A priest with problems pre-teen.

[KiloVictor]

My priests melee frequently as well, especially while young.

Don't start with your quickest cast spell to lure them in.  Draw them with your longest casting spell.  At Jarulf's level it's smite.  Since they haven't aggroed you, you won't be interrupted with the long cast time.  As they are running to you, then cast mindblast with the shorter cast time since you'll have less time to cast, but while they are running it still gives you breathing room without having the cast be interrupted.  Now that they are on you, pop a pain, make sure inner fire isn't going to go down, hit a renew and melee to your heart's content.
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That's an important point, to open with your longest cast-time spell. I modify the casting order slightly to get a bit more damage up front by hitting SW:P immediately after the Smite, and then strafing to one side (faster than backing up) while I'm waiting for the 1-sec cooldown before I fire Mind Blast. If you are good with your positioning and start at max range, you can usually go Smite-SW:P-Mind Blast before they close on you for melee.

I'll usually toss Renew on myself at the start of the melee too, just so I can maximize the mana regen time to my next cast.

While you're meleeing and pain is doing all that damage for you, your mana will be regening so you can either fire off another offensive spell or your lesser heal or if things are really bad, a shield.  Using that setup, all my priests at that level have little to no downtime and if you get an add, you'll have enough mana to deal with the add as well.
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That's the other key thing for a low-level priest, the "five second rule" for mana regen. Once you stop casting, it takes five seconds for mana regeneration to start, and it continues until you *finish* casting your next spell -- time spent in the cast is still regeneration time.

That's why you want to group your casts, and that's why I add the Renew at the start of the melee. It's a bit more mana-efficient than using the shield, and it means I can go a few seconds longer in melee without casting, so I get a bit more mana regen. It works well; like Treesh, my low-level priest didn't have a lot of downtime.

If you're going with Shadow talents, getting the Spirit Tap talent as soon as possible makes a huge difference in downtime. I'd suggest it as the first talent if you're going to invest in Shadow at all.

The only other thing that I'd suggest is start grouping with people. You want to have a good list of other classes to group with, so best to start meeting the other players now. :)

Kv