Ryan M. Patrick

Not my best month from a writing perspective – my family and day job took priority. But I got some stuff done.

The Saturn Anomaly and Crush Depth

Still at the Pentagon. The former is ready to go, the latter I’m still doing some proofreading. I’ll probably bug them in May and see if that kicks off anything. Very frustrating.

The Kuiper Dominion

I wanted to get to 60,000 words, I didn’t even get to 45,000. I wrote about 6,000 words the entire month, which is my worst writing month in about 5 years or so. Not great. In better news, though, I got back on track the last couple days of the month and really sat down and thought through my next few chapters. I think I’m back on track and will get to 60,000 by the end of May.

Memento Vivere

This is a success story. I did a beta swap with a friend where I read his complete manuscript while he read my partial (60k words out of a planned 90-100k) Memento Vivere and gave me some really good feedback. I then re-outlined the future chapters with that in mind and think I’m in a really good place on it. It’s a very personal story and is emotional to write but I think I can get it done in the 2nd half of this year. And, most importantly, it doesn’t need to go to the Pentagon for review!

Short Stories

I got the final version of “Singularity Seed” (hard sci-fi exploration) to the Based Book Sale’s Relics anthology, edited “The Golem of Checkpoint Charlie” (Cold War fantasy) for a Raconteur Press call, and finished and edited “The Unwoken Rings” for an as-of-yet-unannounced anthology I was invited to write for. This was where I spent a majority of my limited writing time this month and it really paid dividends. I’m already at 2 shorts done for the year (and 3 in the last 5 months) and still have two more outlined for later in the year.

Critique

I finished two manuscripts this month. At 7 for the year, goal was 12. In good shape here.

The plan for May is to get back on track for The Kuiper Dominion and hope that the Pentagon approves one or both of my books for release. I am getting killed in sales right now, which makes sense, it’s been a whole 12 months since my last title was published and despite my best efforts they’ve fallen off a cliff. I’ll have more on that in a future post – I’ll probably have to at least partially pivot to some of my primary-world fantasy stuff in between my sci-fi and technothrillers…