Macro help for new playerFollow

Hi. New to rift, a few years in WoW. I've read some of the threads on macros pretty intensively. I think I understand them. Obviously I don't since implementing them doesn't work. I have a pyromancer mage, and I use this macro:

#show Fireball
cast Flame Bolt
cast Fireball

My understanding of how this should work: Flame Bolt has a cooldown (CD) of 8 seconds. Fireball has no CD. Therefore, if Flame Bolt is not on CD then it should cast, otherwise Fireball will cast.

How it works is completely illogical, to me at least. I do have smart targeting on, and that seems to make a difference. If I have no mob targeted, and I invoke the macro, it will target the nearest mob (if any) and cast Fireball. If I invoke the macro again, then it will cast Flame Bolt, and from there proceed as expected (casting Flame Bolt when off of CD and Fireball when the CD is active).

If I manually target a mob first (or invoke the macro then interrupt the cast of Fire Ball by moving), it will do exactly what I expect it to do (cast Flame Bolt first and then Fire Ball until Flame Bolt is off of CD and so forth). I'm guessing that smart targeting "pretends" that the initial casting of Flame Bolt took place without actually doing it? Is there any way around that?

Actually, TBH, this works exactly how I *want* it to work, if I don't manually target a mob first. Cast the spell with the casting time first, then the instant spell, then the casting time spell until the instant spell is off CD, rinse and repeat. I just don't understand why already having a mob targeted should make the macro perform differently, without putting in conditionals to make it do that.

Any ideas?

Thanks for the link! It included a good bit of info and was well organized, better than any I've seen for this game/topic. However, relating to the macro I'm having questions about, it just confirmed what I already thought -- it doesn't explain why the macro is casting in the order that it is casting.

yea i'm having a similar problem on one of my macros...

here's what mine is:
suppressmacrofailures
cast enduring brew
use healing potion


it is my understanding that the ones at the top of the list take priority, but for this particular macro the opposite occurs every time; and instead of enduring brew being used first, the potion is consumed