C Gockel Writes

Want to keep reading for free (or close to it)?

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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: Time Watcher (Mine Through Time Book 1) by Kate Serzenta

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Featured Fantasy: Time Watcher (Mine Through Time Book 1)

99¢ as of July 21, 2026
Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

New York City, 1862. Fabienne Beaumont lies bleeding in a filthy alleyway. Desperate to escape the bloody War of Rebellion, she and her siblings had been trying to hustle passage back home to their native France. Instead, she fell victim to a card shark’s bullets. As everything fades to black, Fabienne thumbs the hands of her old pocket watch – unaware that she’s about to awaken from one nightmare straight into another.

Hartford, Connecticut, 1864. Two years earlier, Union war hero Brayden Marshall married the beautiful Fabienne – but she’s been like a stranger to him ever since. Everything changes, however, when he’s summoned back to Hartford on a mission for The Watchers – a secret society that can harness the power of time travel. It’s like meeting Fabienne for the first time all over again. She’s passionate, curious – and desperate to right the wrongs of her past. Could the mysterious pocket watch she clings to explain the sudden change in Fabienne’s behavior? And if so, can Brayden risk his future on a woman so obsessed with her past?

Savannah, Georgia, 2008. Spirited high-schooler Emily Willburne is reluctantly researching her family history for a Civil War assignment when she stumbles across the diary of her great, great grandmother, Fabienne. The diary claims to contain the secret of traveling through time – a secret Emily believes could save her dying mom, and rebuild her fractured relationship with her estranged father. But as Emily literally steps into her own history, a new possibility emerges – that the only way to reunite her family in the present is to tear Fabienne and Brayden’s marriage apart in the past.

Does Emily have the power to fix what once went wrong? Or will she tear apart her future, instead?Time Watcher is an intricately woven, clockwork-tight tale of time travel and romance – perfect for fans of Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife and Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series.

Book Review: Only Bad Options (Galactic Bonds Book 1) by Jennifer Estep

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Featured Science Fiction: Only Bad Options (Galactic Bonds Book 1) by Jennifer Estep

$1.99 as of July 21, 2026
Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

Apple, Nook, Kobo, GooglePlay

This was the most fun in sci-fantasy fiction I read in all of 2022. If you loved the original Star Wars, but could have had a little more romance (although it is not technically a romance*), I think you’ll like this book. It’s definitely Space Fantasy. There is “magic” and there are also “soul bonds.” It is satisfyingly complicated, and the character development well done. If you’re looking for a fun read this holiday, I highly recommend it.

*Also, this is not blue alien erotica.

Here is the setup:

[Read more…]

Featured Sci-fi: The Key to Kells (A Key Murphy Thriller) by Kevin Barry O’Connor

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Featured Sci-fi: The Key to Kells (A Key Murphy Ancestral Memory Thriller) by Kevin Barry O'Connor

FREE as of July 20, 2026
Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

“… a thriller that will be pleasing to any fan of The Da Vinci Code,” —Kirkus Reviews.

DISCOVERY UPENDS EVERYTHING WE KNOW ABOUT MEMORY AND GENETICS. IT MIGHT COST KEY MURPHY HIS LIFE.

Key Murphy is a freak, a prodigy. He has visions so real he’s diagnosed with PTSD. Key learns that his visions might be caused by a mutated gene which allows him to experience the memories of an ancestor.

Key also has a family link to The Book of Kells. Pages from the book were stolen in Ireland in the distant past. Those pages are believed to contain a fundamental secret of Christendom.

Padraig Collins is one of the wealthiest men in Europe. He was an undercover operative for the IRA. He amassed a fortune. He wants those pages. His soul depends on them. He will do whatever it takes to possess them.

The race is on.

[Read more…]

Featured Sci-fi: Firestorm Complete Series (Books 1 – 9) Daniel Young

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Featured Sci-fi: Firestorm Complete Series (Books 1 - 9) Daniel Young

$4.99 as of July 19, 2026
Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

★★★★★ “Old-fashioned space opera at its best”

FULL AND COMPLETE SERIES—OVER 1,000 PAGES!

Captain Aaron Decosta, a decorated starship commander, embarks on a clandestine mission across the uncharted expanses. But fate has a twist in store when his vessel is swallowed by a cosmic maelstrom, leaving him and his crew stranded on a world shrouded in mystery and danger.

Back on Earth’s galactic frontier, Colonel Michael Decosta receives the harrowing news of his son’s disappearance. Bound by blood and honor, he defies the chain of command, embarking on a perilous journey to the Bone Yard—a place where space anomalies distort reality and where no rescue has ever returned from.

As father and son navigate their separate but parallel odysseys through alien terrains and treacherous alliances, their tales of survival converge in a saga of family and warfare. With a reunion their only beacon of hope, they must forge alliances with strangers and face off against unfathomable foes.

The Firestorm series offers an unrelenting adventure of survival, loyalty, and the unbreakable bond between father and son.

[Read more…]

Featured Fantasy: Blue Moon Boston Books 1-8 by Justin Herzog and Steve Higgs

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Featured Fantasy: Blue Moon Boston Books 1-8 by Justin Herzog and Steve Higgs

99¢ as of July 18, 2026
Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom (Full-price: Canada, Germany, Australia)

Boston has a murder problem. Also a witch problem. And possibly a fairy war.

Welcome to the worst assignment of Detective Chloe Mayfield’s life.

After one spectacular career implosion, Chloe gets dumped into Boston PD’s supernatural division—aka the place they send cops they’d rather forget. Her new job? Investigate crimes that officially don’t exist… and try not to die doing it.

Unfortunately, Boston’s paranormal underworld didn’t get the memo about taking it easy.

One day it’s witches with attitude problems.

The next, leprechauns robbing the Federal Reserve.

Then headless corpses, cursed swords, angry fae nations, and at least one situation that can only be described as “what do you mean Excalibur is in Boston?”

Armed with stubborn determination, questionable backup (including a wise-cracking dwarf and a possibly delusional Joan of Arc descendant), and a rapidly deteriorating career, Chloe dives headfirst into cases that make absolutely no sense—and somehow make her life even worse.

[Read more…]

Featured Sci-fi: Surplus Marines—Phaethon Corp Series by Jaxon Reed

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Featured Sci-fi: Surplus Marines—Phaethon Corp Series by Jaxon Reed

START THE SERIES FREE—Book 2-Book 9 are 99¢ each US
Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia
& Available from Audible (FREE Trial for new users)

Bo Duckworth is a former master sergeant with the Republican Marines. Forced out of the service for destroying a recalcitrant X103 battle bot during a critical mission, he is out of a job, out of luck and out of ideas on how to make it as a civilian. Like other lost souls, he drifts toward the frontiers of known space looking to find a new life.

Tom Savage is expanding Phaethon Solar, offering the company’s technology to asteroid miners, new planet explorers and others probing the fringes of the galaxy. But on these extremes of humanity’s farthest reaches, his people receive the most inhumane treatment. Here there is no civilization, no law, and no order. Tom decides to procure his own private military to safeguard his company’s technology and personnel.

What Tom needs and what Duck can provide are . . . Surplus Marines!

[Read more…]