Episode Details

🎙️ Welcome back to The Mythic Mic Podcast, where immortality can be murdered, prestigious universities conceal rotten foundations, and ambition may demand more than anyone should be willing to sacrifice.

This week, host Bethany Amanda sits down with fantasy, science-fiction, and horror author Lynn D. Jung to discuss her dark-academia debut, Mothsblood!

Lynn shares her long journey from a multilingual childhood storyteller to landing three agents, surviving multiple submission rounds, and finally receiving her first publishing deal. She opens up about navigating publishing during the COVID shutdown, pivoting from young adult to adult fiction, and why persistence matters even when your career does not resemble the six-figure success stories most often celebrated online.

We also dive into Mothsblood, where ambitious alchemist Larkspur Lee attends an elite graduate school in Paris and ruthlessly pursues the ultimate goal of immortality until one of her supposedly immortal professors is murdered. Lynn discusses historically inspired alchemy, magical metals and runes, classism within prestigious institutions, financial inequality, messy healing, and the terrifying questions raised when the achievement Lark has sacrificed everything for proves far less permanent than she believed.

⚗️ What happens when an immortal dies at a school built around the promise of eternal life?
🩸 How far will Lark go to claim power in a system designed to keep outsiders beneath its elite?
🦋 And what remains of her ambition when the future she is chasing may be another carefully constructed lie?

This is a must-listen for dark-academia readers, murder-mystery lovers, ambitious and morally complicated heroine enthusiasts, and anyone fascinated by alchemy, institutional power, and the dangerous pursuit of immortality.

🔥 IN THIS EPISODE, WE TALK ABOUT:
✨ Lynn’s life as a science educator, zoology graduate, traveler, and longtime writer.
✨ Growing up as a multilingual learner and discovering storytelling in elementary school.
✨ Cold-emailing agents with a childhood manuscript before learning querying etiquette.
✨ Signing with three different agents before receiving a publishing deal.
✨ How COVID disrupted submissions and affected early-career literary agents.
✨ Amicably leaving representation to pivot from YA into adult fiction.
✨ Why querying newer agents with strong mentorship and industry connections can matter.
✨ The persistence required when your publishing journey is not a rapid success story.
✨ Creating a dark-academia fantasy inspired by Lynn’s experiences living near Paris.
✨ Larkspur Lee, an ambitious alchemist determined to achieve immortality.
✨ Entering an elite academic world dominated by wealthy legacies and powerful families.
✨ Writing a woman of color forced to work harder in a deeply stratified institution.
✨ Building a magic system from historical alchemy, Hermetic metals, and runes, including researching Isaac Newton’s secret alchemical writings and other primary sources.
✨ The impossible murder of an immortal professor and why that death forces Lark to question the system and her own obsession with immortality.
✨ Examining prestige, classism, racism, and sexism within academic institutions.
✨ The difference between valuing an education and valuing the name printed on a degree.
✨ Portraying healing as messy, nonlinear, and sometimes harmful to the people nearby.
✨ Dreamlike scenes where reality, substances, magic, and nightmares begin to blur.
✨ Lynn’s upcoming gothic fantasy about a death priestess infiltrating a noble house of necromancers.

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👤 Bethany Amanda – @BethanyinFantasyland
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