Ryan M. Patrick

Previous blog posts in this series are found at the bottom of the Crush Depth main page.

Chapter 14 ended with a dead-end – the yacht that had no connection to the Vepr or any of their mission. Again, that’s probably a weak plot point but the character development and some interesting nuggets that I let out may lead me to keep it. Chapter 15 starts after they get back.

Chapter Fifteen: Parkowski has conversations with Hokes and Carmano, then Armstrong. She goes to bed frustrated.

Everyone on the Atlantis habitat is lying to Parkowski, but she’s just now starting to pick up on it. Also, love those acronyms! Especially GIUK, it makes me feel like I’m writing a Cold War submarine novel like The Hunt for Red October. Someday…

So many lies though!

I’ll probably make some changes here in edits, reference the marine mammal program more. I finally got all of my ideas on that down in a future chapter so I’ll foreshadow it more earlier in the book.

I love all of this, this part is staying.

And we’re going to see a lot of “large biologics” in future chapters!

Lots of Lag Delay references in this chapter, but I think it’s still readable without having read that book.

Chapter Sixteen: Parkowski goes out with the Seaquest and they find the submarine – a large portion of it.

We’re going to get to the first big twist soon.

But we’re raising the stakes – they’re cut off from the surface!

They’re all going out – this will be relevant in a few chapters.

It’s going to make her (unfounded) suspicion of Carmano hit harder later.

That trench is going to get very, very important!

Again, literally everyone is lying to her. The other his is the Russian submarine that they’re looking for!

Chapter Seventeen: This time, with bodies – and they’re American sailors.

I’m not 100% happy with my writing here, especially in terms of descriptions. I think I can improve this. But concept-wise it’s solid.

Yes, what are they looking for? And they’re looking for different things!

This is a slower chapter, and I think I need to tighten it a bit at pieces of it. But overall it’s fine.

And there we have it! The “other” submarine from the prologue. Why the deception? Why the subterfuge? What is really going on? I love that I put this twist here and not later, I think it makes it more effective.

Overall I’m a little worried about pacing. It’s a bit slow up until this point, but the novel itself is only 90,000 words planned which is roughly my goal. I may expand on later chapters and cut heavily from this one and some of the others and get to this point faster.