Ryan M. Patrick

Going to be another busy month before (hopefully) things calm down a little in October. I have a couple of work trips and my brother’s wedding so I’ll be traveling quite a bit, but I think I’m going to be able to get a lot done.

Writing

Need to finish up the last few thousand words on The Europan Deception and then edit it into a good enough state that I can query the small press I’ve been working with. If they say yes, I’ll work with their dev editor, if no, I’m not querying anyone else – straight to my beta readers and the Pentagon for the prepublication review.

After that, it’s Crush Depth time. I am currently sitting on 14,000 words out of a planned 90,000. However, I have a lot of material from my last draft that ended up being 112,000 words that I can re-use. If everything goes well, I might get the next draft done by the end of the year, or maybe January 2025.

I’ll also be taking a stab at Journey, the sequel to Trials, but that’s at a lower priority than the other two.

I have a short story I’m working on based on the Pentagon pizza meter urban legend. Having worked at the Pentagon, there’s plenty of restaurants inside of it so there’s not much truth to it, but I wanted to write a fantasy take on it. I had started it but didn’t like where it went, so I’m going to try again. I’d love to get it done by the end of the month.

Reading

Here’s the books I’m planning to read in September:

• The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey
• The Corsican Shadow by Dirk Cussler
• The Treadstone Exile by Joshua Hood
• The Lords of the North by Bernard Cornwell
• Conqueror’s Pride by Timothy Zahn

If you’ve been following along…I may or may not read these books, but this is the plan at least!

Gaming

I’m planning on finishing Star Wars Bounty Hunter and Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb this month. After that, the plan is to go to Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, but that’s still TBD. I’ll be grinding away at Dragon Age: Inquisition achievements as well.

Hope all of you have a great September!