Ryan M. Patrick

It’s been a month! I finally outprocessed from the military and joined Blue Origin as a senior engineer. Most of my time has been spent getting back up to speed on the program I worked on January through March, in addition to helping my wife finish her semester of grad school at UVA and my kids with their schoolwork and activities. But, I did get a lot done.

From my reading, I finished:

• Keraban the Inflexible by Jules Verne. Not his best book, but still a fun read. Four stars.
• Machine Vendetta by Alastair Reynolds. A great conclusion to the Prefect Dreyfuss books, with some pacing issues. Four stars.
• The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks. A bit longer than I would have liked, but a good follow-up to the first book. Four stars.
• Zuri’s War by Nick Snape. A fast-paced sci-fi adventure that continues a series that I’m really enjoying. Five stars.
• The Spear of Destiny by Ryan Williamson. A good-but-not-great novella (almost novel-length!) with a great core plot and characters and some annoying side elements (the clockwork lady) that knock a star off. Still an enjoyable read.
• Both of Mark Coker’s Smashwords guides – slightly dated, but still really valuable information.

I’m currently (re)reading Mongol Moon by Mark Sibley, getting ready to read the sequel, and Extinction by Douglas Preston. Might have both of those done this week.

With my writing, I got 59,000 words done out of a now-planned 66,000 in Trials. I’m so close! One quick round of edits and it’ll be off to the Pentagon and my beta readers, with a Q4 2024 release still on track.

Crush Depth I’ve been reoutlining and I’m probably 75% of the way done with that. Can’t wait to jump back into that one; which should go fast given that I’m reusing large parts of the first draft.

Sales have been going…ok, I guess. The Martian Incident has finally hit a hundred sales/borrows, but has been slowing down of late. Lag Delay…just never really got going. More details to come on a future blog post.

Hope you all had a great May, and I look forward to June!