Not my best writing month, but it ended well, and it bodes well for December and January. Work and family stuff took a lot of my time,
Still at the Pentagon, but at least the government reopened and hopefully they’ll get to my book soon! I also went through all of my beta reader feedback and made a couple of changes – the biggest being that I directly connected the U.S. stealth aircraft program to the satellite they recover on orbit and the ancient starship from The Martian Incident. I had thought there had been a more obvious connection but my critique partners disagreed. Other than that, it’s good to go as soon as the Pentagon gives me the ok. I’m hoping for a February or March release.
I got stuck in the middle of the month on one of the most important chapters, where the main character turns on the quantum processor recovered from a sunken nuclear submarine, and then again on the next chapter, where the other submersible returns after being attacked by a mosasaurus. Both times writer’s block got me for about a week. I had hoped to get to 52,000 words this month but instead I hit 42,000. Not bad, but not ideal. For December, I’m looking to get to about 60,000 words. Wrote a couple of blog posts too on my progress – check them out on the book’s main page.
The good news is that I got over the hump and the words are coming fast and furious now. I’m hoping to finish in the February or March timeframe.
Short Stories
I got not one but two sci-fi short stories done this month! One (“The Painted Dark”) I had been working on for about six weeks, the other (“Singularity Seed”) I wrote 4,300 words in a weekend. Both have been submitted to semi-pro mags.
Other Projects
Not much to talk about. I wrote a little bit of Black Sails and Sorcery but nothing to really be proud of. I haven’t started outlining Lost Remnant yet, but I have done some brainstorming on a couple of standalone books – Unidentified, a Preston & Child-inspired mystery involving alien abductions, and The Druid of Albuquerque, which is what it says on the tin.
December is going to be a short month for me writing-wise as I generally take two whole weeks off around Christmas but I’ll be busy until then.
Ryan M. Patrick 
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