Ryan M. Patrick

It’s been a weird, busy month and I’m honestly glad it’s over – it was both a marathon and a sprint.

Reading

This month, I read:

• Extinction by Douglas Preston. Classic technothriller, 5 stars.
• Constitution by Nick Webb. Sci-fi book that was all over the place. Still 4 stars.
• Act of Defiance by Andrew D. Wilson. One of the best post-Clancy Jack Ryan books. 5 stars.
• Ballistic by Marko Kloos. It has some rough spots, but overall a great hard sci-fi thriller. 5 stars.
• Fire Strike by Mike Maden. Really good technothriller, 4 stars.
• Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Really good, not quite as on-point as some of his others but still a great book. 5 stars.

Started some others (mainly a few that I mentioned in my beginning-of-month post) but haven’t finished them yet. Goodreads says I’m still on track for 100 books by the end of the year, so I guess I have that going for me :-).

Writing

The good news was that I finished Trials this month. I’m not 100% sure if I’m going to release it this year (which was the original plan) or not, but I’m definitely going to move forward with editing it. The manuscript is out to my beta readers and I’m hoping to get all of the feedback collected by the end of August so I can edit it in September. If you ever want to be a beta reader for me (or do a manuscript swap) just email me or DM me on Twitter, I’m always looking for more!

I’m making good progress on both Crush Depth and The Europan Deception, especially with the latter. I finally thing I have the biggest issues with the last draft – character motivations & tone – solved, issues which have been plaguing me for years. Crush Depth is at 12,000 words and The Europan Deception is at 27,000. I’m hoping to get both manuscripts done by the end of the year and out to my betas for feedback. Then, I’ll start on Journey – the sequel to Trials.

Rough month for sales, but I also turned off ads (weren’t working like I had hoped) and I’m still at a standstill with what to do about Lag Delay. Hopefully getting a sequel in Crush Depth out will help – it seems like most successful self-published books are in a series!

Personal

My wife started her grad school classes again, which means we are busy – especially with the older 3 all doing swim team this summer. I am in month 2 of the new job and I love it – I am definitely in a better mental state now that I’m a civilian and out of uniform. I am also looking forward to getting down to the Jersey Shore in July! It’s my favorite place to spend time to relax & recharge.

I hope you all had a great June!