Ryan M. Patrick

It’s a new year of writing!

The Martian Incident has been a decent success, about as good as I had expected it to be. In one month I’ve sold ~30 copies and had about an equivalent amount of full readthroughs on Kindle Unlimited. Reviews and ratings are pretty consistently 3 to 5 stars. I’m sure others are having better debuts, but I’ll take it!

Lag Delay is in its final edits. I’ve made all of the Pentagon-required changes and have ran it through M.S. Word and Grammerly to look for typos and grammar issues. I’m going to do a final pass-through before I order the proof paperback copy – which the process of setting up took me ten times what I was expecting. I am really excited about the launch in March, this is the best book I’ve written and the one that my beta readers enjoyed the most. I think readers are going to love it when it comes out on March 26.

I finished the new outline for The Europan Deception late in December and am working through the new draft. I’m about 18,000 words into a planned 140,000. It’s going to take me a while, but two set pieces are being completely reused from the last version so it’s not all new prose. I hope to get it off to the Pentagon (for a security review) and my beta readers (to tell me everything to fix) by the end of June.

I’m also re-outlining Crush Depth (the sequel to Lag Delay). The current draft is ok, but it has potential to be so much more. I’m probably reusing 60%-70% of what I already have, just in a different structure. I’m hoping to be done with that by the end of March and then let it simmer until later this year, when I’ll take it on in earnest.

I’ve been neglecting my short stories – “First Contact” has been half-done since Thanksgiving, but I haven’t had time to work on it. Hopefully that’ll change this month.

And, in my personal life, I start my Skillbridge with Blue Origin on Monday. I’ve been extremely blessed to have the military career that I’ve had, but I’m incredibly excited about my future in the private sector and in the commercial space world.