C Gockel Writes

Featured Science Fiction: Pico’s Crush (Central Galactic Concordance Book 3) by Carol Van Natta

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A paradise planet turns deadly. Can a professor and a sniper save his daughter and her friends from mercenaries and a serial killer?

When ex-military sniper and current personal security specialist Jerzi Adams visits his daughter Pico’s quiet college on the paradise-like planet of Nila Marbela, he doesn’t expect emergency evacuations and rogue robots. Nor does he expect to renew a friendship with former squad-mate. And the last person Pico expects to see is the unrequited love she crossed half a galaxy to avoid.

Explosions, sabotage, and assaults used to be Andra De Luna’s daily routine, but she gave it up for a professorship at a prestigious university. Now she’s flung back into that world, with an entire floating campus of students to protect.

When the hunt for a cunning serial killer leads Jerzi’s old friends Luka and Mairwen (Overload Flux) to town, there’s trouble in paradise as the body count starts to rise. Either the world of academia has gone from merely cutthroat to downright deadly, or more sinister forces are in conflict, with the campus as a battleground. Without an improvised miracle or two, no one’s going to make it out alive.

Featured Science Fiction: Minder Rising (Central Concordance Book 2) by Carol Van Natta

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Featured Science Fiction: Minder Rising (Central Concordance Book 2) by Carol Van Natta

$5.99 as of August 21, 2022
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A covert agent asked to train a prodigy telepath discovers he must first keep the boy and his mother alive in a gleaming city full of danger.

An injured agent on the galactic capital planet must evade whoever is killing off his covert interrogations unit and make an impossible choice–save his own skin, or save an innocent woman and her prodigy son. Can he discover who is subverting the mission of the Citizen Protection Service, before they fulfill their dark plans?

A millennium into the future, the Citizen Protection Service tests all children for minder talents, and recruits the best. Injured agent Lièrén Sòng is recovering from a near-fatal crash in Spires, the gleaming capital city of the galaxy. He should be preparing to return to interrogating criminals for the Citizen Protection Service, but he’s made unexpected friends with a woman and her son. The boy has strong telepathic talents similar to Lièrén’s, and his attractive mother makes Lièrén long for the stability of family.

Imara Sesay works hard as a road crew chief in Spires and part-time bartender to provide for her son Derrit. For him, she even breaks her ironclad rule never to get close to a customer, when she trusts Lièrén to teach her son how to control his growing telepathic talents.

However, new fatalities in his covert unit make Lièrén suspect he isn’t a lucky survivor, he’s a loose end. He should pull away from Imara and Derrit to keep them safe. But when the local CPS Testing Center shows a more than usual interest in the boy, Lièrén must make an impossible choice–protect the boy, or run for his own life. Can he stay alive long enough to save Imara and her prodigy son?

Featured Science Fiction: Overload Flux (Central Galactic Concordance Book 1) by Carol Van Natta

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Featured Science Fiction: Overload Flux (Central Galactic Concordance Book 1) by Carol Van Natta

$4.99 as of August 21, 2022 (FREE as part of Star Crossed)
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 Winner, SFR Galaxy Award, 2014!

When the cure for a deadly disease is stolen, two misfits are all that stands between greed and intergalactic tragedy.

Luka Foxe can’t let anyone know about his secret mental abilities. Debilitated by their influence when faced with violence, the brilliant forensic investigator now only takes assignments involving theft. But when he has to hunt down a hijacked vaccine for a galaxy-wide pandemic, the tragic first clue is his best friend’s brutal murder.

Nightshift guard Mairwen Morganthur knows she must keep a low profile. The product of illegal genetic alteration, she’s a lethal weapon with no social graces. But when she’s tasked to protect a detective with frightening intuition, she finds herself falling for him even though he could expose her.

Racing to recover the critical cargo, Luka is surprised by his developing feelings for the capable-but-mysterious guard. And Mairwen may have to risk everything by revealing her identity, with deadly mercenaries hot on their tail.

Can the unlikely pair survive an interplanetary conspiracy long enough to save lives and find love?

Overload Flux is the first novel in the sweeping Central Galactic Concordance space opera series. If you like haunted characters, compelling mysteries, and interstellar romance, then you’ll enjoy Carol Van Natta’s epic tale.

Featured Science Fiction: The Gaia Gambit (The Gaian Consortium Book 3) by Christine Pope

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Featured Science Fiction: The Gaia Gambit (The Gaian Consortium Book 3) by Christine Pope

$4.99 as of August 20, 2022
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Humans and Stacians have been sworn enemies for centuries, so Gaian Captain Lira Jannholm has no reason to trust Stacian starship commander Rast sen Drenthan when he proposes a bargain that will end a dangerous confrontation over a resource-rich planet. When Lira finds herself disgraced and discharged from duty through no fault of her own, she joins forces with Rast to discover the truth behind her reversal of fortune.

Running from rapidly multiplying enemies in a ship stolen from one of the most powerful criminals in the sector, Rast and Lira discover they are pawns in a conspiracy that reaches into the highest levels of government and has put them in mortal danger. The secret they uncover could change the balance of power in the galaxy forever…not to mention destroy their own future together.

Featured Science Fiction: Breath of Life (The Gaian Consortium Book 2) by Christine Pope

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Featured Science Fiction: Breath of Life (The Gaian Consortium Book 2) by Christine Pope

$2.99 as of August 20, 2022
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Anika Jespers, a homesteader’s daughter on a Gaian colony, thinks she’s destined for a dull existence on her family’s farm. But when her father makes an impossible bargain with their neighbor, one of the alien Zhore, she faces a future different from anything she could have possibly imagined.

The familiar story of Beauty and the Beast takes on new life in this SF romance novella, with the Beauty a homesteader’s daughter and the Beast an alien on a faraway colony world.

This book also contains the bonus follow-up holiday short story, “A Simple Gift.”

Featured Science Fiction: Blood Will Tell (The Gaian Consortium Book 1) by Christine Pope

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Featured Science Fiction: Blood Will Tell (The Gaian Consortium Book 1) by Christine Pope

FREE as of August 20, 2022
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Welcome to Iradia, where the Gaian Consortium looks the other way if enough money changes hands, and the best way to ensure a long life is to secure passage off-world….

When Miala Fels’ father is murdered by a vicious crime lord, she decides the best way to get her revenge is to hack the accounts of the man responsible and bleed his hoard of ill-gotten loot dry. Her plans go awry when Mast is killed by a rival, and she ends up nursing one of his men, the notorious mercenary Eryk Thorn, back to health. Her only thought is to have Thorn help her get off-world in exchange for half of Mast’s treasure. The last thing she expects is to lose her heart to him…or to have the consequences of that love change her life forever.