Ryan M. Patrick

Well, that was a month!

I’m still in the outprocessing stage, but the end is in sight for my active-duty Space Force career. I start with Blue Origin on Monday, and am super excited for that next phase of my life. However, my reading and writing really suffered as a result of a lack of time in April. Hopefully May will be more productive!

In regards to reading:

• I DNF Dale Brown’s Starfire. He added a YA-type plot to a very tech-heavy technothriller and it did not work for me. I might come back to it later, but it’s not what I’m interested in reading at the moment.
• I finished Freakonomics – 4 stars out of 5. Decent book, but the authors really stretched some of their conclusions from the data.
• I (re)read Masters of Doom – easy 5 out of 5 look at the 90s gaming industry and id Software. Great book.
• I checked out and read Timothy Zahn’s The Icarus Plot from my local library. 5 out of 5 stars. I wasn’t a fan of the switch to 1st person from The Icarus Hunt, but the book itself was so well-written that I could overlook it. I would highly recommend it for fans of Star Wars EU novels or Firefly, it has the same feel and a great cast of characters.
• I read Monkey: The Journey to the West as research for Book 2 in The Mystios Chronicles. Great, timeless book.

I had planned to get to a few more, but it just didn’t happen. I’m currently in the middle of Alastair Reynolds’ Machine Vendetta and Jules Verne’s Keraban the Inflexible and am enjoying both. Hopefully next month I can get back on track – my Goodreads goal of 100 books this year demands it!

With respects to writing, I’ve put Crush Depth on the backburner – it requires too much research, which is time-consuming at the moment – and focused on Trials. I’m 45,000 words into a planned 60,000 and will likely go over my goal. My beta readers will help me trim it down and I hope to release it this summer! I’m super excited, there was a recent discussion on Twitter/X about sword & planet books and a lack of them in the current marketplace – I think this will help fill that niche.

Thanks again, and hopefully next month I’ll get back to a more productive state!