Ryan M. Patrick

What a month!

I had my most productive writing month since 2020, somehow putting down over 60,000 words, mostly on The Europan Deception, which I hope to have an update on soon. That book is a blast. I added a couple of POVs – characters who had been main characters in the last draft getting chapters from their perspectives – and it just works. I don’t know how else to describe it. I’ve been struggling for a decade-plus to write a Robert Ludlum-style conspiracy thriller in space and I think I’m finally pulling it off.

Everything else is on the backburner, but there’s a reason for that, one that I will hopefully share soon. Trials is out with my beta readers and feedback is coming in; mostly positive, but some of my long-suffering critique partners have been more negative than I had hoped. I also am going to use that series to try rapid-release – when all 3 books are complete and edited, I’ll release them within 60-90 days of each other. More to come on that later.

For reading, I didn’t exactly do what I had planned to do – been a few months of that! This month, I read:

• Condor’s Fury by Graham Brown. Classic posthumous Clive Cussler book. 5 stars.
• Bloodstained Skies: The Core of Rage by Dagmar Rokita. Dark space opera that could have used some editing – good story, but needed tightening around the edges. 4 stars.
• Finn’s War by Nick Snape. Another great entry in my current favorite self-published sci-fi series. 5 stars.
• My Brother’s Keeper by Tim Powers. Best book I’ve read all year. 5 stars.
• The Lost Tomb by Douglas Preston. An interesting look back at some stranger-than-fiction stories one of my favorite authors covered as a reporter. 5 stars, but not for everyone.
• Return to Glory by Jack McDevitt. An ok, but not great, collection of short stories by one of my favorite sci-fi authors. 4 stars.
• Sun and Steel by Yukio Mishima. Short, but excellently written and captivating. 5 stars.
• Doomsday Recon by Jason Anspach and Ryan Williamson. A military fantasy book that’s not perfect, but they really capture how soldiers relate to one another in a stressful environment. 5 stars.
• Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert. It was my least favorite of the Herbert books when I read it in high school, and is still my least favorite in my re-read almost 2 decades later. 4 stars.

It’s been a busy July and August is going to be more of the same. Then, it might slow down a little bit once school starts up and my kids aren’t in what’s left of my hair 24/7! I hope you all had a great month and I’ll be back in a few days with what I plan on getting done in August.