Ryan M. Patrick

I’ve talked a lot, both here and on Twitter, about how all of my books have to go through a prepublication security review. But what is it? Who has to do it? How much of a pain is it?

If you’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement with the U.S. government for a security clearance, you’ve entered into a lifetime agreement with the Department of Defense to protect any information vital to national security that you may have learned. This is for everyone, from my friend who worked at the Newport News Shipyard for three years and never held a clearance to some close friends who have been read into every military and intelligence community compartment known to man.

The Department of Defense (which I’ll use synonymously with the Pentagon in this post) has a process to protect classified information called the Prepublication Security and Policy Review. This is for everything from speeches to nonfiction books to the crazy technothriller and sci-fi novels that I write. Why does this exist? Because books like James Bamford’s The Puzzle Palace and Jeffery Richelson’s The Wizards Of Langley: Inside The Cia’s Directorate Of Science And Technology have disclosed secretive programs, making them less effective and wasting the taxpayer dollars spent to create them.

Everyone who has ever had a clearance should be going through this process, but many do not. If you’re writing fantasy, or contemporary romance, you’re probably safe. But if you’re writing modern technothrillers or highly-detailed sci-fi novels – like me – you probably need to go through it. The consequences are pretty severe, the DOD can seize all of your profits made off of your books and potentially jail you, but the odds of you being found out are pretty low to nonexistent unless you’re doing something like Edward Snowden or Jack Texiera.

But, since I’ve “done some stuff,” I am taking the prepublication review route. I haven’t done it since I separated from the military, but when I was in, I had to fill out a form (which apparently I don’t have to now that I’m out) and submit my manuscript in PDF format to an .mil email address. They don’t have to give you a timeline, but it does need to be done before you query agents or send it to an editor.

The Martian Incident took 3 months (May to August) and I received no comments back – the manuscript was cleared to publish. Lag Delay took over a year (!) and I had 30 pages of edits to make. Some of them made sense, I had a fictional special access program whose name was too close to some real ones. But others didn’t – I had to remove all references to TDRSS, which is an unclassified NASA data relay system, as well as a one-off throwaway line referencing the Cold War-era Constant Peg program which was declassified decades ago. Why, I have no idea, but I made the changes and was cleared to publish.

I’m hoping The Europan Deception is more like The Martian Incident than Lag Delay when I submit it early next year – there are plenty of references to JWICS and the CIA, but all are fictional and/or declassified. Plus, it’s set a hundred and fifty years in the future…how could I be divulging any classified information in a world with spaceships and wormholes! When I write any of my fantasy novels, though, I’m not submitting them – the Pentagon doesn’t care about wizards or grimoires or pirate mages ;-).

If you ever have any questions about the process, my email is always open.