Ryan M. Patrick

It’s been a month.

My company launched our first orbital rocket, and I was part of the team supporting it. I didn’t get anywhere near as much done in my hobbies (weightlifting, writing, reading, video games) as I had planned. But it still was a successful one.

Writing

I finished the final developmental edits for The Europan Deception and got it off to the Pentagon! That’s huge, two of my goals for the year knocked out in the first month. I still have a lot of line-level editing to do but that’ll happen while the Pentagon prepublication review office reviews it. Once I get that back, I’ll set a launch date and set up a launch campaign. More to come!

I got to Chapter 20 on Crush Depth and Chapter 22 on Memento Vivere this month. Hoping to get both done in the next 11 months, and releasing the latter sometime later in the calendar year as well.

I also got through outlining Chapter 30 (of 60) of The Apophis Contingency, the sequel to The Europan Deception. Drafting on that will start later this year.

And last but not least, I finally sold my first short story to a paying mag! More to come in a future post on submitting (and collecting rejections…), and I’ll be adding a short fiction section to my website as well.

Reading

I’m cutting way back on my Goodreads goal for 2025, looking to knock out 52 books as opposed to the 100 I read in 2024. This month, I read:

• Raising the Past by Jeremy Robinson. Great premise, average execution. 4 stars.
• Sun Slayer by Juzi. Not my preferred genre – it’s a sweeping epic fantasy – but it’s incredibly well done. 5 stars.
• Mathias Sandorf by Jules Verne. Not his best, not his worst. 4 stars.
• The Bourne Sacrifice by Brian Freeman. The best of the post-Van Lustbader Bourne books, reaching deep into the Ludlum vault for some characters, organizations, and plots. 5 stars.

Video Games

Played a ton of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Got about three-quarters of the way through Myst IV: Revelation. Also got about halfway through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on my brother’s old Xbox 360 – needed to get that Harry Potter fix in!