April 13 a snippet.

Most of my time is being spent on the next Family Law book. But when I need a break I work on April 13. I did this today As always rough and unedited.
…………………………..
“Come look. It’s doing it again,” Eileen said leaning over peering out the window.

“Let’s go outside,” Victor suggested. He put on his slippers and grabbed a pistol out of habit and caution. They hadn’t had any trouble at all. Late at night it was cool in Northern California but not cold. A jacket might be needed to sit for hours but not to see the lights in the sky. This was the third night the conflict between the Spacers and North America was visible. The first night was spectacular but it seemed to be winding down now.

None of this conflict seemed aimed at their area which was just fine with them. All of Southern California suffered from the bombardment of Vandenberg a couple of years ago. The delicate balance of services and legacy infrastructure that made the lower part of the state habitable had collapsed in a cascade from the point of that strike within three days. The rural northern part of the state still didn’t have electric power and existed in a political power vacuum but was habitable. If you had the skills and means it was possible to live much like people in the area had back at the start of the twentieth century.

The wrap around porch shielded the sky but they went to the corner where they could see the sky both to the north and east. Their eyes were already adjusted to the dark since they’d been in bed. Vic examined the open areas, the tree line, and listened carefully before he allowed himself to look at the sky. There was no traffic noise or other sounds of civilization to break the silence and no glow of electric lights to spoil the view.

A man-made meteor passed by to the north shedding fragments of various colors as it disintegrated. It was too high and far away to hear anything. It petered out, consumed before it got anywhere near the ground. Vic silently hoped it wasn’t a manned object. There were fine single lines of debris reentering, very much like a natural meteor shower, but they suspected none of it was natural. Suddenly there was a bright spark high overhead, then another until there had been a regular procession off them leading off to the east. After a pause there was a gentle orange glow on the eastern horizon that faded away. A few minutes later there was a brief white flash reflected off some clouds and then nothing more. That seemed to be it for this round.

“Do you want to look at the news on the satellite phone and see if anybody knows what is going on?” Eileen asked Vic.

“Not tonight. It always takes them some time to decide what to say, or to sort out what others are saying. Better to wait until tomorrow when the foreign reports will be more reliable. Let’s just go back to bed for now,” Vic said.

“You’re right,” Eileen said but leaned out and took one last look. Nothing was happening so she followed Vic back inside.

38 Responses to April 13 a snippet.

  1. James J Davis December 3, 2020 at 4:28 pm #

    Thanks for the snippet Mac!

  2. Rick C December 3, 2020 at 10:03 pm #

    Thanks for the snippet, Mac. Look forward to both/all of your stories!

  3. HamsterDesTodes December 4, 2020 at 3:43 pm #

    Wonder what these fireworks could be. Did China try another go? Did Home feel it necessary to go after somebody’s satellites again?
    From what I recall, the USNA hadn’t rebuild enough hulls to be able to sustain 3 days of fighting.

    • Thorsten December 4, 2020 at 8:28 pm #

      This:

      Suddenly there was a bright spark high overhead, then another until there had been a regular procession off them leading off to the east. After a pause there was a gentle orange glow on the eastern horizon that faded away. A few minutes later there was a brief white flash reflected off some clouds and then nothing more. That seemed to be it for this round.

      Describes a terrestrial strike, not a space battle.

      You’ve got rods (bright spark high overhead, then another until there had been a regular procession off them leading off to the east), followed by a cesium cloud (gentle orange glow), followed by a sledghammer (brief white flash reflected off some clouds).

      • Mac December 5, 2020 at 8:32 am #

        You got it.

      • HamsterDesTodes December 5, 2020 at 12:57 pm #

        Yeah, reading again I can see it as well.
        So either it’s a flashback to book 11 (is Salt Lake City close enough to northern California? I can’t visualize the US at all) or the USNA poked the tiger again in the very same year.
        What did April bomb the two days before the NSA hive? Wait, doesn’t matter, she didn’t bomb them during the night, it was always daytime. So it’s a second attack, not a flashback.
        Probably rejected the treaty then. Holy Frigg, they don’t learn at all do they?

  4. Cheryl December 4, 2020 at 3:57 pm #

    Thanks, can’t wait

  5. Harry December 4, 2020 at 4:20 pm #

    Thanks for the snippet, Mac. Keep writing. Gee, I wonder if they finally pissed Jeff off enough for him to take out Vancouver? Or maybe his step-mom? I’ve been wondering what she’s been up to.

    • Thorsten December 4, 2020 at 8:25 pm #

      Vancouver is still around as capital in the FL timeframe.

      And why the heck do I keep getting “spam deleted” messages when I’m trying to post here.

      • Glen A Fletcher December 4, 2020 at 9:27 pm #

        Buts it the other Vancouver,

        Vancouver Canada: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Vancouver,+BC,+Canada/
        Vancouver USA: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Vancouver,+WA,+USA/

        Both are part of the USNA, in April and Family Law.

      • Mac December 5, 2020 at 8:31 am #

        NO IDEA ON THE SPAM. I ONLY DELETE OBVIOUS SPAM MANUALLY. WHAT WORD PRESS DOES CAN BE A MYSTERY.

        • Ben C. December 7, 2020 at 9:20 am #

          I have run into the spam thing before as well. At the time I was trying to give locations in some of the books. Here is the vague version, so hopefully it will make it through:

          In various places Easy’s real name changes. Sometimes it is Washington, and sometimes Jefferson. A text search should turn up the locations.

          • Mac December 7, 2020 at 12:56 pm #

            Thank you. Making a note to standardize them.

          • Sean F. December 8, 2020 at 2:56 pm #

            As a brief addition to this, Mo’s name changes a few times from Pennington to Paddington in several of the “middle” books, as long as you are standardizing. Great snippet, looking forward to the new books.

          • Mac December 8, 2020 at 5:42 pm #

            I THINK I have all those corrected but they won’t auto update in Kindle. You might check in your list of account and lists / manage content and devices to see if there are updates.
            YES – NO PADDINGTON SEARCHING ALL CURRENTLY UPLOADED MANUSCRIPTS.

          • Ben C. December 16, 2020 at 4:26 pm #

            Just in case you only checked the April series, there was also a Paddington in chapter 27 of _Secrets_in_the_Stars_ as the author of the illustrated history.

            In other naming fun, in chapter 7 of _Been_There,_ Done_That_ the text has James and Elena when it seems like it should be Carlos and Sophia.

          • Mac December 22, 2020 at 11:55 am #

            nope. Checked latest uploads to Amazon and those are all corrected. Check content on devices?

  6. Michael S December 15, 2020 at 10:24 pm #

    Three days of bombardment visible from the ground, phew! That might be a record for continuous combat so far. Irwin’s attacks were scheduled daily, not continuous.

    • HamsterDesTodes December 16, 2020 at 9:08 am #

      IMHO it’s highly unlikely that it’s been a three-day bombardment.
      Even these 20m meteorites over Russia a few years back were only visible for about 100km among their paths, so all the combat the Foys can see is comparatively close to them. There’s no way that there’s enough stuff left to destroy in post-Vandenberg California to be worth 3 days of attacks.

      Most of the light show must be above the atmosphere, not at ground level or the Foys wouldn’t be able to witness it.

      On a slightly related topic, here’s a video about nuking the moon:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEfPBt9dU60

  7. Michele L Starr December 16, 2020 at 3:18 am #

    I keep thinking over the casino and him apparently having interest in Family law series and thought anything could happen if the new buyer got killed. Heather would definitely make it his to oversee again if she had control and the owner eliminated the political elements.

    • Mac December 16, 2020 at 5:54 am #

      I haven’t been reading David Weber…

  8. Chuck Todd December 22, 2020 at 12:14 am #

    Mac, this youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZcAnqCscIw ) seem to give credence to Jeff Singh’s fusion reactor? Did you get your Idea from NASA? or did they steal it from you?

    Chuck Todd.

    • Mac December 22, 2020 at 4:25 am #

      That isn’t exactly what I described but somebody is working on it. I lost the link I got a couple of years ago. I thought of it on my own. There are other fusion technologies being tried with bucky tubes too.

      • Brent December 22, 2020 at 4:24 pm #

        Interesting stuff! Mac, if you come across the link you lost for the “Singh/Chandler” (Chandler/Singh?) technology it would be great if you would share it
        I’m still going down the rabbit hole from the Eugene Podkletnov gravity work with rotating superconductors. It’s great to see the physics that some of the speculative fiction is based on described in practice (or perhaps the physics research based on the speculative fiction – whichever is more applicable).
        I look forward to your continued great stories, please keep up the good work! Thanks, and best wishes for the holidays and new year.

  9. Brian R December 22, 2020 at 11:44 am #

    Merry Christmas.
    Thank you for the enjoyment you share

    • Mac December 22, 2020 at 11:49 am #

      Thank you – so glad you enjoyed them.

  10. Mike Rhodes December 22, 2020 at 2:51 pm #

    I just finished book 12 in a reading marathon for the past month. I love this series and hope you continue since planetary exploration is now open and somewhere out there Alians are zipping around. I would eagerly like to join as a beta reader if that is a possibility.

    • Mac December 22, 2020 at 4:20 pm #

      Thank you. I’m pretty full up on readers at the moment.

      • John Leggett December 31, 2020 at 8:09 pm #

        Happy new year Mac.

        • Mac January 10, 2021 at 6:06 pm #

          Thank you. We are all working on that….

  11. Aimee December 24, 2020 at 11:48 pm #

    Marry Christmas

  12. matthew bird January 3, 2021 at 9:34 pm #

    Mr Chandler– I was looking to get the series in paper or hard back. Do you currently have the series for sale in paper? Thank you

    • Mac January 9, 2021 at 8:47 am #

      Just the first of each series. It has been very difficult getting them formatted and approved covers.

  13. Charles Crapuchettes January 10, 2021 at 2:12 pm #

    I was just rereading this and decided to check on visibility distance of nuclear fireballs. At 1 and 30 megatons, mushroom clouds ascend to 17 and 37 km respectively, and are directly visable from less than 500 and 700 km, 340 and 480 miles, respectively, from flat treeless ground. Less in wooded foothills. The direct light, near the horizon, would be reddened. If the fireball is not directly visible, there would be scattered sky blue light from higher altitudes, reddened to white because near the horizon, probably visible out to about 1000 km, or 700 miles, at night above flat ground.

    • HamsterDesTodes January 11, 2021 at 8:20 pm #

      But spacers don’t have any weapons in that range.
      They either use kiloton-range bombs or Jeff’s monster nukes. Given that there’s no mention of an earthquake, we can exclude Jeff’s nukes, so whatever the fight was fought with are either small warheads (unlikely IMHO given the description of “spectacular” instead of “awful” “terrifying” or similar), rods from god or space combat directly above the Foys.

      Now that I think about it, small warheads would be visible pretty far, no matter how high the actual mushroom cloud, given Aprils fondnes for blinding the defence with calcium sheets at 10km height. And who knows, these sheets may be spectacular pretty. Except that every reentry vehicle needs A LOT of rods to survive. IIRC a mere 2 attacks would have depleted their reserves at Vandenberg, so most of the fighting can’t have been nukes.

      • ChuckC January 18, 2021 at 1:52 am #

        10 km high is visible for less than 360 km. If d, h, and R are distance, height, and Earth’s radius, all in the same units, 2×h×R==d×d, to lowest order.. if it’s in the highest atmosphere, such as the very earliest reentry trail, at sonething below 400k ft (121.92 km) altitude, it can be seen less than 1250 km, 775 miles.

        • Thorsten January 18, 2021 at 6:41 am #

          Except if you have cloud cover, and your flash of light is bright enough to keep reflecting back and forth between ground and clouds.

  14. Ed Greenberg March 5, 2021 at 1:54 pm #

    Reading through April 1-12 again. Then Family Law. Very nice snippet. Looking forward to all the new books.

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