C Gockel Writes

Featured Sci-fi: Fuzzy Dice by Paul Di Filippo

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$1.99 as of October 15, 2024
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“Di Filippo clowns his way through this transdimensional travelogue cut from the same cloth as Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” —Publishers Weekly
 
At forty-five-years-old, Paul Girard is a self-loathing clerk at an independent bookstore, having finally killed his dream of being a writer by throwing out his rejected manuscripts. Drowning in existential angst, Paul can’t envision much of a future for himself—until he meets Hans. 
 
Hans is one of the Mind Children, an artificial race that has succeeded humanity. If Paul allows Hans to copy his human essence, the key to Superspace and its infinite number of universes will be his. And even though said key is a yo-yo, Paul agrees.
 
Desperate to escape his banal reality, Paul flings the yo-yo and winds up in the singularity that preceded the Big Bang . . . a matriarchal society of women warriors . . . a realm populated by TV characters from his childhood. But Paul’s frantic travels only prove one thing: wherever he goes in the multiverse, there he is. Now how does he get home?

Featured Sci-fi: The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman

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Featured Sci-fi: Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman

$1.99 as of October 15, 2024
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From the acclaimed author of Marsbound comes a mind-bending sci-fi adventure that will have you questioning the very fabric of time itself

Struggling grad school dropout Matt Fuller is toiling as a lowly research assistant at MIT when he inadvertently creates a time machine. With a dead-end job and a girlfriend who left him for another man, Matt has nothing to lose in taking a time-machine trip himself—or so he thinks.

Featured Sci-fi: Illuminae (The Illuminae Files Book 1) by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

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$1.99 as of October 15, 2024
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“A truly beautiful novel that redefines the form.” —Victoria Aveyard, bestselling author of Red Queen

This morning, Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the hardest thing she’d have to do. This afternoon, her planet was invaded.
      The year is 2575, and two rival megacorporations are at war over a planet that’s little more than a speck at the edge of the universe. Now with enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra—who are barely even talking to each other—are forced to evacuate with a hostile warship in hot pursuit.
     But their problems are just getting started. A plague has broken out and is mutating with terrifying results; the fleet’s AI may actually be their enemy; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady hacks into a web of data to find the truth, it’s clear the only person who can help her is the ex-boyfriend she swore she’d never speak to again.
      Told through a fascinating dossier of hacked documents—including emails, maps, files, IMs, medical reports, interviews, and more—Illuminae is the first book in a heart-stopping trilogy about lives interrupted, the price of truth, and the courage of everyday heroes.

Featured Fantasy: Death by Miss Adventure by S.G. Tasz

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Featured Fantasy: Death by Miss Adventure by S.G. Tasz

FREE as of October 15, 2024 (Book 2 only 99¢)
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She’s a ghostly assassin. He’s a sharp-eyed Brit who can melt minds. When something goes amiss in the magical underworld, can they unravel a murderous puzzle before all hell breaks loose?

Adina Venture keeps her banter brisk, and her emotions hidden. Maintaining a careful barrier between herself and anyone she cares about, she stalks the lonely Las Vegas nights as a supernatural killer-for-hire. Her signature? Making her jobs look like bizarre accidents—or “misadventures,” as they are often called in the official death reports.

When an organization known for its brutal justice accuses her of slaying one of their own, little Miss Adventure knows she’s in big trouble, and the only way out of it is to prove she’s not guilty. There’s just one problem: Until they’re sure she’s not a killer (at least, not the one they’re looking for), she will be magically bound to Chief Inquisitor Levi Breitling, an unforgiving and unceremonious investigator who’s sure of her guilt. If she can’t convince him she’s innocent, he’ll verify it himself—by digging into her head and ripping out her memories one by one.

In the struggle to clear her name, the unlikely pair uncover clues that suggest the murder was part of a much bigger, potentially Armageddon-level plot. Now, the fate of Sin City hangs on whether Adina and Inquisitor Breitling can find the true culprit before a deadlier monster awakens. And the longer it takes to track down the killer, the tighter the chain between them seems to grow…

Death by Miss Adventure is the darkly humorous first book in the Death by Miss Adventure urban fantasy series. If you like twisty mysteries, witty banter, and slow-burn, enemies-to-lovers romance with a dash of spice, then you’ll love S.G. Tasz’s award-winning novel. Unravel this snarky gothic mystery today!

Featured Sci-fi: The Handler’s Gambit (The Saxen Saga Book 1) by Ingrid Moon

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Featured Sci-fi: The Handler's Gambit (The Saxen Saga Book 1) by Ingrid Moon

FREE as of October 15, 2024
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A young man undermines a warlord’s conquest to free himself and a girl he barely knows.

Play the game.
Murder the innocent.
Don’t let them see you sweat.

Commander Boone’s treacherous secret could save thousands of lives—if he could only escape from the murderous warlord who employs him. He wears his game face while following orders to destroy enemy fleets and handles a reckless assassin with elemental powers. Behind the scenes, he is undermining the warlord’s pursuit of an innocent rival.

The duplicity and the horrors are taking their toll. Boone wants out.

In a bold gambit, he crafts a plan to escape. But his superiors might be catching on, and the plan is not without its own horrors. With everything working against him, including the woman he thought was his salvation, he may not live long enough to execute it.

“Absolutely epic action with a tug at the heartstrings.”

Space Battles, Biological “Magic,” Ground Assaults, Betrayal, Unlikely Allies

The Handler’s Gambit is a dark, character-driven thrill ride across the galaxy, where the sacrifices made for freedom clash with the indomitable human spirit.

Featured Sci-Fi: Eater by Gregory Benford

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$1.99 as of October 15, 2024
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Impending personal tragedy is dimming the brilliant light of Dr. Benjamin Knowlton’s world. On the threshold of their greatest achievement, the renowned astrophysicist’s beloved wife and partner—ex-astronaut-turned astronomer—is dying.

But something looms alarningly on the far edge of the solar system: at once a scientific find of unparalleled importance that could ensure the Knowltons’ immortality, and a potential earth-shattering cataclysm that dwarfs their private one. For Benjamin and Channing have discovered “Eater,” an eons-old black hole anomaly that devours stars and worlds. Yet its most awesome and devasting secrets are still to be revealed…and feared.