About Mac
Mac' Chandler is supposedly retired. At the end of 2022 I moved from Rochester MI to the milder climate of North Carolina and a condo without steps much more suited to my age. (75 as I write this)
Writing is still fun and I intend to continue as long as my mind stays fresh. I'm not a expert on English or a skilled grammarian but I love to tell a story. I thank all the people who take a moment to tell me they enjoyed my work.
Thank you!
Looking forward to it!
When do you think it will be live?
Realistically middle of next month.
🙁 I was hoping tomorrow or maybe next week!
Now I have to be patient!
I’m one of those people that has a physical reaction for a lot of typos and grammatical errors. As another poster mentioned on a different thread, it jars me out of my suspension of disbelief as I’m reading a story.
Your stories are good enough that I’m happy to keep coming back even with the editing problems though. 🙂
I couldn’t guarantee that I’d catch everything, but if you’d like a pretty decent amateur edit, I’d be happy to help.
An example of the kinds of recommendations I’d make from a quick glance through the April #6 snippet you posted on October 5th…
He came over and leaned close as she had, but didn’t jump back. Then eased back a couple steps so he didn’t hit his head when he stood straight. He tried to look neutral but didn’t manage it to hide his irritation at alarming him.
— I would recommend —
He came over and leaned as close as she had, but didn’t jump back. Then he eased back a couple of steps so he didn’t hit his head when he stood straight. He tried to look neutral but didn’t manage to hide his irritation at her for alarming him.
Like most of the editing issues you have, the sense of what you mean is clear, but the actual text can be jarring.
Like a lot of people, I’d rather you spend you time on new content and farm out edit checking to others (paid or volunteer). More content please!
Regards,
Jim Hill
I’ll give you a try next book. What you are offering is a little higher level editing than most of my betas have been attempting. Not strictly grammar but clarity. I cut back on betas because I had too many and many of them were reporting the same errors and I didn’t have a standardized way to mark them up. It was getting confusing.
This is amusing. I went back to see what I had in the final edit and add your clarifying version. Here is what the final version was:
He came over and leaned close as she had, but didn’t jump back. Then eased back a couple steps so he didn’t hit his head when he stood straight. He tried to look neutral but didn’t manage to hide his amusement and irritation with her at alarming him.
Very close.
I’ll be happy to help. I do find it amusing that in my post I used ‘you’ instead of a more correct ‘your’ in my final sentence. 🙂 I blame my keyboard and fast typing speed. 🙂
Quoting myself…
Like a lot of people, I’d rather you spend you time on new content and farm out edit checking to others (paid or volunteer). More content please!
“… you spend you time…” should obviously be “… you spend your time…”
I had to laugh. 🙂
Jim
Thanks again for the update! Since April #6 is in the bag so to speak….Will you be focusing your attention on Family Law #3 next?
Yes. FL#3 – But I’ve also started April 7. I get stuck or cross-eyed on one and need a switch to clear my brain. I have a couple full sized unrelated stand alone books I will work on if I can find plugs for plot holes and an ending for one.
Mostly yeah.
how about releasing the book without a nice cover? just make a placeholder for the later cover and publish it. Then, change the cover as soon as the book is properly edited,
Nope – working on it now.
Do you include a note inside a book when you update (make corrections)?
I haven’t done that. I suppose I could add dates of minor revisions to the title page. I never thought to do that.
I’d like that! Then you would know if you’ve had an update too. Kind of like an Ed number in a paper edition.
I decided to reread all 5 April books getting ready for April 6 and I got fresh downloads from Amazon on February 26th. I’m reading the first one as I type.
The editing is definitely MUCH better than it was, but here’s a couple of goofs I’ve run across without really looking for them…
In Chapter 12:
“He brother had just about caught up with her mom
“He” should be “Her”.
In Chapter 13:
One of the references to Jon is misspelled
she could see John as an ally
Since there’s a legitimate John later in the book (the Agapitos’ cousing John), this would be hard to catch unless you catch it reading Chapter 13.
Not really huge deals, but enough that while reading through it, you go that’s not right”. The kind of little things that a spell checker isn’t going to catch.
Wow, I looked this post over 3 times before I clicked ‘post’ and I still missed where I typed “cousing” instead of “cousin”.
I’m coming to appreciate the difficulty of edit checking your own words more and more.
As one lady told me – You read what you said in your head.
I wonder if you could place small (few paragraphs) of the “The story so far”?
With the advent of ebooks I’m finding I read an order of magnitude more books than paper. So by the time a year rolls around waiting for the next sequel, I’ve forgotten the salient parts of the previous books.
So writers do it to an extent, I just wish more would.
Thanks
I’ll do put back-story in the first couple chapters and reminders here and there, but as a separate section, no. If I were writing it as a serial for a magazine I’d do that more, but it makes the book too big when I already have a problem making them too large to publish on paper. I’ve been trying to go the other way actually. Also I make every effort to make the story stand alone so if someone buys it out of order it still makes sense and is entertaining. I’m also not very good at writing synopses. So I’m sorry not to accommodate you, but it’s not my style at all.
I absolutly love your books. They are engaging, original and thought provoking.
Please write FL 3 the same way and you wont lose a single reader, almost guaranteed 😀
Thanks for the kind words. I don’t know any other way to write them so I hope it is as interesting as ever. It’s fun.
Back Story is the devil.
Please make people buy and read your other works in order so they know what is going on. If they are trying to pick up your series at book 6-7 and expect to get a summary they are just wrong. #6 could definitely have 50% of the backstory trimmed. If one line doesn’t jog the memory its time to download the last book and enjoy it again for twice the value.
April spent too much time in her head and not enough time doing things.
The libertarian sermon was more concise and better organized than your previous statements. Bravo.
Barak was great and the storyline was awesome. Your action and Story are awesome don’t let that other stuff bog you down!
Great work.
Thank you.