Ryan Southwick

About Ryan Southwick

Ryan Southwick is the author of The Z-Tech Chronicles. The first book in an epic series, Angels in the Mist, released June 2020. Southwick is also a veteran Silicon Valley software developer. During his career, he’s developed everything from mission-critical business applications in the healthcare industry to 3D applications and mobile games. His professional path touches every corner of IT and he is a rabid, agile evangelist as a result. 

In The Z-Tech Chronicles, Southwick uses his technical skills and a lifelong love of science fiction to create a world filled with androids, cyborgs, vampires and plasma guns set in the Silicone Valley. 

Ryan is also passionate about leadership, hiking and haute cuisine. He currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two children.

BOOKS:

Corporate Catharsis (2019)

Angels in the Mist (The Z-Tech Chronicles Book 1) (2020)

Your biggest literary influences:

George RR Martin, Raymond E. Feist, Piers Anthony, Ilona Andrews

Last book read:

Best Intentions by J Dark

The book that changed your life:

Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. It was the first fantasy novel I ever read. Not only did it start a long, voracious epic fantasy habit, it was also my gateway to D&D and a group of lifelong friends.

Your favorite literary character:

Probably Samantha Moon from J.R. Rain’s Vampire for Hire series. She’s a down-to-earth detective who had a really bad thing happen to her and, when she’s not trying to solve mysteries, is just trying to reconcile life as a vampire with her kids and potential love interests. I love that cross of supernatural and super-ordinary, and Samantha handles it with just the right combination of courage and “damn, this sucks.” J.R. Rain also isn’t afraid to spend time showing us what challenges she has with everyday life, which made me like the character all the more, because I really felt like I’d walked in her shoes.

Currently working on:

The rest of The Z-Tech Chronicles is already written and just going through the editing/publishing process. While in between edits, I’m working on a hitherto unnamed dystopian/Sci-Fi with a splash of fantasy set 500 years in the future:

The remnants of humanity are on the long road to recovery from nearly destroying themselves several hundred years ago. Survivors pooled their resources to build protective domes, isolating themselves from caustic weather and each other, and eschewing any technology not necessary for survival.

Seg is a young man whose family and thousands of others haven’t left their agricultural dome cluster for seven generations. Their only outside news comes from representatives of the Federated Nations, who strictly regulate both technology use and information shared between domes.

While this lifestyle may indeed be the only thing preventing humanity from annihilating itself again, it’s boring as hell, and Seg can’t help dreaming about the world beyond his dome.

That changes when a city outsider with black-rimmed eyes comes to visit. Fi is, if possible, even more bored than Seg, but her startling secret catapults them into a series of events that could change the world forever — or destroy it completely.

It may sound a little dire, but it’s definitely on the lighter side of the dystopian scale, and I’m having a lot of fun with it so far. Stay tuned for more in the coming months!

Words to live by:

“Do unto others as you would have done to you.” It’s an oldie but goodie, and especially applicable today.

Advice for aspiring authors:

Find a writing group/circle. Get your chapters out there for feedback as frequently as possible instead of waiting for the entire book to be finished. That feedback will catapult your author career by months if not years. Learn to like social media. =]

Articles/Reviews:

Friendhood

Books That Make You

Ryan’s Interview with Nancy Wood