C Gockel Writes

Featured Sci-fi: Saving Mars (Saving Mars Series Book 1) by Cidney Swanson

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Featured Sci-fi: Saving Mars (Saving Mars Series Book 1) by Cidney Swanson

Expected to be 99¢ February 8 – 23, 2026
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Some pilots follow orders. Others just wing it.

A rule-breaking pilot from Mars must defy two worlds to save her family and her home when a planetary disaster forces her onto a high-stakes, secret mission to Earth. Now she must rely on her wits, her guts, and her brilliant but fragile brother to pull off the impossible. But soon a star-crossed encounter with a privileged Terran boy – and a devastating betrayal – threaten to unravel not only her mission, but the very future of her world.

“SCI-FI THAT SOARS.” -Kirkus, starred review

Saving Mars is a Sci-Fi series of colonization on Mars featuring interplanetary politics, adventure, and romance that’s perfect for fans of coming-of-age science fiction.

Featured Sci-fi: Planting Life by Laura Montgomery

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Featured Sci-fi: Planting Life by Laura Montgomery

A NEW RELEASE I MISSED!
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Nominated for the 2026 Prometheus Award for Best Novel.

The road to Mars has to start somewhere. It might as well be central Virginia.

Jack Darien scorns his parents’ path. After the disaster at his father’s Mars settlement, the high school senior scraps both his lifelong interest in space exploration and his college plans. Even his rescue of a college student from assault doesn’t make him see his own future any differently.

Jack becomes obsessed, however, when one strange comment from the attacker draws him to unravel secrets at the former Superfund site that is now Webb University, the school where his returning father teaches and eco-restoration reigns. What starts for Jack as a distraction from thinking of his future turns into a dangerous journey that puts him, his mother, and sister at risk. As for his father, Jack decided long ago the man was on his own.

Jack’s determination to chart his future clear of his father’s failures hits a snag when he learns the school’s hidden mystery. Unfortunately, those determined to bring Webb down learn it, too, and ratchet up their own efforts toward Webb’s destruction.

Planting Life is an immersive young-adult science fiction adventure. If you like unearthing secrets, a dogged hero, and reckless courage under threat, you’ll love Laura Montgomery’s near future coming-of-age saga.

Featured Sci-fi: Synthetic Eden by Alexander Titus and Sean Platt

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Featured Sci-fi: Synthetic Eden by Alexander Titus and Sean Platt

FREE as of February 5, 2025
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When Earth falls to a devastating fungal plague, geneticist Dr. Samara Makinde joins humanity’s desperate bid for survival on DaVinci, a distant exoplanet meant to be their fresh start. But DaVinci has a secret: it harbors spores that wipe out every pregnancy, threatening to erase the colony before the next generation is born.

Samara believes she can save them with gene therapy, reengineering human DNA to live in harmony with the alien fungus. But psychologist Dr. Ayesha Basu sees only the shadow of her family’s past, genetic “enhancements” that led to madness, and vows to stop Samara at any cost.

Defying the colony’s laws, Samara risks everything to secretly engineer her own child. Her daughter, Phoebe, should be a miracle. Instead, she becomes a spark for paranoia and revolt. When the ruins of DaVinci’s first settlement reveal a mass grave of genetically altered children, fear turns to fury, and the colony fractures into zealots and outcasts.

Featured Science Fiction: Silent Order—by Jonathan Moeller

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Featured Science Fiction: Silent Order—by Jonathan Moeller

FREE First in Series—Book 2 Only 99¢
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The galaxy is at war, but wars are won and lost in the shadows.

To the galaxy at large, Jack March is a privateer of the interstellar Kingdom of Calaskar and a former Iron Hand commando of the malevolent Final Consciousness. In truth, he is an alpha operative of the Silent Order, the most efficient and feared intelligence organization in human space. When there is a crisis, Jack March is the man to call.

But there are many forces that wish to enslave or destroy humanity.

And when a mission leads March to a lawless asteroid space station, he might be the only one left to stop those forces…

Featured Sci-fi: Sentient Relic (Peregrine Outpost Book 5) by Stan C. Smith

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Featured Sci-fi: Sentient Relic (Peregrine Outpost Book 5) by Stan C. Smith

New Release
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She was built to teach humanity. Now she’s the last voice of a forgotten world.

Alone in the ruins of a dead colony, a sentient robot prepares her final message… and her final act.

On the distant planet Tenoth, terraforming failed, and humanity’s dream of a thriving colony perished in a tide of flesh-eating bugs. The human embryos meant to populate this world were destroyed. The only survivors were the robotic teachers built to nurture and teach the humans. Centuries later, only one teacher remains: Presence.

Wandering through ruined structures and broken memories, Presence decides to end her existence. But first, she will build a final record—one that tells the story of the colony’s failure and warns any future explorers about the deadly creatures waiting beneath Tenoth’s soil. As she reconstructs her past, Presence wrestles with grief, loneliness, and a fading sense of purpose.

Each chapter she records is a piece of her soul, a confession from a sentient machine that once had hope. But as her message nears completion, something impossible happens—something that could change everything she thought she knew about her purpose… and her future.

Sentient Relic, a novella, is a prequel for the Peregrine Outpost series, an epic post-apocalyptic, space colonization story.

Featured Sci-fi: Toy Starship by M.R. Forbes

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Featured Sci-fi: Toy Starship by M.R. Forbes

New Release
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Evan Marshall was a decorated Marine until a deadly mistake ended his career. Now he drifts between dead-end jobs and cheap motels, running from a guilt he can’t escape. When his estranged sister dies, Evan heads home carrying more regret than hope, uncertain whether anything of his old life can still be salvaged.

A garage sale find. A cheap gift for the nephew who hates him. That’s all the toy starship was supposed to be. Instead, the simple peace offering opens the door to something far more unbelievable, extraordinary, and dangerous than he ever imagined.

Because the starship isn’t a toy at all.

The discovery carries Evan beyond Earth and into a sprawling galaxy of distant worlds, ancient powers, and unfolding conflicts. But his initial wonder quickly gives way to desperate survival when he learns he’s not the only one who knows about the ship. They’ve been searching for it for a long, long time, and there’s nothing they won’t do to get it from him.

They say you can never go home again.

They were right.