Ryan M. Patrick

Not a great month. Washing machine broke, layoffs at work (I survived, many of my friends did not), and just awful weather for the most part in the DC area. But there was a lot of good on the writing side.

Writing

Against all odds, The Europan Deception came back from the Pentagon after only 29 days in review! I honestly wasn’t ready for that kind of a fast turnaround, but it’s much better than the alternative. I bought a cover and updated the page on my site, then set up a preorder on Amazon and an ARC request form. It’s coming out May 6 and there’s a lot to do between now and then. However, I am very happy with how the book turned out and I have six more books in the series to go.

Both Memento Vivere and Crush Depth are well over 40,000 words in their current forms – on Chapter 33 and 29 respectively. The former I would like to get out this year – it doesn’t have a security review and I believe it’s in good shape developmentally – but the latter is likely a 2026 release.

I also am about 1,000 words into my next short. It’s slower going with that than I’d like but I have a lot of other stuff going on. Especially with a lot of my friends finishing books that want me to beta-read their stuff too!

Reading

This month, I finished:

• Kronos by Jeremy Robinson. A tad rough around the edges but a really cool premise. 4 stars.
• The Grandmaster’s Infatuation by Paul G. Zareith. I beta-read this one, then sped through the final version after it was released. It was a lot like Book 1, but bigger and better in almost every way. 5 stars.
• A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. A re-read, I read it for the first time almost two decades ago. 5 stars – perfect from start to finish.
• Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky. A fun longer novella, great premise but it’s been done before, and I’ve never been a huge fan of his prose. 4 stars.
• Crimson Fire by Abel Montero. A really cool ARC read – epic fantasy doesn’t usually grab me like this one did. 5 stars.
• On Basilisk Station. Another re-read, just as good as the first time around. Easy 5 stars.

Video Games

I finished Myst IV and started Indiana Jones & The Great Circle, but the latter hasn’t hooked me in as much as I thought it would. I’m still in the first big area (Italy). Instead, I started Spec Ops: The Line on my PC and am having a blast – am about halfway through. I’ll probably come back to Indiana Jones at some point next month though.

Still playing a lot of Black Ops 6 with my friends, having a lot of fun with the new Zombies maps!

Onward to March!