Posts
Name: Mandi M. Lynch
So here I go, having to sum up my life in a nutshell. It's hard to do, let me tell you.
Right now, I'm loving life. I'm dating, for the first time in a long time, and attached to a great guy who loves me for me. I often wonder how it's affected my writing. In some ways it's not hard to tell. I mean, I haven't written any angst-filled poetry in months, and the last time I tried, I just kept staring at blank paper until I gave up.
But there's a flip side. I mean, every aspect of my life seems to be going right. In October, I won the Music City Mythos contest put on by the Nashville Writers Meetup Group, which guarantees me a place of honor in the anthology when it comes out in late summer of 2011. Since then, I've been published several times and accepted for publication in several other publications set to come out early this year. These include my first paid submission and my first accepted poem. I'm finally at a place where my larger projects seem plausible.
I've come a long way from the story I eeked out on a manual typewriter and illustrated in crayon when I was six. Validation, and it only took 22 years of writing to get this far. Hey, at least my cats loved me along the way.
My other creative endeavors include photography and just about any craft you can think of. I love to paint, cross stitch, and am taking up knitting scarves. I love how you can start with nothing and turn it into something amazing.
As for the photography - I love taking something natural and finding the architectural elements of it. To contrast, sometimes I take something so obviously man made and find the organic elements. It's either composition or decomposition, depending on what side you approach it from. Either way, it's awesome. It's beauty in the every day, a way to turn your head sideways and see a whole new world.
I guess not everything I do is creative. I love history, so I became a docent at the Parthenon. Nashville has the world's only full scale replica, and if you visit us instead of Athens, you'll see two things you can't see there - our building has a roof, and the statue of Athena, all 42 feet of her. It's awesome to be there and talk about what used to be.
Also, I'm an avid geocacher. For those not in the know, it's like high tech treasure hunting for techno-geeks. I'm the biggest geek I know. But it's fun, it gets me outdoors, and it takes me to places that I may not otherwise find on my own. Plus, I was just elected secretary of the Middle Tennessee Geocachers' Club, which is the second oldest caching club in the entire world.
I also sit on the board of directors for the Ashtabula GLBT Outreach Alliance. I'm totally straight (not that it matters), but I do it because I have skills they need, and I believe in the cause. Everybody deserves a chance to be who they are, to feel safe in their lives and comfortable in their own skin. That's all the rest of us want.
I volunteer with Hyperi*con (speculative fiction convention in Nashville) and the American Cancer Society. I don't know how not to volunteer somewhere. I also help organize the Nashville Writers Meetup, and I run the Nashville regions of both NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy for the Office of Letters and Light.
And the trivial stuff: I have fascinations with the Isle of Man and the European Microstates, and fully plan to travel to all of them in my lifetime, along with Quebec and Nunuvut (and a lot of the rest of Canada). I want to see the 50 states, Paris in the fall, and WWI battlefields. Not necessarily in that order. I'm obsessed with funky nail polish (peacock blue as I type this), funky socks (I must have 200 pairs by now), and the incredibly artistic popup books that are hitting the marketplace now. Someday, I'll learn to tat and have a writer's studio that looks like a TARDIS. My favorite TV shows are M*A*S*H and Dr. Who.
I'm complex and simple at the same time.
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My Creative Website: http://mandimlynch.yolasite.com/ (Note, I just made this, so if it sucks, I apologise!)
My Lit mag and Zine: http://inkmonkeymag.synthasite.com (what, I didn't mention I run one? Well, I do, and it's full of awesome and win!)
Email address if anyone wants it: mandi.m.lynch@gmail.com - don't be alarmed if it takes days for me to reply.
