Ryan M. Patrick

It’s at the Pentagon for a security review – here’s to a short turnaround! If all goes well, I’ll shoot for a December release.

Here’s what I’m planning to put in the “About this Book” section at the end:

If you’ve read any of my other books’ “About This Book” sections, you know that most of my novels have been percolating in my head for years, usually decades, before I was able to get them down.

This is not one of them.

Some of the ideas in it have captivated me for a while. The Black Knight satellite conspiracy has always been one I’m drawn to, given my day job, but I was never able to craft a plot idea around just the spacecraft itself. The Great Storm of Saturn, too, has kept my attention for quite some time despite its natural origin. And if you’ve read my short story “Low Frequency” (which should be free on your platform, despite Amazon’s best efforts to not price match it!), you know I love the idea of low-frequency waves overwhelming those of your brain.

And I’ve always been a fan of the Space Shuttle program, despite its many shortcomings.

But the plot itself didn’t exist until a month or so before I started writing it!

The Martian Incident was originally a prequel to The Europan Deception, but the storylines diverged sometime after the book was finished in 2018. It became a standalone – or at least I thought.

But then my plan hit reality, and The Martian Incident is my most popular book. Despite the fact that authors shouldn’t read their reviews…I do, both the positive and negative ones. And the number one thing most people ask for is a sequel.

So the thought came to me as I was driving one day…why not write one? And then maybe a second sequel to make it a trilogy and tie off all of the loose ends, and show that I can finish a series as a writer? It seemed so easy, right?

And in some ways, it was. I outlined this novel in May 2025 and started writing the first week of June when I finished the first draft of Crush Depth. And I went fast – something like 10,000 words a week for the first five weeks, then slowed down after our family vacation to Disneyland in the middle of July. After that it slowed somewhat, but I still got the first draft done in early September. 90,000 words in 5 months is insane, even for me, but it’s the cleanest I’ve ever written.

Then, it went to my beta readers and the Pentagon, which cleared it for publication. And now you have it in your hands. I hope you enjoyed it! All of your questions – and I know that there are many – will be answered in The Kuiper Dominion, which is hopefully releasing sometime in late 2026.