It's school vacation week here in New Hampshire so the kids are home, all day long. I have a grab bag of updates, so read through for all the news. I have a note in my planner that reminded me to get ahead in my word count because productivity would be low this week. When I wrote that I can remember thinking I was pretty smart. [ 338 more words ]
http://kd-mcadams.com/a-grab-bag-of-updates-and-its-school…/
“Seriously Tanner?” Maddison asked from the door. “What?” Tanner turned to see the frown on her face. A piano in space made little sense. It had to be a remnant from the early days of cheap launch solutions. As humans transitioned away from liquid rocket boosters and high dollar per pound launch platforms engineers routinely sent awkward objects into orbit. Just to prove they could. [ 1,380 more word ]
Schedules and deadlines are tough when you're self-managed. You set them yourself and your success is a direct result of your action. So what do you do if you make a promise to readers and then miss a deadline? I'm just wrapping up step 8 from my 15 step plan for writing a successful series - write your face off. I've written 91,000+ words in six weeks, but I'm actually behind schedule. [ 339 more words ]
http://kd-mcadams.com/what-to-do-when-youre-behind-schedule/
Last week I mentioned that I was behind on the writing part of They Awake, the first book in my new Off Earth series. I had a solid writing week, but I've decided to shift the release date. I didn't want to release the book in the summer, as sales are often slow. But this years schedule is setup to support a new release every six weeks and I want to stick with that. [ 240 more words ]
Approaching the Lowell, Off Earth Manufacturing’s base of operations, was like flying into a puzzle. At the early stages of construction, trying to figure out where the station ended and the ship it was building began required careful inspection. Maddison Holtz was still fascinated by how such a small thing could build the massive freighters and cruisers they had become known for. [ 1,779 more word ]
The last few weeks I've been going through the idea and planning parts of writing a successful series. Those are critical to your success, but in thinking about the series I've loved there are five keys to a truly memorable series. Before you dive in and start adding meat to your outline, take a minute and work on these five areas. [ 735 more words ]
Sorry I didn't post here at all last week. Everything caught up with me - wisdom teeth recovery, super bowl hang over, snow days, people home sick you name it. I tried to stick with my daily word count, but even that slipped. It was one of those weeks where getting showered and dressed were big wins, everything else was gravy. [ 443 more words ]
http://kd-mcadams.com/who-are-your-favorite-supporting-cha…/
The tiny mechanical creature lay motionless on the gravel path. It didn’t return to the base station last night but the empty battery had to be a symptom of a larger ill. This particular bot wasn’t mission critical for human life, but without it the flora and fauna in Capability Park on the moon were going to be stressed. Last time this guy had an outage they lost over fifteen percent of the plants growing here. [ 1,738 more word ]
I normally try and post these on Wednesday, but having my wisdom teeth out last week has really thrown me for a loop. Sorry this is late, but I look forward to being back on track next week. In the last post I shared how I decided my idea was worthy of expanding into a series. Here I'll go through my process of building enough reference material and ideas to actually form the foundation of a series. [ 951 more words ]
Last Tuesday I had my wisdom teeth out. It totally kicked my butt. I wanted to talk about artificial intelligence in medicine and robotic dentists, but I'm in scramble mode so I'm just whining instead. I knew having them pulled wasn't going to be a vacation, but I thought I was lucky and smart. There were only 3 teeth to pull, and they were fully in, nothing impacted. [ 486 more words ]
Grep felt her heart racing. This wasn’t the first time they were heading out on a dangerous job, but it still wasn’t easy. The Cthulhu ships were strong and the team was clear on the technique, but it was still risky. Flying into the vacuum of space to retrieve an oversized delivery pod sounded like a standard operation for the salvage crew. [ 1,946 more word ]
Coming up with ideas isn't a challenge for most writers, myself included. The actual challenge is picking a single idea and following through on it. I must have 2 dozen novels started but collecting dust in the cloud because I decided to shift gears to the next great idea. Deciding what ideas are good enough to pursue as a series is mostly instinct, peppered with a few data points. [ 785 more words ]
http://kd-mcadams.com/3-steps-for-validating-your-series-i…/
I'm having my wisdom teeth out tomorrow. This is a bit of a short update, but I'm trying to get a little ahead on the word count for the week in case I don't feel much like writing tomorrow. I also wanted to mention that last Friday I released Book 5 in my Seamus Chronicles sci-fi series. It's called Exploration and is… [ 476 more words ]
http://kd-mcadams.com/space-fighter-pilots-and-artificial-…/
One of the longest running jokes on Lagrange-4 is that when Kai Nazca excavated through the first vein of DeGrassium and revealed the Chondrule Club, Kinkaid was already behind the bar. Of course the Chondrule Club didn’t actually exist until it too was excavated but the joke gets some funny looks when a newbie first hears it. Maddison Holtz was not a newbie. [ 1,576 more word ]
After writing and publishing two series with 6 books in each I decided to look at the process and see if there were steps I could take to improve my odds of creating something successful. One of my biggest issues has been reader engagement while I'm working on a new story. When I'm writing my head is down and I don't have time to come up with ideas to share with my readers. [ 1,288 more word ]
http://kd-mcadams.com/15-steps-for-writing-a-successful-se…/
If this is TL;DR I would love to know your favorite Science Fiction logo you can tweet me, leave a comment below, share on Instagram or Facebook. For the Off Earth Series progress scroll to the bottom. One of my favorite science fiction scenes is the slow flyover revealing a ships call sign or designator. Star Trek does it great, every time that U.S.S. [ 382 more words ]
Humans are messy and tricky. While I was thinking about artificial intelligence working aboard a space salvage station I realized that there would be some unlabeled parts. This was even before the story about John Young smuggling a corned beef sandwich on board a Gemini-3 launch. When systems can't identify things, people are going to get the job. Below is a story about a junk sorter from the Off Earth Series world. [ 1,735 more word ]
