K. D. McAdams

Science Fiction Author

Uncategorized

Replacing a door

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365 Days Blogging – 5 of 365
Handstand Push-up’s – Replaced a (heavy) exterior door
Dinner with friends – 0 of 12
Words of Fiction written – 290

I spent most of today replacing an exterior door. The door is on the shady side of the house and is perpetually damp. The bottom and weather seal rotted and eventually fell off. I bought a new steel door and planned for about a 5 hour job.

Five and a half hours later I had the old door removed and the new one in place. I did not have the time to install the trim or do any finish work.

Our house was built in the 1880’s and renovated in the 1990’s by a previous owner. The renovation was good but there aren’t many straight walls or square openings. Getting the new door installed and opening right required lots of dry fitting, shimming, trimming and adjusting. It was a trial of patience more than grueling physical labor.

Tomorrow I’ll tackle most of the finish work and probably paint next week.

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What I’m working on 10/5/2016

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365 Days Blogging – 4 of 365
Handstand Push-up’s – Worked on 5 Tibetans (got to 13 reps)
Dinner with friends – 0 of 12
Words of Fiction written – 659

Hopefully some of you are here to find out more about my books. Summer was a little rough in terms of creating new content, but I did get some things written and you should start seeing new books soon.

As far as what I’m writing right now, that words of fiction counter up top reflects new words in the 6th Dylan Cold novel, titled Frayed Shorts. The 659 words today pushed the manuscript past the 10,000 word mark and things are really starting to flow.

In Frayed Shorts, Dylan has left the Brookford Police Department and is trying to make a go of things farming with Abbey. Unfortunately his good friend Betty, from the police station, gets herself in serious trouble trying to help her nephew Luke. The young man was working on a charter boat in the Caribbean when he overheard some clients talking about stock market transaction. He overplayed his hand and while the men manipulating the securities can survive without the millions they cannot afford the scrutiny Luke has brought to their business practices.

This story is getting Dylan out of New Hampshire and expanding the world where his skills are needed.  There will be some jetsetting and plenty of action to keep the pages turning.

The release of Book 4 of the Dylan Cold series, Exotic Husbandry, is getting closer everyday. I’m trying to learn more while I go through the feedback from my editor. Every time I send her a manuscript I think it’s perfect, but when it comes back there are corrections on almost every page.

If you’re ever interested in beta reading or having me talk to you or your book club about my stories please let me know. I love talking about my stories and my writing process.

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Opinions are okay

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365 Days Blogging – 3 of 365
Handstand Push-up’s – Worked on 5 Tibetans + physical therapy
Dinner with friends – 0 of 12
Words of Fiction written – 0

During this political season it’s tough to avoid opinions. For someone like me who is highly averse to conflict this can be tricky.

I used to think that all opinions were valid and people were entitled to their own ideas. As I watch the news, comedians and the candidates themselves manipulate data and statistics it becomes clear that not all opinions are valid. Forming an opinion based on flawed or even misleading data points creates an invalid opinion.

The sad truth is that people smarter than me (Politifact, Snopes and Factcheck.org) are working to expose the misinformation but it’s facts be damned for many people with strong opinions. This can make for some difficult and awkward conversations/arguments for those of us with a live and let live attitude.

What I’ve come to believe is that if I don’t share my opinions, when asked, I don’t have enough conviction in my thought process. As a result of this lack of conviction, a conversation may help me strengthen my understanding of a topic. In other words, refusing to form and discuss an opinion is as ignorant as forming one based on bad data.

I’m not going to jump directly into politics, but I want to share a few opinions that I’ve spent some time thinking about.

  • Our national approach to schooling is broken ~ From Kindergarten through Undergraduate degree our education system is generally outdated. There are amazing teachers and individuals who interact with students everyday, but they are constrained by a system focuses on conformity.
  • Term limits for politicians (with emeritus status for one extra term) ~ Career politicians are a bad thing. No one person should hold office for more than 10 years. I see some value in an emeritus position for a powerful organizer to teach the next term of lawmakers how to get things done but that’s not a career either.
  • Climate change is real ~ Calling it global warming was a colossal PR mistake. Weather patterns are changing and whenever it’s cooler than we are accustomed, critics use short term data to debunk a long term issue. I think we can address climate change as a species, but it’s a global issue and we’ll face more consequences before anything happens.
  • There are other intelligent creatures in the universe ~ I don’t like precious snowflake theories. The size of the universe is beyond my comprehension and I think the conditions for life had to have occurred more than once.

These are some of my opinions. I open to discussing them rationally and even willing to change them, but not just because you shout louder than me.

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Blog theme ~ Gratitude and Desire

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Note: I need to figure out the rules for what constitutes blogging, writing the post or posting it. This was done yesterday but I made a mistake in posting. I’ll give myself credit for consecutive days even though it wasn’t posted on consecutive days.

365 Days Blogging – 2 of 365
Handstand Push-up’s – Worked on 5 Tibetans
Dinner with friends – 0 of 12
Words of Fiction written – 0

In yesterday’s post announcing my 365 days of blogging birthday challenge I mentioned that I have a theme. And for the big reveal…. Gratitude and Desire.

We have a custom around our house, and I suspect we’re not unique, where when someones birthday is approaching we ask them what they want. For as long as I can remember my answer to this question is nothing. I’m lucky that I have a lot of nice things in my life and I thought that the best way to show my gratitude was to not want anything. It actually turns out to be just plain laziness.

I’m starting to see gratitude and desire as a yin and yang of accomplishment.

This actually plays out in a few of my books too. In The Seamus Chronicle Seamus has a strong desire to finish his dark energy reactor and provide power to the world. Not until the Robinson family makes it across post-apocalyptic America and Seamus realizes how lucky he is to have his family does he come up with the final steps to get his invention working. His desire was powerful and driving, but without gratitude it wasn’t enough.

On the flip side, gratitude alone doesn’t lead to much beyond good feelings. If Einstein stopped working after his first successful proof and basked in the gratitude for being allowed to work on such interesting problems he wouldn’t have gotten to the Theory of Relativity.

I suspect many of us have been shamed into not wanting something. Have you ever told a friend that you want a raise, a better job or a new car only to be told you should be grateful for you already have? Well they’re not mutually exclusive. You can be grateful that you have a job and still want a new one.

In our current world, desire left unchecked by gratitude is a larger and more visible issue. It turns passion into obsession and compassion into competition. These are going to be big themes in my next two series.

I’m grateful that I have the opportunity to write fiction, but I want to sell more books. So while I share about what I’m writing and how I’m working there will be a consistent slant to the information that acknowledges the challenge of balancing gratitude and desire.

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Happy birthday to me ~ My birthday challenge

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365 Days Blogging – 1 of 365
Handstand Push-up’s – Worked on 5 Tibetans
Dinner with friends – 0 of 12
Words of Fiction written – 0

Today is my birthday. I’m  45 years old and finally starting to feel like a grown-up. As this day approached I realized that I need to challenge myself if I want to avoid going from grown-up to senior citizen in the blink of an eye.

Honestly the adult-ish feelings have been growing since January. When I sat down to look at my 3-5 year plan I realized that in 5 years I will have a child graduating from high school. My youngest is only two years behind which means we have fewer years remaining than we’ve completed.

As a parent most things in my life are driven by my kids. I’ve been fortunate to stay at home with them (thanks Jen!) but that means I’ve also abandoned much of the adulting that goes along with having a job outside the house. It’s one of those cases where the see-saw has tilted completely and the kids are sitting on the ground while I’m stranded up in the air. We’re in an easy routine, but there’s not a lot of movement.

One of the things that these adult feelings have reminded of is that I need to challenge myself ifI really want to grow. Looking back I realize I’ve felt this for a couple of years but didn’t see it. You see for the last few Decembers I have tried to figure out something I could do every day for the next year. You may have seen those people who have sex, drink a beer, or walk 30 minutes every day for a year. all wonderful ideas, but they just don’t resonate with me.

When it comes to something I want to do every day for a year I’ve never been able to come up with something unique and different. But I was looking at it the wrong way. I don’t need to be different globally, I only need to do something unique for me.

With that lesson in mind I’ve come up with 3 challenges for myself over the next year. They address my professional, health, and personal goals.

  1. Blog everyday for a year ~ Mostly I’ll be sharing what I’m working on and what is influencing my thinking. I have a theme and a plan which I think is a good start. As of today, I don’t have 365 brilliant pieces of content to share, so some days will be short and sweet but even a project update can be a post.
  2. Be able to complete five consecutive hand-stand push-ups ~ I stole this from someone famous (maybe Tim Ferriss or the late Scott Dinsmore). To accomplish this goal I’ll need to be in great overall shape which means it’s not about a number on the scale.
  3. Enjoy 12 dinners with friends (that would be up from 0 this past year) ~ All families are busy, but I’ve used that as an excuse to neglect relationships with my friends. Expanding my world beyond the people in my house is probably the best way I can think of to spur personal growth.

So depending on how or when it is you came across my site, this is how I got here.

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The week ahead 7/11

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I love to procrastinate and I think I’m pretty good at it, but something went wrong today.

August 1 is a Monday, the first of the month and the first day of the work week, a perfect pairing to start a new habit. But on Saturday I sent Exotic Husbandry, the fourth Dylan Cold book, to my editor which means that today, a Monday, I’m kind of ready to start something new.

So here it is, for readers waiting for the next story and aspiring writers who wonder about others writing process, this is a summary of my plans for the week ahead.

  1.  Word count – 7500 words for the week, on Deceptive Practices Dylan Cold book 5. This is low, but after a few weeks of heavy revisions on Exotic Husbandry, my writing practice is a little off so I need to start building it back up.
  2.  Format and upload The Seamus Chronicles to Kobo, iTunes, and Google. These books are no longer exclusive to Amazon and I need to make sure they are available and looking good on other platforms.
  3. Document my process for tracking income. With Amazon being my single source of book sales, tracking was pretty straight forward, though getting more involved with every new book. Now that I am selling on other platforms I need to make sure I understand what’s working.
  4. 2,000 words of flash fiction. There is an indie anthology in the works over on Kboards and I am submitting 2 stories of 1,000 words. The first one is written and getting line edited, the second one is percolating in my brain pan.
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