, laptop to laptop, communicating in that nearly telepathic fashion that comes with years of marriage. Together, they work to raise their own padawan in the way of the geek. She can usually be found at all the usual social media haunts. If you’ve looked in all these places and can’t find her, she’s probably off reading fanfiction. She’ll be back soon.
When she’s not flailing about her favorite characters and actors, Justine struggles to create her own characters with the hopes someone will flail about them one day. Her award winning debut novel, The Order of the Key, a Young Adult Urban Fantasy, has been called “Season 5 of Buffy meets the X-Men,” and Justine will likely live happily off of that description alone for the rest of her days. Its sequel, The Skeleton Key, was released in April 2022. Its prequel novella, Fuel & Fire, was released in April 2023. The final book of the Keys & Guardians series, Keys of the Dawn, was released in February 2024.
Justine’s award winning sophomore novel, Never Say Never, a Young Adult Contemporary Romance with a splash of Fantasy, is an IndiesToday and IndieReader Recommended read. Readers have said it is Raven from Teen Titans if she was stuck in a Rom Com, another badge of honor she wears proudly.
Justine prides herself on writing what she calls “Weird Stuff”. She has always believed that it is the stranger subject matter that combines great storytelling with a great message. And that’s what she aims to achieve. Her work is not limited to novels, and links to her shorter works can be found here. She received the Editor’s Choice Award for her work in Best New Writing 2017. She has also been known to spin a fanfiction yarn here and there, and is even an award winning fanfiction writer!
As an editor, Justine has worked in acquisitions and as both a content and line editor at small publishing companies, as a reader in YA lit mags, and in the corporate sector, helping people grammar it up in their legal briefs. She was one of the founding members of The Inkwell Council, an editing trio that ran a monthly lottery and provided the winner a free edit of their first three chapters. She then moved on to join the CraftQuest team as an editor and as one of the panelists for their livestreamed writing advice videos. Most recently she has worked as an editor for Writer In Motion, Query Connection, The Young Inklings Society, and as an Editor-in-Residence at WriteHive. She and her fellow WriteHive editors now host The Word Nerd Cafe podcast.
Her freelance editing service is Manzano Editorial. She is a member of SFWA, The Author’s Guild, SCBWI, EFA, NWU, iPubHub, and the LGBTQ+ Editors Association. Her complete writing and editing resume can be found at J. Manzano Writer_Editor Resume.
Justine is a proud advocate for equal rights, acceptance, and safety for the communities she is a part of: women, the LGBTQ+ community, and the disabled and neurodiverse communities. This has led her to become the Director of Operations for the I Know Why She Stayed Initiative, an initiative that aims to provide tools and materials to create awareness about the link between domestic and financial abuse.
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