C Gockel Writes

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.

Featured Sci-fi: Trading in Danger (Vatta’s War Book 1) by Elizabeth Moon

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Featured Sci-fi: Trading in Danger (Vatta's War Book 1) by Elizabeth Moon

$1.99 as of October 14, 2024
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The first volume in the Vatta’s War series – action-packed military SF from the Nebula Award winning author of The Speed of Dark.

Ky Vatta is a highly promising military cadet with a great future ahead of her, until an insignificant act of kindness makes her the focus of the Academy’s wrath. She is forced to resign, her dreams shattered.

For the child of a rich trading family, this should mean disgrace on a grand scale. And yet, to her surprise, Ky is offered the captaincy of a ship headed for scrap with its final cargo.

Her orders are absolutely clear, but Ky quickly sees potential profit in altering the journey. Because, whatever the risks, it’s in her blood to trade – even if the currency is extreme danger.

‘I thoroughly enjoyed Trading in Danger and wholeheartedly recommend it’ THE BOOK SMUGGLERS

Featured Science Fiction: Red Dust (Gods & Assassins Book 1) by Frank Kennedy

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Featured Science Fiction: Red Dust (Gods & Assassins Book 1) by Frank Kennedy

FREE as of October 12, 2024
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Fallen gods with a taste for murder. A criminal syndicate. A secretive desert town.

Ex-god Royal has a bone to pick with the human race. In his previous form, charismatic Royal and his surly partner Moon all but saved the forty worlds of the Collectorate from destruction. Their reward? Desert exile on Azteca to live as humans. No public gratitude. History rewritten.

Seriously. Doesn’t anyone respect a god?

Royal and Moon intend to leave their meager existence behind someday and recapture the old glory (random galactic chaos), but building an interstellar criminal network requires millions of credits. Assassinating the enemies of the Collectorate’s paranoid President pays well, yet the jobs are few.

Circumstance brings them to the tiny town of Desperido, where life – and a world of secrets – plays out beneath the desert’s red dust. Royal, ever the shape-shifting visionary (narcissist, some might say) conjures an exciting new path forward. First, the former deities will have to deal with enemies in their midst as well as the Horax, one of the planet’s most powerful criminal syndicates.

Prepare for a wild ride with a healthy dose of snark in the opening stanza of a five-book serial, “Gods and Assassins.” Pistols draw, rifles blast, traitors abound, conspiracies arise, wormholes open, and whiskey flows.

Featured Sci-fi: Reese Daniels Smuggler Series by T.D. Wilson

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Start the Series FREE (Books 2 & 3 only $1.99 Each)
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Smuggling precious cargo to a remote colony was supposed to be easy. I was dead wrong.

Smuggling is a dangerous business and Reese Daniels has the score of a lifetime within his grasp; however, getting shot down on one of Uranus’ moons wasn’t in his plan. Stranded and on the run in the middle of an alien invasion, Reese must work with a group of Marine cadets to escape a grisly fate.

Awarded Silver Honorable Mention in the recent first quarter Volume 40 of L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future contest.