Behind the Scenes: How "Old Ironsides" Became Fiction for America's 250th
Since you're reading this via dailyworldfeed.com, it's worth pulling back the curtain on how this particular story came together. This title didn't begin with characters — it began with a historical fact and a question about what that fact owes the present. "Old Ironsides" is real, well-documented, and thoroughly memorialized; the fiction lives in asking what happens if that memorial keeps having consequences. That's the throughline across the Dex System Semiquincentennial series, and this release is where it lands on the ship itself. The research shows up in the details more than the headlines.
Also new from AM I AM Publishing: E-Drive: The Good Ghost, available now on Bookshop.org. Drafted with an assist from Gemini.
Cipher note: Strip away the mystique and a cipher is a rule for turning readable text into something unreadable, and back again, using a key. That idea scales from a schoolyard note to the encryption protecting a bank transfer. What changed is speed: modern ciphers run in milliseconds, guarding everything from medical records to text messages. A simple substitution cipher is still the easiest way to feel how the logic works firsthand.
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