Tag: fiction
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Crush Depth 18: Chapters 36-38 – Climax
Old posts are on the main Crush Depth page at the bottom. Last time, the mosasaurs had stopped their attack, but also had stopped talking. The surviving characters need to figure out how to speak with them again to see if they could help. Chapter Thirty-Six: The mosasaurs stop communicating. Debating options, Parkowski hypothesizes the…
Ryan Patrick
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Crush Depth 15: Chapters 27-29 – Aftershocks
Previous posts in this series can be found on the main Crush Depth page at the bottom. We left off after the big attack at the midpoint. The habitat is damage, some characters are dead or wounded, and the crew is recovering and theorizing about what the creatures are that are attacking them. Chapter Twenty-Seven:…
Ryan Patrick
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Technical Accuracy vs Rule of Cool
I love Top Gun. Who doesn’t? Both the original 1986 movie and its 2022 sequel are great, pro-America, pro-U.S. military action movies with great characters and flying sequences. The original is one of my all-time favorites and the sequel is pretty good too, especially compared to the slop Hollywood has been putting out the last…
Ryan Patrick
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Crush Depth 14: Chapters 24-26 – The Aftermath
Older posts can be found at the bottom of the main Crush Depth page. In the last post, the mosasaurs attacked in waves and the crew of the habitat fought them off. This is somewhat different than the first two Crush Depth drafts where there was one big attack that the submarine wasn’t able to…
Ryan Patrick
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2026 Writing Goals
Going to try this again. Last year’s goals were a mixed bag. Going to do a blog post in January on wasted words, and another on improving my processes. I want to get to a steady-state output of two published books a year and given how long the development effort is for a single book…
Ryan Patrick
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Crush Depth 12: Chapters 18-20 – Just Before the Big Attack
These have been done for a week or so but I’m just getting around to doing this now. Old ones are here at the bottom of the page. If you saw my last post you know that I went back and rewrote a ton of what I have, mostly in a flow state in the…
Ryan Patrick
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End of Year Review
Going back to this and do a self-evaluation. Mostly good, but some big misses. The Europan Deception Easily my biggest success this year. All goals met and I couldn’t be happier with my results. Crush Depth Partial success. I did write a version of Crush Depth and got feedback on it but ended up junking…
Ryan Patrick
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Crush Depth 11: New Chapters 1-17
As I mentioned in the last blog update (they all can be found at the bottom of the page here) I went back and rewrote all 40,000+ words in the last few weeks. Here’s the new version: As you can see it’s a very different book based on the same concept. I’m leaning into some…
Ryan Patrick
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Crush Depth 10: Redo!
Tell me if you’ve heard this one before (and no, I’m not singing “Miami” by Taking Back Sunday) – I’m rewriting Crush Depth. I noted in my last update that I had slowed down. I wasn’t getting the words out. It wasn’t fun anymore. So I did what I normally do – I converted my…
Ryan Patrick
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Crush Depth 9: The Plot Thickens – Chapters 15-17
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…
Ryan Patrick
Ryan M. Patrick 