C Gockel Writes

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I Bring the Fire Omnibus eBook and The Defiant audiobook

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You can read (and listen to!) most of my books through subscription services:

  • Everand* (formerly Scribd) – ebooks + audiobooks
  • Kobo Plus – ebooks (no Kobo device needed—the app is free)

Both offer 30-day free trials—so if you’re a fast reader, you could get through quite a bit at no cost.

Learn more about KoboPlus and Everand. 

Or Read & Listen Completely Free

You can also find my books at your local library:

  • Libby / OverDrive
  • Hoopla
  • CloudLibrary
  • BorrowBox

If your library carries ebooks or audiobooks, there’s a good chance they have my books—or can request them.

Find Libraries that Offer Libby/Overdrive

If Your Library Doesn’t Loan eBooks or Audiobooks

You may be able to get a library card at a larger library system for a modest fee. Here is a website that lists libraries with non-resident borrowing priveleges.

A quick note

I’m a big library user myself and often enroll in various subscription services (books add up fast—and so do growing kids’ expenses).

However you choose to read—buying, borrowing, or listening—I’m just glad you’re spending your time with my stories.

*Everand isn’t currently featuring Magic After Midnight.

Featured Fantasy: Dead to Rites (Last Call Book 1) by Christine Pope

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Featured Fantasy: Dead to Rites (Last Call Book 1) by Christine Pope

New Release
Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

Apple, B&N, Kobo, GooglePlay, Author’s Store

She inherited a haunted house, a Whiskey Row wine bar, and the ability to see ghosts. Then someone got murdered in her men’s room.

Designer Lorelei Cosgrove was perfectly content drifting in Scottsdale — mourning her parents, running a small Etsy shop, and not particularly interested in being responsible for anything more demanding than her own takeout order. Then her great-aunt Hazel passed away and left her a Victorian house in Prescott, a wine/beer/mead bar called Copper State Cellars, and one stubborn stipulation: live there and run the bar, or lose it all.

A near-fatal reaction to a bee sting on Lorelei’s first afternoon in town wakes up a latent Cosgrove family gift — one Hazel apparently forgot to mention. The Victorian’s most prominent resident is Hazel herself, still wearing her twin sets, still bossy as ever, and apparently not too worried about being dead. Then there’s the 1920s Prohibition-era federal agent who haunts Copper State Cellars and calls Lorelei “doll” and the murdered priest who turns up dead in the men’s room — and immediately starts haunting it himself, unable to remember anything about who killed him…or why.

With a local police detective eyeing her as a suspect, a defrocked priest turned bookstore owner she can’t quite figure out, and a local parish where every suspect has a secret worth hiding, Lorelei has to learn the rules of her new gift on the fly. Because ghosts can witness. They can warn. They can mislead.

But what they can’t do is solve the case for her.

Featured Sci-fi: Alien Arena by Jasper T. Scott

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Alien Arena series by Jasper T. Scott

FIRST BOOK 99¢—Plus a New Release!
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Only the winner goes home.

Former Army Ranger Cole Maddox survived the massacre that wiped out most of his company. No one could explain how.

Years later, Cole is back home with a wife, two kids, a dead-end job, and a life that feels too small for the war still raging inside his head. Then the nightmares begin—strange jungles, towering ruins, shadowy monsters, and hovering drones watching his every move. At first, everyone tells him it’s PTSD. Then he wakes up bleeding.

When Cole discovers that other survivors from his old unit have been vanishing one by one, he realizes something is coming for the men who should have died that night. And when Cole is taken, he learns the truth.

He has been chosen for an alien blood sport, thrown into a deadly arena with other human contestants and monsters from across the stars. Every new environment brings another trap, another impossible choice, and another reason for the survivors to turn on each other.

The rules are simple: fight, run, kill, and survive.

Cole has already survived one impossible slaughter. Now he has to survive another, because somewhere back on Earth, his family is waiting.

And only the winner goes home.

Alien Arena is a military sci-fi action thriller for fans of The Hunger Games, Squid Game, and Predator.

Featured Sci-fi: Spacebar (Books 1–6) by John Walker

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Spacebar: The Complete Series by John Walker

99¢ Amazon only
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Carson Flint left the Commonwealth’s wars behind for the quiet life of running a saloon on the edge of nowhere.

The Bulwark sits on Castus, the last neutral ground in a galaxy that tore itself apart. Smugglers, refugees, and war-weary soldiers drift through its doors, and Carson keeps his corner of it calm by staying out of everyone else’s business.

Then a dying man stumbles in carrying a secret worth killing for.

The stranger came out of Commonwealth service, hunted across the stars, holding something the Thortan warlords will level a settlement to reclaim. When their guns reach Castus, neutrality means nothing, and the Bulwark stands between a ruthless militia and a discovery that could reshape a galaxy.

Carson only wanted a quiet life. But some doors, once opened, pull you toward the adventure of a lifetime.

Includes Books 1–6.

Featured Fantasy: Assassin’s Apprentice (Farseer Trilogy Book 1) by Robin Hobb

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Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb

$1.99 Most Vendors
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Apple, B&N, Kobo, GooglePlay

A gorgeously illustrated anniversary edition of the book that launched the epic Farseer Trilogy, praised by George R. R. Martin as “fantasy as it ought to be written” and Lin-Manuel Miranda as “an incredible series,” featuring a new foreword by Robin Hobb and ten illustrations.

Twenty-five years ago, Robin Hobb’s first novel featuring FitzChivalry Farseer and his mysterious, often maddening friend the Fool struck like a bolt of brilliant lightning. Thus began a beloved saga spanning multiple series, full of adventure, magic, and sinister plots. To celebrate a quarter-century of wonder, this special edition presents a modern classic as it’s never been seen before, with ten beautiful illustrations by Magali Villeneuve.

Young Fitz is the bastard son of the noble Prince Chivalry, raised in the shadow of the royal court by his father’s gruff stableman. He is treated as an outcast by all the royalty except the devious King Shrewd, who has him secretly tutored in the arts of the assassin. For in Fitz’s blood runs the magic Skill—and the darker knowledge of a child raised with the stable hounds and rejected by his family.

As barbarous raiders ravage the coasts, Fitz is growing to manhood. Soon he will face his first dangerous, soul-shattering mission. And though some regard him as a threat to the throne, he may just be the key to the survival of the kingdom.

[Read more…]

Featured Sci-fi: Starship Express (Starship Express Book 1) by John Walker and Ethan Kramer

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Starship Express by John Walker and Ethan Kramer

99¢ on Amazon
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Nelson Tuckey tells the best stories in Sunningdale Psychiatric.

Alien worlds. Impossible deliveries. A ship he calls The Lost Princess. Reed is just an orderly, but he listens anyway. The stories keep the old man calm. And besides, everyone knows they’re not true. A space courier locked away on the fourth floor? Please.

Then the old man dies. And leaves Reed a shoebox.

Inside: pages of coded notes written on napkins and torn menus, addressed to “the boy.” Suddenly, the memory games Tuckey made him play don’t feel like games anymore. And buried in the mess of scribbles is a set of coordinates pointing to a clearing in the middle of nowhere. Reed should throw the box in the trash and go back to his shift. Instead, he gets in his car.

Some stories are just stories.

This one turns into the adventure of a lifetime.

Featured Sci-fi: Portals (Into the Galaxy Book 1) by Ann Christy

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Portals by Ann Christy

99¢ only on Amazon
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The world sees the portals as an invasion. For Lysa, they’re an invitation.

The portals appeared without warning. Every thirteen minutes they take a thousand humans, leaving exact duplicates in their place. Now, chaos reigns and no one is sure anyone is still the person they knew. Whoever is sending the portals has destroyed human society without firing a shot.

Not everyone thinks the portals are a prelude to invasion. Lysa, a student far too bright for her own good, believes the portals might even be something wonderful. There must be a logical reason for the portals, and that means something alive and thinking on the other side of those shimmering holes in our reality. Her burning curiosity leads her to do the unthinkable; she leaps through a portal meant for another.

What she finds is a galaxy teeming with life, worlds beyond imagining, and two terrible truths: Earth is in danger, and the portals are a one-way trip. Stranded in an alien civilization, Lysa will have to use her ingenuity to find a way home and warn Earth before it’s too late.

Portals is book one of the Into The Galaxy Duology, an exciting action-packed adventure suitable for all readers.