C Gockel Writes

Featured Sci-fi: Blend (The Rogues of Teton Book 1) by Frank Kennedy

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Featured Sci-fi: Blend (The Rogues of Teton Book 1) by Frank Kennedy

99¢ as of July 31, 2026
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All legends begin somewhere.

Blue-skinned Arliss Dubai returns to planet Teton with mechanical enhancements and fury burning in his silver veins after wrongfully serving time in lunar prison. Stepping off the transport into the mile-high megacity Vandress, he faces a world that disregards enhanced humans like him, engineered to save a dying planet. Now, these Blends are lower-class citizens, marked for expulsion by zealots in a post-Collapse society forced to survive indoors.

Twelve-year-old Kip Dubai doesn’t recognize the stranger claiming to be his father. A rare hybrid known as a Patchie who bears the traits of two peoples, Kip found family elsewhere during his father’s imprisonment: In a gang of misfits who steal to survive in the steam-filled hidden spaces of the Servo District.

When Enforcement Q officers ambush Arliss in a dark alley, death seems certain – until mysterious, otherworldly figures intervene, leaving bodies and questions in their wake. These ethereal “friends” suggest cosmic forces are stirring within Vandress’s towering spires, and ancient powers are awakening.

A fractured family stands at the crossroads of revolution. Arliss must reconnect with his son before Vandress tears itself apart, or before whatever lurks in the shadows comes for them all.

If you’re into broken cities, fantastical mysteries, and characters who’ve been screwed over but refuse to stay down, BLEND hits different. The first book in The Rogues of Teton series smashes together gritty sci-fi action with fantastical “wait, did that just happen?” moments.

“A riveting opening series installment that introduces spirited characters and an unforgettable dystopian world.” – Kirkus Reviews

Featured Sci-fi: Displaced Book 1 by Stephen Drake

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Featured Sci-fi: Displaced Book 1 by Stephen Drake

FREE as of July 28, 2026
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When Kevin Murdock, martial artist and outdoorsman extraordinaire, is revived from suspended animation aboard a transport pod, he and his nine fellow occupants have no idea what to expect.

Murdock argues for caution after seeing something strange: animals also inhabit their new environment, all of them larger than their Earthly counterparts. Conflict soon erupts between Murdock and James Whittier – a politician with a lust for power and control.

But soon, they all realize that there’s something even more dangerous onboard… something that might cost them all their lives.

Featured Sci-fi: Lost Souls (Book 1 of the Get Lost Saga) by Noah Chinn

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Featured Sci-fi: Lost Souls (Book 1 of the Get Lost Saga) by Noah Chinn

FREE as of July 27, 2026
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A smuggler, a stowaway slave, and a pirate find themselves on a collision course deep in the no-man’s-land of space, tracking a mystery that’s centuries old.

Maurice “Moss” Foote is down to his last hundred credits, which he needs to get his old ship back and start over. Again. But then, Moss is so familiar with rock bottom he has his mail forwarded there.

Hel was born a slave, or maybe she wasn’t. It’s confusing, just like the compulsion that keeps her building… something. When she sees an opportunity to escape aboard a ship, she takes it, not realizing the trouble she’s in for.

Roy “Hellno” Herzog is a pirate who prefers to work alone. Now he’s got a lead on a prize so big it could set him up for life, if he can stomach working with other people. All he has to do is track down one runaway slave.

“An action-packed space romp with a dry sense of humor that will appeal to fans of The Orville who wish that show was more like Firefly.” – Marcus Alexander Hart of the Galaxy Cruise series

Featured Sci-fi: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

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Featured Sci-fi: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

$2.99 as of July 26, 2026
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From New York Times bestselling author Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game—adapted to film starring Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford—is the classic Hugo and Nebula award-winning science fiction novel of a young boy’s recruitment into the midst of an interstellar war.

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race’s next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn’t make the cut—young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.

Ender’s skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.

Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender’s two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.

Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game is the winner of the 1985 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1986 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

Featured Sci-fi: The Song of the Sirens (First Contact) by Peter Cawdron

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Featured Sci-fi: The Song of the Sirens (First Contact) by Peter Cawdron

New Release
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Alex’s world should be simple. High school, homework, friends, exams — the ordinary rhythms of teenage life, but life is anything but simple forty trillion kilometers from Earth!

When his girlfriend, Lux, slips out of high school and onto the surface of their asteroid, she stumbles across two bodies in charred spacesuits. Everything that seems normal is suddenly being called into question. Who were they? Why were they abandoned, left to mummify in the vacuum rather than being brought home and mourned? Was it a terrible accident — or something far worse?

Alex isn’t sure who they can trust. The more he looks for answers, the more certain he becomes that someone doesn’t want any questions being asked. Two forgotten bodies. One terrifying truth. And a chain of events that will change the course of human history.

FIRST CONTACT is a series of stand-alone novels that explore humanity’s first interaction with extraterrestrial life. This series is similar to BLACK MIRROR or THE TWILIGHT ZONE in that it is based on a common theme rather than common characters. This allows these books to be read in any order. Technically, they’re all first as they all deal with how we might initially respond to contact with aliens, exploring the social, political, religious, and scientific aspects of First Contact.

Featured Sci-fi: The Hyperscape Project by Donald Swan

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FREE as of July 25, 2026
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He set out to prove a theory. Now he’s racing to save the galaxy from his mistake.

Along with his newly found, rag-tag band of alien friends, Nick Bannon battles to keep his devastating technology out of the hands of the biomechanoid race known as the Mok’tu.

Nick is flung to a distant world when his hyperspace experiment goes awry. Technology can always be used for good or evil and now his peaceful experiment could become a horrific weapon of a malicious alien race. Every species in the galaxy is in danger of total annihilation and it may take one man’s greatest sacrifice to stop it.