📜 I Tricked Myself & Got Ciphered 😭


From the Desk of Darlene N. Böcek

Faith-building Fantasy, Sci-fi & Speculative Stories

Hi, Reader

In my upcoming Sci-fi Fantasy Dystopia series, JulieAnn Bishop has a CIPHER she has to decode. In order to find the "safe place" where she's supposed to go, she's got to DECRYPT...a POEM.

I wrote the poem. And inside the poem I hid the clues she is supposed to follow to find that location. (It took A LOT of research to identify and create these clues; they're real things!)

🤦‍♀️ However, I forgot to write down for myself what those clues meant.

I guess I thought I'd remember. But alas, one clue eludes me.

I asked ChatGPT about the poem, and this is what it said:

"The phrases you provided do not form a coherent message and seem to be random phrases strung together... Overall, it's difficult to interpret the meaning of these phrases without additional context or information about where they come from or how they relate to each other. It's possible that they are simply a collection of phrases with no particular meaning, or they may be part of a larger text or story that provides more context."

So much for AI help. 😆

So, as I'm writing JulieAnn's story, I also have to personally make sense of the CLUES left for JulieAnn. Trying to figure out what words the author (ahem!) put into the mind of JulieAnn's father and for what reason. It's a strange 4th Wall experience.

🤷‍♀️

It's fun, though. Even though the final KEY is lost to me, I have enough hints that should help me DECIPHER IT IN TIME. 🧐 So I'm REALLY standing in JulieAnn's shoes. 👣

But if you like mystery, dystopia, fantasy, and faith--just you wait!

I'm thrilled to soon be able to it share with you!

Don't forget...FRAGMENTS BY J.A. WEBB

Fragments is FREE on Kindle Unlimited Fugitive is immediate FREE DOWNLOAD and the prequel to Fragments. It has a cross-over of characters.

The storyworld is dark. And the world is bleak. But you see a flickering candle which gives hope in the dystopia. I absolutely LOVED this story. Can't wait to read the rest!

(see links in the BookMobile below)

PUBLISHING NEWS

Coming up...

Next week I have a very exciting announcement.

Meanwhile, in case you missed it last week, here's a blurb about my upcoming Sci-fi Dystopia (series name and story title to be announced)

They came at sunset. They weren’t human. And they took everything.
It is the near future and America is gone, replaced by Unity’s iron-fisted regime. Deep in the California forest, the Bishop family has survived off-grid for years—until the day their defenses fail. The Feralis Umbrae, monstrous enforcers of the state, shatter their homestead, leaving JulieAnn Bishop the last one standing.
Armed with martial arts training, her father’s hidden caches, and a strange supernatural light that will not leave her side, JulieAnn plunges into a world of underground rebels, sinister experiments, and lies that stretch from Earth to the stars. If she falters, her family will be lost forever. If she resists, she may uncover a truth more terrifying than the monsters themselves.
Gripping, relentless, and deeply human, (this series) launches a dystopian epic where survival means more than staying alive—it means holding on to hope.

📖 Rebuilding Civilization

I've just started to read The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm (Lewis Dartnell). I'm going to see how my own dystopia/post-apoc story measures up.

The idea of a Cataclysm reminds me of the brouhaha last week during the Feast of Trumpets where many people said farewell to their friends and followers on social media, persuaded that Christ was coming back on September 22nd.

Some people even gave their kids up to social services to make sure there was someone to look after them during the post-rapture chaos. So much is wrong with that.

When he didn't show up, they claimed they'd been using the wrong calendar and he was actually going to return on October 6. 🤷‍♀️

A broken clock is right 2 times a day. And one of these days, when "the love of most will grow cold," Christ will return. And maybe someone will have predicted the day.

While I appreciate the hope represented in their anticipation of Christ's return, Christ's teaching teaches us it will get worse on earth ("as in the days of Noah,"(Matt 24:37) vs " Every inclination of the thoughts of their minds was only evil all the time" (Gen 6:5).

Christ's parables teach us what to do in the meanwhile:

  • Keep our lamps trimmed with oil on the side,
  • use the talents he gave us with all diligence,
  • remain faithful even to death.

Let us pursue this.

And we can also prepare ourselves for how to live without modern conveniences, just in case.

See you next week!

Darlene

🤦‍♀️ apologies!

Last week, some of the links didn't work... I've double-checked them and this time you can actually access the books...

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