Ryan M. Patrick

It’s been a great month from a personal and professional standpoint, but my writing’s been slower than I’d like. If you want to follow along with the prototype Blue Ring satellite I’ve been working on, Spaceflight Now is tracking the status of the first New Glenn launch that will take it to orbit – the rocket is currently vertical on the pad and waiting to be static fired!

Writing

I only got about 10,000 words done on Crush Depth, putting me at 45,000 – the planned halfway point. It’s slower going than I had hoped for but I’m making solid progress.

The Europan Deception is with my beta readers and the feedback I’m getting back is almost entirely positive. There’s changes to be made for sure, but the developmental stuff is largely in great shape. I’m going to do 2 months of heavy editing in early 2025 and then get it to the Pentagon for my security review. The plan is to have it out ~60 days from receiving it back.

I finished my “Gargoyles” short story and am going to do a round of edits before submitting it. I am very happy with it, it’s the best short fiction I’ve ever written and I hope I’ll be able get it published in a mag!

Next month, I’ll outline my 2025 goals, so stay tuned for that, but for now I’m expecting to draft 2 books, edit 1 (Crush Depth), publish 1 (The Europan Deception), and write 4 short stories. More detail to come.

Reading

This month, I read:

• Angelmass by Timothy Zahn. Great sci-fi, lots of well-loved tropes turned on their heads. 5 stars.
• The Forsaken Planet by Bryan Wilson. Great debut indie sci-fantasy, 5 stars.
• The Conqueror’s Legacy by Timothy Zahn. Really good conclusion to an epic space opera trilogy, 5 stars.
• The Archipelago on Fire by Jules Verne. Not his best. 3 stars.
• The Song of Kali by Dan Simmons. I like his sci-fi better than his horror, and while Simmons is a great writer his characters in this one are just infuriating. 3 stars.
• The Last Kingdom by Steve Berry. Ok, but he’s written a lot better. And the central plot is totally illogical. 3 stars.

Video Games

I finished Prey (the 2017 one) and loved it. Reminded me a ton of Deus Ex and Bioshock. Great game, don’t know why it took me so long to play it.

I’m currently playing Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter and Call of Duty: Cold War’s campaign. Both are great.

For multiplayer, it’s been Black Ops 6 the whole month – MP and Warzone and Zombies. Best COD in years, can’t recommend enough.

I hope you all had a great November and we’re almost done with 2024.