Ryan M. Patrick

Old posts are on the main Crush Depth page at the bottom.

Ah, editing. Simultaneously my favorite part and my least favorite part of writing.

Thankfully, from a big picture standpoint, Crush Depth is in good shape. That’s honestly to be expected considering it’s the fourth draft of the same story concept.

But there’s a lot of details to work through.

Let’s go through the stages.

First Passes

I finished the draft just at the start of the new year (2026) and let it sit for a few days, then jumped into editing.

I went chapter by chapter initially. I looked for huge errors – inconsistencies mostly. And I found a bunch.

The worst offenders:

• The habitat is a very mobile platform! It exists at depths from 500 m to 8000 m below the surface.
• The Vepr‘s location is inconsistent – sometimes it’s at the bottom of the trench, other times it’s along the wall, and yet other times it’s right at the edge (where it’s supposed to be).
• LT (j.g.) Armstrong comes back to life – he was on the Seaquest when it imploded yet is back on the habitat for the climax.
• The mosasaurus’s ability to manipulate condensation, as cool of a scene as it seems, is never revisited or explained.

I fixed all of these except the first one and sent it off to beta readers with the caveat.

Beta Feedback

I had five beta readers, one long-time collaborator, two I had swapped manuscripts with in the past, and two new critique partners.

Most of the feedback was positive! But they pointed out a couple of new issues:

• There’s way too much technobabble (fair)
• The nuclear torpedo subplot is half-baked at both ends (very, very, very fair)
• Mike’s appearance on the destroyer at the end seems forced (fair)
• The timing of certain events doesn’t make any sense (artifact of 4 full drafts, very fair)
• There’s some pacing issues in the middle (disagree, but critique taken)

This is what I’m working through right now. I’m planning to finish the changes this week and then fire it off to the Pentagon – I won’t make any material changes that add anything that they care about after this point.

What’s next? I’ll make a post about it when I get clearance to publish, but if you’re curious…

Copy Edits and Proofreading

This is the easy part and the hard part at the same time!

I’ll do the first part in parallel with the Pentagon prepublication security review. This is where I open up the “Editor” in Word and go through all of the recommended issues that it caught.

Then, once I get approval, I’ll create an Amazon listing (60-90 days away) and order a paperback proof. That one I’ll mark up like I did The Europan Deception below and then go through the final edits before I let it go live.

But that’ll come later! I’ll have a blog post about the prepublication process for me when the time comes. That’s the conclusion of this 21-part series for now, hope you enjoyed the journey along with me!