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.
Um, is this book intended to be available via Kindle Unlimited? Right now it isn’t, and I recall there was an issue with one of your previous books.
I imagine I’ll read this one anyway, but Kindle Unlimited certainly makes it a “no brainer” for those of us who’ve joined that program.
Argggh! I am an idot!
The book *is* available via Kindle Unlimited if I check in the right browser window.
Thanks Mac!
Keep well and I’m now going to be up late. Cheers!
I’m almost halfway through the book so far and love it. Just wanted to let you know. Will review when I finish
Thanks I do appreciate reviews.
A decent novel and I enjoyed it. Not as much as the April/Family Law novels, but worth a read.
Mac: you NEED a proof reader. Seriously. (Sigh.) Dig my email out and send me a chapter of one of your books in some editable format and I’ll work it over for you. (I read my email once a month or so unless prompted though. Just sayin’.)
Most of the errors in this book are punctuation. There are the usual number of problems with ambiguous or incorrect pronouns, and the lack of “ly” suffixes per Mac’s self-described native dialect of English remain jarring.
FYI “depreciate” and “deprecate” are not synonyms.
Still, good work … but some polish would make for much easier and more enjoyable reading!
Cheers!
I’m sending you a Word file. Have at it.
I don’t understand the comment about depreciate/deprecate because I searched for both words in the document and found neither.
Just did a quick search: “Depreciating” humor, should be deprecating humor, chapter 9, 30% in. Still saving my copy to read for a vacation! (I write a series under Robert Hinshaw and got tagged in my reviews for my not-quite-perfect editing too, which I thought was pretty good at the time! So I’m sympathetic.)
OK found it – don’t know why I didn’t in a previous search. Will fix it when current update clears.
Great Mac! I’ll go check my email. Sorry for the delay, but, ugh, email!
When I write I make mistakes too … and so does every “professional” author I know. Trying to stamp as many errors as possible is as good as anyone can aim at.
I’ll endeavor to have something back to you in a couple of days.
Stay well.
(Well but STILL in lockdown here. Let’s not talk about that!)
This book made my day, I picked it up last night and starting reading it this morning (UK) after finishing my previous book.
I was in the shower listening to it with Text-to-speech when I realised it was Thee! alien book I’d been begging Mackey to write/finish for years and a huge smile spread across my face.
Sadly I’m not going to be a very productive worker today as I listen to this book while working from home.
LOVE it, a third of the way done and ite 2am laughing out loud. When readed your doing an invasion story I was like ok any you do is good, but its been done. You take everything and put it on its head. Love it
Highly enjoyable storytelling as usual, Mac.
Most of the editing goofs I noticed were excess quotation marks, things like:
“Thank you again. Lead on,” he invited Davidson.”
There were quite a few instances of this, but I wasn’t particularly bothered. I like your books so much that I honestly would rather have them released a few weeks faster than perfectly polished. The beauty of ebooks is that you can fine tune them and release updates as needed, and even crowdsource the copy editing.
And when Barnard said, “That’ll buff right out,” after the Tiger spaceship crashed I cracked up laughing. I was a Heavy Wheel Vehicle Mechanic and Recovery Operator in the Army a few decades back and to this day I remember saying and hearing that exact phrase innumerable times as we hoisted some impressively busted vehicles on the hook. No one does unintentional destructive testing as well as a grunt … and you’d never actually buff anything with CARC paint, which was always part of the joke.
I’m glad you’re considering wrapping up the April series and continuing their adventures in the Family Law series. Now that you’ve introduced us to this new cast of characters I want to follow their ongoing adventures too, and being a greedy old bastard I don’t want your time and efforts expended on several different series simultaneously.
Finally, I’d consider your first “alien first contact” story to be Paper or Plastic, which I still go back and reread every few years … and can’t help but notice the similarities between Roger and Jed, Barnard and Josh. You do like writing about Soldiers With Unusual Skills.
Now I’m off to leave a review on Amazon. Cheers!
Thanks I do appreciate specific problems. I’ll fix the example and look for similar.
Finished that 9/26 evening.
My appreciative comment got deleted but thanks anyway
No idea why. Wasn’t me. Maybe an address WordPress doesn’t like? Thanks for the appreciation.
It seems that I can post a reply to your or another’s comment, but a new post is treated as spam and deleted. Life’s too short to worry about it. Its enough that I can tell you how much I enjoy your books and look forward to the next one.
Thank you. WordPress doesn’t make me very happy either – it’s better than nothing and free. I don’t want to put a big effort and time into a post every day blog.
I checked to see if somehow one of your posts got labels spam or trashed. I don’t see anything sorry. WordPress isn’t the greatest but it’s free and I don’t want a blog I post to every day. The lady who maintains it is retired and I only bother her when it stops working at all.
I’m going through again slowly and have found some missing or extra quotes and a few words. I’ll have those corrected and posted tonight.
Posted 6:40pm 9/26. It will take time to show…
Loved the book, and made sure to leave a review on Amazon. Thanks!
I am seldom moved to emotions other than humor when reading SF and yet I was moved to tears by the chapter on the alien shield. Thank you for giving me a very moving story line. It balances the laughter your writing also invokes.
Bought it, read it in a day.
A very decent book, but it felt like it’s missing something to make the step to great read.
I would say it’s missing suspense, but the April books aren’t thrillers either and I love them so much that I reread them again and again. So it can’t be that. Perhaps it’s the fact that we didn’t get to know the characters closely before we were thrown in what basically amounts to a slice of life story? The first Aprils were rather action-packed, so we got to know them all while being dazzled by shiny explosions before we got to the slower pace and deeper content.
Hard to say much without spoilers, but even the action parts of this story weren’t very actiony IMO. Or perhaps it’s the time skips towards the end? Too many PoVs for a first book? I have no clue, but something kept me from engaging as deeply as other books, even compared to the kinda-similar Paper or Plastic.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t miss this book and I certainly don’t regret spending the 4€, but I probably wont reread it.
I think I know why you didn’t engage with it – or, at least, I had the same reaction you did. The story has no real conflict, either external or internal. At several points people start doing the usual arrogant nonsense that antagonists in Mac’s other books do, but they all get promptly sat on by more sensible people without creating any real problems for the main characters. Similarly, none of the characters change appreciably over the course of the book. Jed, Three Fingers and Blue are the same people at the end that they were at the start (to the point that when, near the end, Three Fingers says his people have changed too much to be happy on their home world, I honestly don’t know what he’s talking about.)
The April books, which you mention, do have their overall conflict, between the tyrannous welfare states of Earth and the protagonists in space trying to escape them, and that conflict sustains interest in the story when the pace slows down. Even the Foys in California, who aren’t really connected to the overall plot, connect to the conflict, by living and behaving decently in a zone where government has all but vanished. When I look for a similar theme or conflict in Fair Trade, I’m coming up dry.
Damn, English is hard 🙁
It was pointed out to me that I may have come across quite a bit less appreciative than intended.
My last paragraph is missing a ‘want to’ in between the “wouldn’t miss it” so I guess I turned the meaning around by 180°.
Sorry about that 😮
@Michael Brazier you definitely have a point. The various antagonists in the book are lacking to an extent of not really deserving the name, they’re swiped aside so easily. The physical antagonists are even worse than the political ones, not even worth a whole chapter to kick them out of the system.
In addition, the ending’s kinda rushed IMHO. The sudden timelaps (with still no definite resolution to boot!) felt very sudden.
I enjoyed this book as much as your other books! Good job!
You keep forcing me to give you money. Keep up the excellent work. Looking forward to sending you more money in the future.
I loved it. Thank you for another great book.
Very good book. I’m enjoying the humorous dialog. I laugh every few pages. I’m at 93% now and will probably finish it today.
As usual Mac, I downloaded your new book as soon as it was available on Kindle, read it at a sitting, enjoying it immensely, and have since posted a 5 star review on Amazon. I don’t let the typos and edits annoy me, though I’d be happy to proof any drafts you want done, Mac. Now, when’re the next April and FL installments coming out? The problem with a new Mackey Chandler book is that reading it always leaves you wanting more. I may have to go back and reread the April saga yet again while I wait for more.
The next April book bridging to Family Law is started. I’m not sure one book will do that. We’ll see.
I just read this and really enjoyed it.
Several laugh-out-loud moments, mostly around aliens’ culture shock.
A sequel set a few years later once contact with the various aliens has been re-established might be interesting.
I gave you a 5* review on Amazon.co.uk.
thanks and keep up the good work.
Thanks. I appreciate all the reviews. They are coming faster on this book.
Finished it last night (around 3 AM). Great read! Once again, you knocking it out of the park Mackey. Now… take some time off (an hour or two… three?) and write the next one! 🙂
Loved the new book! You have such a gift for good dialog; I laughed out loud so many times. I swear, your plots could be terrible (they are NOT) and I’d still read all your books just for the entertaining dialog. Thank you and keep them coming, please!!!
Thanks for wrecking my sleep, Mac.
Started reading and I just couldn’t stop. Really nice story and relatable characters. I liked the premise That we have a group of aliens who have marginally more advanced tech and are stunned to see that we are more advanced in some ways than them. The give and take and kinds of situations described between the aliens, their human friends and the governments they have to deal with seem very plausible. The changes psychologically, culturally and politically that take place seem to be spot on and realistic. The story seems to take place over a 20 year period and it’s easy to see our alien friends are a lot less alien now and their human friends a lot less parochial in their associations. I can’t wait to see if you come up with more in this “universe”… I hope so.
Nice slice of life meets Alien first contact. Thoughtful stuff.
Good stuff and a fun read. I love the Snarky comment factor from the Aliens
But you do need some proof reading. As a aside I noticed in April, Easy and Happy are still swapped on the first flight of Happy Lewis when they first board and there is a consistent swapping of Straight for what should be Strait by your spell checker in several books. Fair Trade provoked a binge reread of the April Series, Family Law and Paper or Plastic. I’m reading on my Kindle and I did check for updates. A lot of the previous glitches/typos have gone away. Are you able to see the feedback about typos Kindle readers are able to put in as they read or is Amazon staff that get that? Crowd sourcing works if you have a invested audience and you have real invested fans.
I found the naming error in April and am correcting it. Fixing the paperback and hardcover is a little more complicated but I’ll get that. Straight/stait doesn’t seem to exist in April but I will eventually check it in all the books now that I’ve made a note.
It was in Family Law that made me notice the Straights/Straits switch. The Straits of Mackinac scenes if I recall correctly. Then the neurons made the connection with the Straits of Taiwan in the April Series. Family Law is where I noticed it but I recall April 5 might have it as well. I would suggest looking at A Depth of Understanding.
Thank you. Looking right now. Fixed kindle versions. FL paperback I need to reformat the whole thing.
Loved Fair Trade, incredible portrayal of the greed and self serving nature that people in positions of power can exhibit. Really enjoyed seeing how stranded aliens would think and react to our self-conflict culture.
Well done!
When does the sequel come out!
I’ve started on the sequel but April #13 will be done and publish first. I like to have at least two works in progress to switch between. I also just spent two days on re-editing April after a few errors were pointed out. I’ll eventually carry those over to the print version but it’s time consuming and doesn’t really pay.
I loved the book. The dog had to check on me several times due to laughing and wheezing. Thank you!
Humans make the oddest sounds….
Loved this book. Will there be a sequel?
Working on it. I have an April book to finish first.
Every time I visit your blog, I come away feeling inspired and informed. You have a real gift for communication.