Tag: fiction
-
End of April 2025
Well, second consecutive month I didn’t get a “real” blog post in. Work and my family stuff has kept me very busy – more updates on that in my quarterly newsletter that’ll go out in June. But I did get a bit of writing in! The Europan Deception The Europan Deception releases on May 6,…
Ryan Patrick
-
March 2025 Wrapup
Busy month. Got more done in some areas than others. Going to focus on my writing because I didn’t read much (!) and barely had any times for video games. The Europan Deception Proofreading is done and the final version is uploaded to Amazon! Reviews are trickling in and they are great, beyond my wildest…
Ryan Patrick
-
February 2025 Goals
Shortest month of the year! I got slightly ahead of my yearly plan in January, we’ll see if I’m able to maintain that or if I get behind. Writing Planning to get to roughly the halfway point of Crush Depth – Chapter 30 or so – and around the same with Memento Vivere (Chapter 29).…
Ryan Patrick
-
End of January 2025 Wrapup

It’s been a month. My company launched our first orbital rocket, and I was part of the team supporting it. I didn’t get anywhere near as much done in my hobbies (weightlifting, writing, reading, video games) as I had planned. But it still was a successful one. Writing I finished the final developmental edits for…
Ryan Patrick
-
2025 Goals
2025 is going to be a big year for me. If everything holds, it’ll be the year I release The Europan Deception, my white whale – the book I’ve always wanted to write and that’s kept me going as I’ve improve my craft. I’ve got a lot of other things I’m working on too. I…
Ryan Patrick
-
Pentagon Prepublication Review
I’ve talked a lot, both here and on Twitter, about how all of my books have to go through a prepublication security review. But what is it? Who has to do it? How much of a pain is it? If you’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement with the U.S. government for a security clearance, you’ve entered…
Ryan Patrick
-
Short Stories
There’s a lot of different story lengths for fiction. There’s flash fiction – generally anything under 1500 words, novellas at 15,000 to roughly 45-50,000, and novels above 50k. Short stories – those generally between 1,500 words and 7,500 words, but sometimes can go up to 10,000 – are an area that I am actively trying…
Ryan Patrick
-
My Writing Journey
I was going to write a post this month on something else, but I was at my brother’s wedding out in Texas and my mom gave me some printouts of my old stories. It made me incredibly nostalgic, and really put how far I’ve come into perspective. I started when I was maybe 9 or…
Ryan Patrick
-
August 2024 Goals
Going to be another busy month as I push to get The Europan Deception done and into its next phase! Writing In my writing, I want to get to 120,000 words done (out of a currently-planned 140,000) for that book. I hit 50,000 last month and I don’t see it being an issue in August.…
Ryan Patrick
-
How I Outline
“How do you manage to write a book?” I get this question quite a bit, from mixed-experience writing servers on Discord to my own mother in a phone call. And, despite my best efforts to sabotage myself, I have written six novels – two of which are self-published, the other four in various stages of…