C Gockel Writes

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

by

I Bring the Fire Omnibus eBook and The Defiant audiobook

Subscribe & Save

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 Science Fiction: Alien Hunters (Alien Hunters Book 1) by Daniel Arenson

by

Featured Science Fiction: Alien Hunters (Alien Hunters Book 1)

FREE as of September 29, 2026
Click for current price: Amazon US, Australia (Full-price: United Kingdom, Canada, Germany)

Apple, Nook, Kobo, GooglePlay

The skelkrins. Predators from deep space. Creatures of claws, fangs, and unending malice. They swarm across the galaxy, slaying all in their path. Planets burn in their wake. And now they’re heading to Earth.

Raphael “Riff” Starfire commands the Alien Hunters, a group of scruffy mercenaries. Galactic pest controllers, they mostly handle small critters–aliens that clog up your engine pipes, gnaw on your hull, or burrow through your silos.

Riff and his crew have never faced anything like the skelkrins before. As these cosmic killers invade our solar system, will Riff be the one hunting aliens . . . or will aliens hunt him?

ALIEN HUNTERS — a free space opera adventure for fans of Star Wars, Firefly, and Guardians of the Galaxy. (Get a deal on the next two books in series – get the boxset!)

Featured Sci-fi: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

by

Featured Sci-fi: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

$2.99 as of September 29, 2026
Click for current price: Amazon US
(Full-price: Amazon Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia Apple, B&N, Kobo, GooglePlay)

HUGO AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST BOOKS: New York Public Library, Parade, Newsweek, Polygon, Shelf Awareness, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal • New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

“An epic story of redemption, discovery and cool speculative sci-fi.”—USA Today

“If you loved The Martian, you’ll go crazy for Weir’s latest.”—The Washington Post

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.

Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.

Or does he?

An irresistible interstellar adventure as only Andy Weir could deliver, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian—while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.

Featured Sci-fi: Endurance the Complete Series by A.C. Spahn

by

Featured Sci-fi: Endurance the Complete Series by A.C. Spahn

99¢ as of September 25, 2026
Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

Apple, B&N, Kobo

USA Today Bestseller!

A disrespected ship, exiled to lonely patrol in the dark corners of the solar system.

A crew of screw-ups, written off by the entire fleet.

They’re about to change everything.

If they don’t blow themselves up first.

Join the Endurance’s crew – a trigger-happy first officer, a hyperactive engineer, a shy covert operative, a conspiracy-spouting physicist, and a captain trying to earn his way back into his superiors’ good graces – as they explore the galaxy by accident and trip their way into saving the world.

This anthology includes all five Endurance novellas, as well as two bonus short stories.

Featured Fantasy: Brews and Clues (Hallow’s Promise Book 1) by A.N. Payton

by

Featured Fantasy: Brews and Clues (Hallow's Promise Book 1) by A.N. Payton

99¢ on Amazon
Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

CSI meets fantasy – with a dash of cozy!

Trouble is brewing in Hallow’s Promise…

Rae wants to steep in the success of her magic potion wagon, BREW-TEA-FUL, and sell drinks that help the residents of Hallow’s Promise. She certainly doesn’t want to assist the town’s investigator in solving another murder. Except this crime has a personal link to her own history: the victim came from the same place she’d once escaped. Rae agrees to help with the case on one condition: it’s her last one.

But her “last” case simmers with danger, dark connections to her past, and a delicious man with a really big…sword. While dodging increasing threats, juggling a creature that keeps trying to eat (dead) people, Rae eventually faces her greatest challenge of all: determining if the life she’s built in Hallow’s Promise is worth risking everything.

Grab a hot beverage, a warm blanket, and curl up for this almost-cozy fantasy murder mystery, spiced with magic, sweetened with new friendships, and stewed especially for you.

Featured Sci-fi: Level One (Galactic Merc Book 1) by Chris Kennedy

by

Featured Sci-fi: Level One (Galactic Merc Book 1) by Chris Kennedy

Expected to be 99¢ from September 26-October 3rd, 2026
Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

Jack Taylor was having a bad night. And that was before the aliens showed up.

Abducted by Gray slavers and hauled across the galaxy, Jack wakes up months later with no money, no way home, and exactly one viable career option:

Mercenary.

But there are problems. Jack has no military training, no combat experience, no nanites, and no clue how to survive an alien battlefield. According to the software implanted in his head, he doesn’t even qualify as a Level One merc.

He’s Level Zero.

Jack will have to to train, fight, earn credits, and level up fast—because getting killed doesn’t pay very well, and the galaxy is far more dangerous than anything he ever wrote about.

And then he discovers the truth about Earth—aliens have been interfering with humanity for thousands of years.

Suddenly, getting home is no longer enough. Jack needs to become rich, powerful, and dangerous so he can do something about it.

But first, he’ll have to survive Level One.

For fans of Reluctant Emissary, Psyker Marine, Drone Ensign, and other military LitRPG science fiction. What does destiny have in store for you?

Featured Fantasy: The Midnight Pack (Jericho James Book 1) by Jasmine Kuliasha

by

Featured Fantasy: The Midnight Pack (Jericho James Book 1) by Jasmine Kuliasha

FREE as of September 21, 2026
Click for current price: Amazon US, Apple, B&N, Kobo, GooglePlay

Jericho James is in over her head.

She’s a Private Investigator famed for debunking mythical creature sightings, and she expects her latest case in Stillbridge, Maine, to be just another instance of “town who cried wolf.” But instead of finding a poorly judged animal in the Northeastern woods, Jericho discovers a family of reclusive scientists. Handsome scientists, no less, working on a cure for a mystery virus.

Intrigued by the virus and utterly captivated by Benjamin—a man with cheekbones that must have been chiseled by God himself—Jericho finds she’s dying to learn more about the family and their work.

And when she accidentally discovers the family’s secret, she might just get her wish.