Megan Lynch

[meganlynchauthor]

2018 #pitchwars bio

I’m Megan and I’m submitting Annie and the Virgin. It’s a magical realism YA complete at about 65k words.

Far from the Tree meets Sister Act...with robots.

Annie, a 17-year-old adoptee living in overcast Pittsburgh, wants to be famous for her future discoveries in robotics, not infamous for seeing crying statues, bearing the stigmata, or hearing the Virgin Mary speak to her in the bathroom. 

The Bishop sends her to a cloistered convent, where he hopes the sisters will either see her in ecstasy or gently suggest that she’s imagining things.  Annie and her best friend, Bea, struggle to make sense of the apparitions and wrestle with the impossibility of reality. She can’t deny her senses, but if she admits that the spiritual realm exists, she may risk losing the future she’s determined to have as a scientist. 

Visuals, you say? Why YES:

This is our heroine, Annie  

+ her bestie, Bea

What does Annie love? Her family, friends, and humanoid robots. She wants to go to Carnegie Mellon University and be a part of a small group of people who steer humanity into the future.

Aaaaaaand what’s stopping her? Supernatural religious phenomena. Special guest appearance by the Virgin Mary, who delivers cryptic messages about Annie’s past. 

Which causes her to question her identity in a big way. Why is she the person she is? How much does our experience account for the people we become? Who is in charge of her own future? 

The bishop wants people he trusts to see her having a vision, so he sends her here:

Note the lack of robots in the room. 

With the distractions of everyday life removed, Annie is forced to come face-to-face with the reality of the spiritual realm. 

Through the quiet of the convent, the good-naturedness of the sisters who live there, and the support of Bea and her new friends, Ross and Hank through a secret cell phone, Annie pieces together the supernatural puzzle, and the picture is a surprise to them all.

And come on--what’s a YA without a mandolin-building love interest? 

Yeah, I know that one’s not quite it. But do you know how hard it is to find a stock photo of a cute guy making a mandolin? 

More about me:

I have another series though the BEST small press in the universe, City Owl Press. My YA dystopian trilogy is called Children of the Uprising, and we have two books out and one in production: Unregistered, Unafraid, and Undone. (If you wanted to add them to your to-read list in Good Reads, I wouldn’t be mad about that: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39101758-unregistered, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39086648-unafraid)

I love City Owl Press and my flock of author owls. Love. Them. 

The acquiring editor there took a leap of faith and bought my manuscript, and asked if I could make a huge change. Like, a total re-write change. I made the change. It didn’t feel quite right, so I made another huge, total re-write change. The second one eventually become Unregistered. 

So I have a history of throwing my work into the fire and watching the phoenix rise from the ashes. I’ve seen the magic that it creates and I’m up for the challenge! This MS is a little different than my City Owl work, so I’m hoping to find someone in the pitch wars universe to help me out with it. 

At a high level, I’m submitting to Pitch Wars to expand my network of writerly folk. It’s fascinating to me that so much of the literary community is online and guess what guys: I want in. 

Already the pitch wars experience has been great! I’ve met some kindred spirit CPs through #PwPoePrompts and I’m so glad I did that. 

I’d also like to find a mentor who is passionate about creating characters who we both care deeply about, filling holes purposefully, and building suspense. I’ll be upfront with my strengths and (more importantly) weaknesses, and I’d like to work with someone who is honest about theirs, too, so we can find the best ways to compliment each other and breathe life into Annie’s story. 

I like to laugh and my voice is pretty straight-forward, I think. I appreciate the musicality of language but I don’t like to dance around and describe everything in so much detail that I lose the reader. I cut my teeth writing plays, so that’s factored into my style--think movement and snappy dialogue.

And as a non-writer, I’m a mom. My boys are one and three, so there’s a lot of laughing and a lot of poop in my life right now. My husband and I also own a business together, which we affectionately call our third child. 

Three random facts:

1.) I speak Mandarin, not fluently but well enough to have a conversation. I lived in China for two years and loved every minute of it.

2.) I had both of my boys at home. I love the concept of birth and studying the physical changes the process brings to women’s bodies and brains. 

3.) I'm a convert to Catholicism, and Mary is my patron saint! I’ve always loved researching for writing, but this novel stands out for me for that reason. 

Here I am on twitter: mlynchbooks

And my pinterest board for Annie and the Virgin: https://www.pinterest.com/lynch0288/annie-and-the-virgin/