Ryan M. Patrick

The other posts in this series taking you deep inside my writing process are found on the main Crush Depth page. A note that I’m probably taking about a month or so off on these posts while I fix some (small) issues – I got a bit stuck on Chapter 19 – but I’ll be back when I have more chapters drafted!

Previously, we recovered a few pieces from a small chunk of the sunken Russian submarine Vepr and our main character, aerospace engineer Grace Parkowski, tried to put the pieces together – unsuccessfully.

Chapter Eleven: Parkowski is taken to a lab and given a piece of hardware and asked if it’s part of the SIGINT gear she had worked on. She tells them no, but it is similar. She pokes around the hardware and powers it on. It immediately connects to a wireless server located in the lab, behind a locked door.

Chapter Twelve: Confused, Parkowski asks one of the Navy crew what’s behind there but is rebuffed – she’s not cleared. That afternoon, she goes out with the Nautilus again, but they don’t find anything – it was a false positive.

These two chapters became Chapter 12.

We go to the lab, and make a millennial reference! I had at least two cell phones go through the wash and were recovered by sitting in a bag of rice overnight.

More technical evaluation. Before any of you cybersec guys yell at me, our ground system FEP is currently admin/admin. Happens all the time in the real world!

We figure things out, get the device powered on…and then we find a massive hand-sized tooth! This fixes one of the largest issues with the last draft(s) of Crush Depth – there’s not enough foreshadowing of the mosasauruses.

Chapter Thirteen: She goes to bed frustrated.

Yeah, not a lot of detail, this is where I filled things in.

Lots of speculation, and some personal anecdotes (Baltimore Aquarium!) as well.

Gotta love electronic lab work! This is similar to something I did last summer where we had an issue with a PDB on a prototype spacecraft that had some broken pins going to its internal power. We powered it on carefully by applying additional current to other +/- pins above what was in the spec.

Some huge hints here for my first big twist!

And now we’re going to go see what it found!

Chapter Fourteen: Parkowski goes out again on the other submarine – the Seaquest– and searches a grid for more missing sections from the downed Russian submarine. They are unsuccessful – they find a missing yacht instead.

This chapter might get cut – it does a lot, but doesn’t advance the main plot. However the character development and mystery deepening that it does might save it.

Not enough people have seen Seaquest! It’s a great show, Star Trek but underwater.

However, it’s another dead end – they find a sunken yacht where it’s not supposed to be.

Again, it’s a dead end. But the plot has advanced!

Hope you’re enjoying this! I’m a little stuck after Chapter 19 but I think I know how to get back on track.