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.

Special Feature: Meet My (Sci-fi) Cover Designer Tom Edwards

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Volka From Admiral Wolf

DESIGNING THE GALAXY

Science fiction lives or dies by imagination, and nowhere is that more visible than on its covers. Before a reader even turns a page, the art has already whispered a promise of adventure, danger, and wonder. Few artists capture that better than Tom Edwards, whose work has become the visual signature of modern space opera and military science fiction.

Over the past decade, Tom has designed hundreds of covers for some of the biggest names in the genre, from vast fleet battles and alien worlds to intimate portraits of lone heroes against the void. His art doesn’t just illustrate; it invites. It’s that rare fusion of painterly realism and cinematic light that makes you feel the hum of engines and the chill of deep space.

To celebrate his contribution to the worlds we write, and you love to read, a group of us, Joshua T. Calvert, C. Gockel, James Rosone and BA Gillies, have come together to showcase some of our favourite covers by Tom and to ask him how he brings galaxies to life.

[Read more…]

Featured Fantasy: Mystic Brews Mysteries by Alyn Troy

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Featured Fantasy: Mystic Brews Mysteries by Alyn Troy

START THE SERIES FREE—Book 2 and Book 3 only 99¢ Each
Click for Current Price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany

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A magical café where the deceased demand answers, cats are snarky, and chickens ghostly!

When my quirky Aunt Rose asks me, an American barista, to help open a hip espresso café near the Welsh and English border, I jumped at the chance. What better way to celebrate my 36th birthday and try to ignore the second anniversary of my boyfriend’s death?

Misty Valley isn’t just your average Welsh village. This one is full of fae like pixies, orcs, and leprechauns, and now me. My special power, other than making great espresso? I can see and hear ghosts.

So, when the spirit of my ex-boyfriend Jake shows up with more than the ghostly chickens he died with (don’t ask, it’s complicated), I find out just how strange my new life in Misty Valley is.

Jake’s new ghostly friend, Sir Reginald, disappeared a year before I arrived. Now that I’m here, the deceased cricket player wants me to figure out who murdered him. And figure out why. Everyone agrees he’s the most cricket of all cricket players. Who’d want to do in a chap like him?

First I find out I’m a witch, now I have to be a supernatural detective? I’d worry about that, but my new bestie seems to be a top secret agent for the fae queen. Yeah, I told you this is a weird little village.

And, since I’m a new witch, I’ve inherited not only a wand, but also a snarky talking cat named Punkin who is addicted to coffee beans. Seems that he had an incident with too many beans and the fae queen’s ball gown. Now I’m stuck with him.

And our attempt to solve the mystery of Sir Reginald’s death, is making the killer very nervous.

My new friends and I find ourselves in hot water right away. Just locating the car wreck that killed Sir Reginald reveals an escaped infernal that wants to eat my new cat, then eat the rest of us.

Can we serve up justice before a brewing disaster boils over? Lattes and Spirits is the first book in the delightful Mystic Brews paranormal mystery series. If you like high-stakes mysteries, sassy heroines, quirky characters, and a side of spells with your cuppa joe, then you’ll love Alyn Troy’s otherworldly adventure.

Featured Sci-fi: Grid Wars The Complete Series by Daniel Young

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Featured Sci-fi: Grid Wars The Complete Series by Daniel Young

99¢ as of May 14, 2026
Click for Current Price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany

WAR IS COMING TO THE GRIDS. It started the moment Hobbes made the worst decision of his life.

He’d come to steal a jewel. Clean job, clean exit. Then he tripped over a dying man on a cargo platform — filthy, barefoot, shooting like nothing human — and made the mistake of dragging him aboard.

Hobbes should have left him there.

The man knows things he shouldn’t. He whispers the name of a planet that doesn’t exist, in fragments that are starting to make a terrifying kind of sense. And now every powerful faction in the sector is sending warships after the Infiltrator. They want the stranger back badly enough to burn the Grids to get him.

Hobbes is a thief. Not a soldier, not a hero. He doesn’t do causes.

But the stranger saved his life. Some debts you don’t walk away from. This one might cost him everything.

[Read more…]

Featured Sci-fi: Lily Starling Series by Christian Hurst

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Featured Sci-fi: Lily Starling Series by Christian Hurst

START THE SERIES FOR 99¢—Book 2 only 99¢, Book 3 only $2.99
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Triple Gold Winner — 2026 Spring BookFest Awards
First Place: Science Fiction Space Opera, YA Science Fiction, LGBTQ+ Science Fiction

New Edition — Book One in the Award-Winning YA Sci-Fi Series

Lily Starling is alone in a city she barely recognizes, with no memory of her past—only a metal tag bearing her name and an instinct for survival. When a Union starship crew claims she belongs with them, she’s pulled centuries beyond her own time and into a desperate mission against the psionic Krythar.

Aboard the starship Salamander, Lily is drawn into a found family of misfit officers, warriors, and exiles. Together, they uncover mysteries hidden among the stars: an ancient memory seed carrying the voices of the dead—and a weapon capable of unraveling time itself.
But when Lily faces her greatest fear, she must choose—confront the truth of her past, or risk losing everything she’s come to care about.

A lyrical, fast-paced space opera about identity, connection, and courage at the edge of the unknown.

Perfect for fans of Becky Chambers, with the cinematic scope of Mass Effect and the found-family heart of Firefly and Red Rising.

Featured Fantasy: Shadowmarch Volume 1 by Tad Williams

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Featured Fantasy: Shadowmarch Volume 1 by Tad Williams

$1.99 as of May 13, 2026
Click for Current Price: Amazon US, Canada, Germany (Full-price: United Kingdom)

Apple, Kobo, B & N, GooglePlay

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR: The first epic fantasy in an “intricate, intriguing” saga set in a conflicted land of humans, elves, and dwarves (Booklist).

The weight of the world rests on the shoulders of twin royal heirs as their enemies, both human and not, threaten the only home they’ve ever known.

For generations the misty Shadowline has marked the boundary between the lands of men and the lost northern lands of their inhuman enemies, the ageless Qar. But now that boundary line is moving outward, threatening to engulf the northernmost land in which humans still live—the kingdom of Southmarch.

For centuries, the Eddon family has ruled Southmarch Castle, guarding the border against the Qar’s return, but now this powerful royal line has been dealt a devastating blow. King Olin is held captive in a distant land, and it falls to his inexperienced heirs to lead their people in a time of growing danger and dread.

It is on the two youngest Eddons that the heaviest burdens fall. As the Qar’s power reaches out across their land, will Southmarch Castle—the only home they’ve ever known—become in fact what it has long been called . . . Shadowmarch?

Featured Sci-fi: Future’s Fall (After the Apocalypse Complete Boxset) by Kevin Partner

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Featured Sci-fi: Future's Fall (After the Apocalypse Complete Boxset) by Kevin Partner

FREE as of May 12, 2026
Click for Current Price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany

The complete series in one thrilling collection.

Thirty-five years after the world ended, a lonely man picks his way across the ashes of America on a final mission.

Reuben Bane spent decades believing he was a force for good, preserving humanity’s gene pool by hunting and eliminating deviants.

Now, he seeks redemption for his evil deeds, and revenge on the cultish Foundation. He must travel across a broken country to find a woman from the past who holds the key to the future.

Set among the ashes of a destroyed world, the series brings to life a possible future world teetering on the brink between endless darkness and an uncertain future.

Featured Sci-fi: Banish the Stars (The Formless Book 1) by Nathan Hystad

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Featured Sci-fi: Banish the Stars (The Formless Book 1) by Nathan Hystad

99¢ as of May 10, 2026
Click for Current Price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany

We have arrived. Descent is in progress.

Ryan Pierce traded military life for a peaceful existence in Napa Valley. Everything was fine until the starships appeared.
As aliens overtake the land and obscure the sun, Ryan quickly grasps that no one’s coming to rescue them. He can’t save the world on his own. Ryan must build a team to confront humanity’s greatest threat.

Who are the invaders, and what did they come for? As people are snatched from the Earth one space elevator at a time, those answers become apparent.

But is Ryan ready to hear them?

From the best-selling author of Ethos, The Event, Lost Contact, First Life, and many more, comes a brand-new epic series, The Formless.