C Gockel Writes

Featured Sci-fi: Rebirth (The Evolution Gene Book 1) by Aaron Hodges

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Featured Sci-fi: Rebirth (The Evolution Gene Book 1) by Aaron Hodges

FREE as of September 4, 2026
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America has fallen. The Western Allied States rose from its ashes—and it does not forgive.

Eighteen-year-old Chris never thought of himself as a traitor. He doesn’t get the chance to argue otherwise. Taken in the night, he wakes in a facility buried deep in the Californian mountains—and he isn’t alone.

Elizabeth Flores has been running her whole life, ever since the night soldiers took her parents. With a brutal winter closing in, she risks everything to reach Sacramento. The hunters find her first.

Now they’re both “volunteers” in the Praegressus Project—a government initiative to enhance the human race. Stripped of their rights, Chris and Elizabeth must work together to survive the torturous experiments. Every day is a test, and every mistake has a cost. The regime doesn’t waste resources on failures.

But only the lucky ones get to die.

Featured Sci-fi: The Trilisk (The Trilisk Ruins Book 1) by Michael McCloskey

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Featured Sci-fi: The Trilisk (The Trilisk Ruins Book 1) by Michael McCloskey

FREE as of September 3, 2026
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Telisa Relachik studied to be a xenoarchaeologist in a future where humans have found alien artifacts but haven’t ever encountered live aliens. Of all the aliens whose extinct civilizations are investigated, the Trilisks are the most advanced and the most mysterious.

Telisa refuses to join the government because of her opposition to its hard-handed policies restricting civilian investigation and trade of alien artifacts, despite the fact that her estranged father is a captain in the United Nations Space Force.

When a group of artifact smugglers recruits her, she can’t pass up the chance at getting her hands on objects that could advance her life’s work. But she soon learns her expectations of excitement and riches come with serious drawbacks as she ends up fighting for her life on a mysterious alien planet.

Featured Sci-fi: Old Blood, New War by Jonathan P. Brazee

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Featured Sci-fi: Old Blood, New War by Jonathan P. Brazee

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Five decades ago, Corporal Isiah “Bull” Amato, Unity Coalition Marine Corps, was ordered to lay down his arms and became a prisoner of war of the Sirius Alliance Syndicate. When he returned to his home planet of New Cotswold, the government had had enough of galactic politics, so it withdrew from the coalition, disbanded its military, and disavowed war.

Not everyone got the memo.

Bull is the commander of his aging-out Veterans of Galactic Wars post when drop troopers land and quickly take over Bally on the Vine. He once swore he would never allow himself to be taken prisoner again, but what can one seventy-three-year-old do to resist?

A Marine’s oath doesn’t have an expiration date, and no matter what the politicians say, his duty is to protect his fellow citizens. Whatever the odds, he has no choice. Bull will fight the invaders.

Featured Sci-fi: Starship Breaker (Alien Coded Book 1) by G J Ogden

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Featured Sci-fi: Starship Breaker (Alien Coded Book 1) by G J Ogden

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He unearthed the galaxy’s most powerful alien artifact. Now, he must run to survive.

Jax Mulder is just trying to survive. Scraping a living as a Breaker in the perilous, interstellar junkyards, he’s used to risking his neck for worthless space trash. But when he unearths an impossibly rare, glowing alien artifact, he thinks his days of grueling poverty are finally over.

His dreams shatter when a savage betrayal causes the entire sector to learn of his discovery. Instantly, Jax becomes the most hunted man in the cosmos.

Forced into a reluctant alliance with Mara Holt, a strict Beyond Earth Authority officer, Jax must outfly ruthless rival scavengers and evade a terrifying, emotionless corporate assassin known only as the Agent.

On the run, and fighting for their lives, Jax and Mara realize that the artifact is worth more than just cold, hard cash. It could unlock the greatest secrets of the universe. Secrets the mega-corporations will do anything to own.

Outgunned and running out of places to hide, Jax and Mara must make an impossible choice. Will they surrender the artifact to a ruthless corporate dynasty, or risk it all to keep the secrets of the alien relic for themselves?

Starship Breaker is book one of the Alien Coded series, by Kindle Storyteller Award winner, G J Ogden. Perfect for fans of fast-paced science fiction adventures like J.N. Chaney’s Backyard Starship and A.K. DuBoff’s Starship of the Ancients, packed with alien discovery, action, humor, and mystery.

Featured Sci-fi: Home Front (I, Soldier Book 9) by Craig Martelle

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Featured Sci-fi: Home Front (I, Soldier Book 9) by Craig Martelle

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Terror from the stars. Aliens have arrived.

An invasion force appears beyond Jupiter. But how?

The Human Force for Peace was supposed to prevent that by intercepting alien forces in distant systems. Black holes with a terminus near Earth were monitored to provide warning.

They all failed. Now, humanity faces its greatest fear.

Fight aliens within the solar system.

Repel an alien invasion.

But the armies of humanity are far away. Issue the emergency recall!

Bring the HFP home to defend Earth.

We will fight for our very existence. In our fields and on our seas. We will fight to the last man, woman, and child. There can be no retreat. There is no ground to give. This is the end game if we wish to see tomorrow.

For all humanity.

By order of Janus Seven, Leader of Humanity

For fans of Starship Troopers, Halo, Battleship Leviathan, and other military science fiction.

Book Review: Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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Book Review: Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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Gumshoe. Racoon. Noir. Do you need any other words to sell you on this book?

Really? Okay, it’s sci-fi with a plausible explanation for this futuristic scenario. The explanation is woven into the story cleverly (perhaps by clever little raccoon hands?) You’ll never feel bogged down in backstory. I loved it.

Here’s the publisher’s note:

Philip Marlowe meets Redwall in this superior adult noir tale, where all the characters are animals, fighting for survival in the city underneath the humans.

In the solar cities of the future, the humans relax in the sun and the animals work in the shadows. Genetically engineered Little Helpers, serving humanity—unseen, unheard.

Meet Skotch. Raccoon, PI—yours for a few buttons as long as the job isn’t too illegal, whatever that means.

A mouse has gone missing. Normally this wouldn’t raise any hackles, nor any alarms, but this mouse has something that everyone seems to want, though nobody appears particularly eager to say what that something is.

The fee is good—perhaps too good. Certainly not something Skotch can easily turn down.

If only Skotch can work out where the mouse is hiding, what he’s hiding, and why his secrets are upsetting a lot of animals caught up in the Green City wars.