C Gockel Writes

Featured Fantasy: To Court a Queen by H. L. Burke

by

Featured Fantasy: To Court a Queen by H. L. Burke

99¢ as of July 16, 2024
Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

Apple, Kobo

Devin doesn’t want to get married, but he wants to be a frog even less.

Knight-errant Devin takes a shortcut through the woods, only to be captured by fairy forces. The fairy queen has run out of breathing males to fight for her hand, and Devin, while not ideal fairy stock, is breathing—for now. Telling a vain fairy queen you’d rather not be her one true love is a ticket to life on a lilypad, so the knight agrees to face three challenges to win Queen Agalea’s hand. When a clever servant girl offers to help him navigate the trials in order to stop the constant bloodshed of the courtship ritual, Devin jumps at the chance.

Cat-Elf Sevaine’s only goal in life is to stop Agalea from killing off every male she gets her hands on. When cocky but quick-on-his-feet Devin stumbles into her world, she may finally have a champion who can beat Agalea’s cruel games—if she can resist falling in love with him herself. With Sevaine’s help, Devin balances “flirting” with his “beloved” and overcoming tasks specifically designed to kill him.

But even if he defeats Agalea’s challenges, will happily ever after be possible if he’s fallen for his new partner in survival?

Featured Science Fiction: The Farthest Star (The Far Horizon Book 1) by A.R. Knight

by

Featured Science Fiction: The Farthest Star (The Far Horizon Book 1) by A.R. Knight

FREE as of July 16, 2024
Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

Apple, Nook, Kobo, GooglePlay

In the far future, a dormant android awakes on a vast starship to find humanity’s last hopes rest with him.

Launched to carry the human species across the galaxy, Starship’s generations-long journey crumbled as machines took everything from their human creators, including life itself. Given a mission by humanity’s last digital remnants, Gamma must traverse Starship’s vast, dangerous bulk in search of a way to preserve Starship’s original purpose.

Yet Gamma isn’t the only intelligent machine on Starship, and some want a very different end as the spacecraft approaches its final destination. As he confronts the mechs that’ve claimed Starship as their own, the key to Gamma’s survival will come not only from his metal fists, but from figuring out why Starship’s humans fell in the first place.

A far-future science fiction action adventure that blends the real and virtual worlds, The Farthest Star kicks off a series that will have you wondering whether our biology or our beliefs make us human.

Featured Fantasy: Game of Hearts (Otherworlds Book 2) by Courtney Millecam

by

Featured Fantasy: Game of Hearts (Otherworlds Book 2) by Courtney Millecam

FREE on Amazon
Click for Current Price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

Win the game, change your fate. Lose the game, lose your life.When Alice Liddell runs away on the night of her engagement party and stumbles into a shadowy pub on a forgotten street, she thinks her life is ruined. Her parents are furious, her reputation is destroyed, and her fall from society will be printed in all of London’s gossip columns. Then a mysterious stranger gives her an unexpected solution to all of her problems: A yearly game inviting mortals into the land of Faerie to play the queen’s infamous Game of Hearts. To win is to gain a wish of your heart but to lose means sacrificing your freedom.

Alice quickly realizes the game is far more intricate and deadly than she was led to believe and teams up with the rebellious and irreverent cat-shifter Ches. Together they must outwit the other players by solving the obscure riddles given as clues and get out of the queen’s enchanted hedge maze unscathed. It also means staying far away from Maddox, the queen’s champion player and Alice’s fiercest competition. He’s determined to win at all costs, but Alice suspects his motives may not be his own.

The deeper Alice goes inside the world of cunning fae, bloodthirsty beasts, and vengeful queens, the more she fears that winning means betraying those closest to her. And in this Game of Hearts, Alice needs to guard hers.

This 1920’s Alice in Wonderland reimagining is the second book in the Otherworlds Trilogy and is perfect for fans of fairytale retellings with dark twists, atmospheric settings, and slow burn romance that’s swoony, not spicy.

Featured Fantasy: Passage to Dawn by Derrick Smythe

by

Featured Fantasy: Passage to Dawn by Derrick Smythe

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

Winner – Pinnacle Book Achievement Award.
Winner – Global Book Award.
Runner-up – Global Ebook Award.
Runner-up – Independent Publisher Book Award.

The men secured the shackles slowly, hesitantly, but Kibure did not resist; he couldn’t. Whatever otherworldly power had come over him in those moments of passion had fled his body the second he realized what he had done…

In a realm where only clerics are permitted to practice magic, Kibure’s inexplicable use of power places him in grave danger. In a twist of fate, the rogue priestess hired to strip him of his power chooses instead to help him escape. Her reasons for doing so are her own, but something worse than death awaits if they are unable to evade the Empire’s most potent wielders.

This epic fantasy series will be especially enjoyed by fans of Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan, Michael J. Sullivan, Edward W. Robertson, Patrick Rothfuss, and Michael Wisehart.

Featured Fantasy: Hedgewitch for Hire Books 1 – 3 by Christine Pope

by

Featured Fantasy: Hedgewitch for Hire Books 1 - 3 by Christine Pope

FREE as of July 13, 2024
Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

Apple, B&N Nook, Kobo, GooglePlay

The small town of Globe, Arizona, is in a world of trouble when Selena Marx, former witch to the stars — all right, psychic advisor to aspiring actors and actresses — lands there after running afoul of the leader of the Greater Los Angeles Necromancers’ Guild. All she wants is to lead a quiet life…or at least as quiet as the cursed cat she inherits when she buys her new home will allow. Unfortunately, people start turning up dead, and she attracts the attention of Calvin Standingbear, the chief of police for the local San Ramon Apache tribe. More mayhem ensues as the series continues! Hedgewitch for Hire is a lighthearted small town mystery series with an overarching romance subplot carries throughout the books.

This boxed set includes the first three books in the Hedgewitch for Hire paranormal cozy series:

Grave Mistake
Hedgewitch Selena runs to Arizona to escape Lucien, a slimy, celebrity-schmoozing sorcerer. Just as she’s meeting the locals — including hunky Calvin Standingbear — Lucien tracks her down…then disappears. When one of Lucien’s acolytes is killed. Selena and Calvin race against time before a too-close-for-comfort evil cuts her own life short.

Social Medium
Becoming an Instagram star sounded like a good way to promote Selena’s metaphysical shop, but when the dark side of social media rears its ugly head, she’s going to need all the friends she can get, including the secretive police chief Calvin Standingbear. Because online witch rivalries can be murder.

Household Demons
When Selena’s parents buy the most haunted Victorian mansion in town, she checks it out— and senses nothing. But the unholy racket tells her something is infesting this house. When backup arrives, the house strikes back. Now her parents are murder suspects…and Selena could be the mansion’s next victim.

Featured Science Fiction: The Lost Warship (6 book series) by Daniel Gibbs

by

Book 1 FREE, 2 and 3 99¢ as of July 11
Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

From Book 1:

There is a time to weep and a time to mourn.

For the CSV Lion of Judah, that time has not yet come.

The war with the League of Sol ended in victory for the Terran Coalition. Major General David Cohen and his crew conclude their three-month goodwill cruise with one final FTL jump. But instead of returning home in a blaze of glory, the wormhole collapses and hurls them more than four million lightyears into the unknown.

Stranding them in a distant galaxy.

With dwindling supplies but buoyed by hope of a miracle, David follows the evidence to a nearby inhabited planet. After a disastrous first contact with the less advanced alien civilization, rival factions threaten the tenuous peace—and reignite a centuries-old genocidal conflict.

Now David and the war-weary Lion must take up arms once again to head off a catastrophic event in hopes of unlocking an ancient technology’s secrets.

Before the chance to return home is lost forever.