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.
On chapter 2 now and will be reading till its finished. Randomly did my 2 hour rounds of hitting F5 on keyboard for about 30 amazon pages and was very pleased and excited to see the book was out. TY i am so happy to be able to read this tonight. I hope i don’t pass out before i finish it. Going to have to take some energy drinks as i have been awake for 30 hours straight when i started lol.
Will make sure to only drink one of them every 4 hours as i don’t need a heart attack. At my work energy drinks were banned when we had young and new workers over do it and treat them like cola. Had to rush a few to ER from utter stupidity after having warned them not to drink a 4 pack in one sitting on break. Yeah and i had to make the rule as first aid and the Site super passed it up to corporate who replied with a general notice and ban on such stuff.
Sounds like Earth think to me…
Using Monster drinks to make Black Rifle coffee and slapping a couple nicotine patches on (even though you don’t smoke) has been known to boost productivity if it doesn’t kill you. You aren’t a programmer by any chance?
Lovely story as always, left a review on amazon.
Thank you.
Cool! Just start reading.
Small question: ” Kurt, Delores and Alice all had experience with recovering a snowball”
Wasn’t Barak who Hunter the Showball?
You are right – that’s an error to fix.
There were several little errors I noticed as I read it. April got a “his” pronoun once, and I believe April and Alice got switched at least once.
Nothing that ruined enjoying the story for me though. Loved it!
Appreciate knowing that. I fixed being a he but will examine April/Alice dialog.
Thanks Mac. Just about to start reading it.
Thank for the read I finished it last night I am a bit shot for work today but so worth it
MMMM!! Tasty!
Not what I expected! So I enjoyed it that much more.
I thought it was strange that Jeff talked about Dolores etc but no mention of Barak for several chapters as if he was not on the crew.
I noticed the same thing. Was thinking it was almost like Barak and Kurt had been combined as Kurt seemed to be copolit which I thought was Barak’s job. Overall really liked the book.
That point is so well taken I went back and added references to Barak. The order in which chapters end up in the book is not always the order in which I wrote them, and somehow I lost Barak’s time-line.
Yes I managed to lose him along the way. Sometime I shuffle chapters or cut out paragraphs and think I retained something that was lost. I fixed it.
I’m with Jerry thought you were going to closings to Family Law time faster. I figure there would be a lot more exploration like FL2, but love still had some great stories. The French and California plotline were fun. The California plot was my real surprise. First time read A9 I wonder about that line of plot. Sometimes as a reader when you love a charter or charters your greedy for more of them, not new charters. When re-read A9 I started enjoying them better and was blow away with daughter. I Just loved her. That why your the author. You do a great job making a long series fun, most long series start to burn out, but yours dont
Another outstanding installment. The ending makes me sad the book schedule is:
April Book
Law Book
Independent Book
Though I love them all it drags out the time until I get to find out what’s next.
Bravo sir! Well done, always leave them wanting more.
I appreciate all the weaknesses and typos pointed out. I’ve tried to fix them all. I doubt it’s perfect but I’m a one man band and rely on beta readers to help me find typos and errors. We don’t find them all over a two week editing time frame. Indeed – I was recently sent a message about an error somebody fount in the original “April” book. It just never ends.
Stayed up late to finish it.
Alien ship in same space and time as human ship is astronomically unlikely, so April may be a touch precognitive/aliens have massive fleet in the area.
Stars to check out are distant habcat G and some K stars and gas giants on route with atypically high He3..
Why the high He3? Fuel?
Non Mac beta reader feedback
C1 to C10
Markus, head of the Committe on Public Order, informally know among their own
fix: known among their own
April couldn’t see any advantage to forcing the conversation around to why Lindsey needed shelter. His mission to place Lindsey was accomplished.
fix: Her mission
c10
It wasn’t until the emerged
fix: they emerged
Even among Earth nations it is dangerous to rely on others to heavily.
fix: too heavily
I like epub books as I can edit them.
I use Calibre to manage my ebooks. It has feature to convert between multiple formats. And, for a while now, it has editing feature. So. Even if you get mobi from amazon, then convert it into epub and edit away.
Thank you.
C11
Dr Ames has a couple very tiny rooms
fix: a couple of very
Throw in a lift ticket
fix: a lift and return ticket
c14
and no other to attain those speeds
fix: no other way to attain
C18
“It will be like be built like
fix: “It will likely be built
looking back at us once the put
fix: once they put
Thanks – fixed and uploading to Amazon.
c19
until I have a hard deliver date
fix: delivery date
c22
Ever crazy possibility
fix: Every crazy
Devil than even talk to Central or Home.
fix?: ever talk
Think they are a pretty
fix: I think
c23
Now it it’s really the mass, or if it is that the far
fix: if it’s really the mass or that the far
You’ve got a good eye. Thanks.
Wow Ann wish I was like that. I drive my dad crazy with my spelling and grammar. His mom was old school grade teacher. It’s a dying talent. He goes crazy at work (claims office insurance) the younger people under. I can tell when he’s doing one of his letters to a attorney, the needed concentration.
Before I attended university I was employed as a Proofer for a government agency involved with printing so I learned to do it and while its many, many years later like riding a bicycle the skill isn’t lost when called upon.
One way anyone can try is by shutting off their normal reading habit by non reading bottom to top right to left (or the reverse of how reading works). That’s not how I do it as I can double of triple track read (read for typographic errors, read for in-story fact errors, read for story emotion tracking, monitor self for loss of emersion (caused by typo, fact error, wtf reaction, etc).
Reading is a simple skill just like walking but both can be enhanced and perfected through thoughtful practise.
Perhaps it can be trained. I’m not sure how exactly. I’m more at the level where reading it out loud helps. Also – I just got through looking at April #6 and uploading the corrections to Amazon. They are much easier to see when you have not read it recently. Your brain does not seem to supply what you meant instead of what your eyes see.
It was not until later in life I realized I was probably dyslexic. I still sometime have to think about such easy three letter word or what side b or d goes. So for me spelling and grammar hopeless for me, it also effects what I say. My thought and what’s in my mind not what comes out. I was always good in math, history, science, but always failed English. I was always in remedial reading but smart enough to get by. My dad always would tell me about books he read like story telling but for grown ups. So just before freshman year I tried Tom Clancy Red Storm Rising. I always wonder how I finished it. Russian names and over 1000 pages, had started over three times. It took me over a month, but his next book it only a week. When school started went for kid scared to be called out to read to that kid never without a book. I thank god for my dad pushing Tom Clancy ?, it change my life. Next summer Sun of all Fear was out. Dad stared it but I woke up middle night couldn’t go back to sleep so I figure I read a few chapters. That was my first book that finished in one setting. Over 1000 my eyes hurt was so tied, but new if I put down my dad would start again…. good times. I thank all great authors like Mr Chandler and their stories. Even in fiction they opened a world of knowledge for me that change my life.
As not a native english speaker (or reader) I am always amazed about the number of corrections found by others, but I had never any problems with your books.
I used (not wasted) one of the cool nights here in Germany to read your last installment.
Had to sleep the next day at tempratures above 33 degree celsius which was in itself awful.
I also had to delete and reload on Kindle, PC and Android to get the new Version mentioned above, as the book is not marked as “update available” and auto update doesn’t work.
As mentioned in another thread the left margin is on all my readers off.
On the PC screen 27” in single row view full width and a recently updated app version (1.21.0 48017) I have a margin of 4.6 cm left and 1.5 cm right with a text of 52 cm.
On a 10” android tablet with current kindle app in landscape format its 3 cm left and 1.5 cm right. Here it seems like the same size as the indentation in the first line of a paragraph independent of the margin settings.
Now the waiting begins again – but its always worth the wait.
Keep up your good work, and I wish you good health and having fun writing so we readers will also having fun reading.
I’m going to re-publish it with NO margins and Kindle can put in what they want. Somebody please tell me if that helps.
I’m also investigating this morning because it appears Secrets in the Stars has two ASINs and not sure why.
Well Word wouldn’t let me set no margins without creating problems so I set them small and tried to make sure all the other hangs and indents were zeroed out. I thought Kindle was supposed to override the Word settings but apparently it didn’t. If there were problems in other books please let me know. Now… to see about the ASINs.
I guess I better buy a kindle so I can see myself. It looks good in the PC previewer but now I don’t trust that.
Loved this book thanks, especial, the sections with Eileen and Victor. Would love to see a book telling their story on how they got to Home/Central.?
I intend to fill out how they did that in April 11 and 12.
I figure you need people for the new settlement they all can’t come from home. Looking forward to when worlds in Family Law are explored. I wonder if you show it in April series, but wonder if maybe a third series…view point of the early explorer and colonists from earth not Home. Sorry you release a great new book in april series now trying dad more work haha?
I have room for at least a couple more April books. I’ve already started a 5th Family Law book. If I get to the point those seem ‘filled out’ I have other stories in my head. I can also write books about the things unseen in the combined series. Stories about Gunny and the other security guys doing jobs. Stories about the Martians. All sorts of stories about what happened with April’s grandpa coming up from Earth and building the station. I’m 71 years old. I can’t imagine I’ll run out of material before I drop dead or come to a very bad end on a pile of hot brass.
Hope for a long and healthy live and many great books.
Trying to add more work
Mac,
I like your work, but at this point I think I am reading the April series more for the hope that it will be like the earlier books. The universe has just gotten to big for me I think. It was not until the wrecked semi was mentioned that I even realized who the girl on earth was. That happen a couple of times.
I really like the First 2 books in the Family law.
“Neither Here nor There” was also a fun read.
This is not meant as any sort of criticism, just thought I would l give you my honest thoughts. I think it is more of a lets talk Mac into doing another stand alone or start a new series.
Well I could have April never grow and keep fighting the same revolution even after they have won. Lots of people have done that – look at the Castros in Cuba. They never learned to govern – so they just kept revolting and finding new enemies. It was – revolting.
Seriously, I know some author that write the same books over and over and they have a huge following who are very comfortable with them. Look at Clive Cussler – I challenge you to pick up any of his many books and open one to the middle. Unless you really luck out and hit just the right page it could be any of them.
I do have another stand alone coming, but selfishly speaking, the series books sell better.
If I wrote as fast as say Chris Nuttell I could do BOTH the series and stand alone books, or even more series. I’m going to muddle along doing pretty much the same thing because that’s how my brain works and it is working for me. I’m glad you like any at all. I will try to catch up on some of the characters that haven’t been mentioned for a book or two.
I like the growth in both series but Family Law my favorite, and I like your stand alone but I always want to now what next in April or FL. I crave to know what them girls will do next. I wonder how some of authors do it with a book every 30 days or so. Granted most are not as good, but good enough for Kindle Unlimited. Before KU and rises of the independent authors had to wait year or two. Now it’s a volume business just good enough, few as good as your stories. NC Reed comes out with one every three month’s and he just as good as you. Also Peter Grant is just as good as yours, he came out with came a trilogy with a book each month. However he cheated by waiting till he finished all three. That’s great on a new series but hate to wait for three books to be written for any April book.
I supposed I could do that if I sat and pounded it out every day like a real job. My wife works full time at the university and has no desire to stop. I do the shopping and cook almost all the time. I do my own laundry and take the vehicles in to be serviced. I don’t think it would be fun anymore if I had to sit at the computer all day long. I already miss reading as much as I used to because I am doing my own books. The money is nice – I was happy to be able to buy a truck cash – but we don’t actually need it to live. So that’s why I’m not cranking out 4 or 5 books a year.
Well I have waited 10 years for a sequel before*. I will gleefully wait 10 years for a sequel from you. 😀
*Yes that’s you Alan Dean Foster….
I’ll try to do a little better than that.
I’d like to hear more about the moon development at Central in the next book, maybe read about a new more streamlined ship, the first few exploratory jumps by other not nations on earth as the French tech get broader notice. I like the slow growth, but I also like the small jumps in tech advances if it fits the story.
Robotic mining and fabrication will one day be HUGE as they could build the core of a new station or the core of a ship quickly, then smaller bots could do more of the finishing. Central with their robotic mining and robotic factories could use the right asteroids to do just that, I know I would if I could.
More please <3
The french ship was lucky.
We know from Family Law that ships will be lost, and test probes will be used to learn the ins and outs of a velocity based jumpdrive
The moon mining of he3 is one way of obtaining but IIRC Jeff’s fusion generation may output he3 as well so instead of dumping it to vacuum he could store it and sell it.
Robotic mining and fabrication will be needed to bootstrap a pioneer planetary settlement and if Eddie still has funds trapped on Earth he could fund research on bootstap technology.
Fablab, single drop chemical reactors, nano and micro scale assemblers and dissemblers (although they have nanotechnology and fabbers already),
Ann
yep yep
Read and review left.
Sounds like you should add Ann to your Beta reader list! I didn’t know people were providing feedback here, otherwise I would have documented the errors I saw over the last day to provide them to you.
Yes Nuttal writes fast – three chapters a day. Set number of words a chapter. Fourty chapters to a book. He generally gets the first pass done in three weeks. More time for editing and covers As a Nuttal Beta reader, it’s hard to keep up sometimes…
Well, Ann might have a life. She’s welcome to keep sending me errors. And yeah Nuttell is a machine.
Thank you for another great read. My husband’s retired law enforcement and absolutely loved Heather’s weekly court pronouncements. Tickled with coin toss and winner/loser dies. Dark humor buffs in AS state (-; Look forward to your next tale, whatever the topic!
Sometimes my characters dark side seriously offends people. They write and ask me how they could decide to take matters into their own hands. It escapes them that all the actions of government, and things like dropping the atomic bomb on Japan. SOMEBODY DECIDED. Individuals. They decided they had the moral superiority and right to do such a terrible thing or DO IT ANYWAY. One of the main functions of both government and corporations is to hide who decides from you and spread the responsibility around so it doesn’t publicly cling to them. Somebody literally pulls the trigger and says – DO IT – even if they evade by saying a committee decided. A really bad example is they used to give one man a blank cartridge in a firing squad so they could in theory say it might not have been my gun that fired. Anybody who has shot a rifle knows from the lack of recoil if he shot a blank. That just means ONE person knows he didn’t have a live round and nobody else knows who unless he tells. But they know it wasn’t them. This is just dishonesty. At most you can say they know they MAY have the blank when they pull the trigger. In my stories you just happen to see who. There is no way to escape responsibility for your actions short of being insane.
That’s Washington state…. Or the “Other” Washington to folks back east?
Kevin, thanks for turning me on to N.C. Reed. He does tell a good story.
I still reread all of Mac’s books at least once a year. But I’m a fast reader and like lots of variety.
Mac, I love everything you write and the stories are worth reading again and again
Always glad to share a good find. Which one did you try? Book 4 of black sheep is just finished, and at editors so I’m refreshing website hopping it it’s soon.
Just finished April’s latest and am ready already to see how Eric heals, not to mention apprehensive about yet intrigued by whether/how Theo may give Karma a hand with Linda Pennington, Eric and Lindsey’s mom. You seem to have mastered the art of the cliffhanger. I have enjoyed your books and always look forward to the next. Many thanks.
You never know… I might reform Lisa and She and Mo could get back together. Or she might become a Martian, HAHAHAHAHA The possibilities are endless. If you believe in an infinity of parallel alternative universe there are all the variations out there. Even the typos…
How about having her get her name changed to Helen Rewold, The personality seem similar enough, I actually checked the name when I ready about that part (thinking they were the same person)
Another great entry to the series. Looking forward to next ones!
Working on it…
April et al planned to go deep to grab the best stellar resources.
Oasis does not seem like an overly great planet.
Haven, well nothing is known about it.
To me a best in space would be a system with good asteroid resources and two habitable planets,
A G star with planets sized like earth or venus but both placed in the HZ. Both well watered (the gravity drive could assist with that if needed) and with space infrastructure to resist any tendency towards runaway greenhouse or iceage. Both well oxygenated with a simple or complex ecology that can be supplemented by life from earth.
Well that is my 2C
Have all your books and one of your short story collections.
Ann
Hey Mac,
Just finally got to reading #10 this week, Probably the above editing recommendations helped, but I have to say the edit I read was pretty darned good. Only 2 things I noticed in a quick read through….
In Chapter 9, in “…and Diana was saying something earnestly,,,:, In that place in the text, Diana should be replaced by Sylvia.
In Chapter 12, you use ‘divulge’ when in context it’s clear you meant ‘diverge’.
I think there were a couple of really trivial things, but they didn’t cause me to take note.
Overall great job!
Thanks I appreciate having specific things pointed out I can correct. I’ll fix those.
Habitable planets Aren’t always.
Venus was once a wet habitable planet but hasn’t been for a long time. So decisions about habitability should take time.
“Continually Habitable’ is the preferred choice although a planet could lose that status through inability to stop a runaway greenhouse effect (Venus) or runaway snowball effect, and there is always a system possibility of disruption by impact (asteroid/comet) and an unknown possibility of disruption by planetary migrations, etc.
We know from observations of the Hot Jupiters that we don’t yet fully understand the issues around planetary migrations nor their sizing.
Any spaceship capable of landing on luna from LEO (with greater than 6.3 km/s) has the Δv to access NEAs (required ~5-6 km/s). So China, France, USNA, etc had adequate craft as did the Happy Lewis.
C-type asteroids have little metal but a lot of water and organic carbon, phosphorus, and other key ingredients for fertilizer which could be used to grow food and supply life support.
Two NEA asteroids seem interesting – Ryugu has nickel, iron, cobalt, water, nitrogen, hydrogen & ammonia and 2011 UW158 has platinum, nickel, iron & cobalt, so both asteroids nicely complement luna materials.
A small 10-meter S-type asteroid contains about 650,000 kg of metal (nickel, iron, cobalt) with 50 kg in the form of rare metals like platinum and gold. A small 10-meter m-type asteroid contains about 6,500,000 kg of metal with 500 kg in the form of rare metals like platinum and gold.
Central is exploiting regolith and Lunar regolith on young mares is just metres thick but on older mares regolith is more than 10m thick and about 50% of regolith is around 75um in size (tiny).
Lunar Regolith: SiO2 42.5%, FeO 15.8%, Al2O3 13.8%, CaO 12.1%, MgO 8.2%, TiO2 7.7%, Na2O 0.44%, K2O 0.15%, Sulfur 0.12%, P2O5 0.12%, Iron 0.1%, Carbon 0.014%.
So Central could make Lunacrete, Lunatiles, Lunabricks, Lunapanels & Ceramics; sintered iron/aluminium/titanium products, layered spray and sinter iron/aluminium/titanium/magnesium products, 3D printed products, sprayed/layered products, foamed/whiskered products, as well as Silicon products, etc.
Central to be inhabitable needs housing materials (walls, ceilings, floors, doors, built-ins, etc; fittings; furniture; appliances), facility management systems (wireless & cabling infrastructure, communication & data infrastructure, a lighting control system, oxygen & HVAC control systems, water and waste systems, an electricity system, metering systems), networks and security (access control, fire & toxic gas control systems, video/etc surveillance system), etc.
Also an atmosphere and food and there are shortages – Nitrogen for atmosphere and growing food; Carbon for growing food; Water for atmosphere, life support and growing food, We know there are some carbon imports from M3 and what Central gets from regolith could be a fraction of the material removed from tunneling.
.Central should investigate the luna mascons (possible heavier metal ores) and polar luna water. Central could use the gravity drive to obtain mass from NEAs..
The asteroid really worth claiming and mining of course is ’16 Psyche’ which is believed to contain 1.7×10^19 kg of nickel–iron (able to supply the current world production requirement for several million years). A small portion of the extracted material would also be precious metals (platinum group and gold). ’16 Psyche’ is one of the ten most-massive asteroids in the asteroid belt. It is over 200 kilometers in diameter and contains a little less than 1% of the mass of the entire asteroid belt. It is thought to be the exposed iron core of a protoplanet. It is the most massive metallic M-type asteroid. Best mined in the belt..
While materials were lifted from earth were any materials acquired in-situ?
PHAs are asteriods that could pose risk to humans and to reduce that risk they should be redirected. PHAs have an expanded risk when humans occupy LEO and Luna as any movement through the earth-moon area is dangerous. There are over 1500 total “Potentially Hazardous Objects” and over 150 are at least 1 km in diameter and there are over 860 NEAs greater than 1 km.
Asteriods with useful mass (metals, water, carbon, etc) could’ve been exploited to help build the luna bases and LEO stations. Nitrogen, Oxygen & water was needed for Life Support (atmosphere, drinking & hygiene), nitrogen, water & carbon, etc is useful for hydroponics, LOX & LH2 useful for propellent, metals useful for constructing spacestations & spacecraft, stoney matter useful for radiation mass protection (if sufficient water wasn’t available).
What was Happy Lewis’s secret USNA mission?
Could it have been a PHA capture and is that why he was selected for the later Rock capture mission?
What is the Rock?
One of the ‘easily recoverable objects’ EROs e.g. 162173_Ryugu, 1989_ML, 65803_Didymos, (7474)_1992_TC or the big one 1943 Anteros (2km diameter S-type asteroid with magnesium silicate, aluminum & iron silicate).
S-Type asteroids like Anteros do have iron-nickel metals and a fraction of that is precious metals but they typically have only 1/10th the metal of a M-type asteroid.