3 Takes

Ark Press Authors

May 14, 2026

1. A Perilous Vision

2. Point Break Even

3. Flavor to Taste

1. Andrew M. Dare

A Perilous Vision

Just as he gave the order, he turned back to the window of the pilot house—and that was when he saw it.

A wall of water ten times the size of the ship headed straight toward him. It would catch the Nighthawk abeam. How had this monster ever formed in the shallow waters of the Albemarle Sound? Yet here it was barreling at him—a mass that seemed as much sand and sludge as water.

That wave will bury us alive, the captain thought. We will disappear without a trace.

So he was out of steam.

He had given it everything she had, but it wasn’t going to be good enough.

The captain did not take his eyes off the wave. The incredible, rogue wave.

They were not going to round the Claw. They were not going to make it to safety.

Time was up. The Great Cause was well and truly lost.

His last thought as the wave slammed into his sleek and beautiful blockade-runner was of his lady.

“She will never know. She will always wonder what happened to me. Oh my lady, I’m so, so sorry . . .”

And then all was water, mud, and sand.

Pre-order American Treasure Hunters: The Hunt for Confederate Gold by Andrew M. Dare.

2. Travis J. I. Corcoran

Point Break Even

99% of the time when you hear someone rant about “cutting out the useless middleman,” you’re listening to someone who’s never done the hard work of BEING a middleman and delivering a lot of hard-to-specify-but-easy-to-detect value. You say you just want a cold Coke…out here on the beach…and you don’t know why you should have to pay three times the price Costco charges? …because a lot of people are in between you and Costco, making sure that ice, Coke, and labor meet at the right time and place to put that cool beverage in your hand right when you want it.

Source. Pre-order Red State Mars by Travis J. I. Corcoran.

3. Larry Correia

Flavor to Taste

Anything you think of, no matter how original it might seem, something similar has been done before.

Think of any current book, comic, movie, or TV show that you like. Odds are that there is some element of that story which has been done before. Is this a rip off? Probably not. Far more likely is that humans have been creating stuff for a very long time, and if you have thought of it, one of the millions of creators that came before you thought of it as well.

So go ahead and write it. Just make sure you put your unique spin on it. Give it your voice. Flavor it to your taste. By the time you are done it will have turned into its own original thing.