C Gockel Writes

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

by

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

99¢ on Amazon
Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

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

by

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

New Release
Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

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

by

Book Review: Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

Apple, B&N, Kobo, GooglePlay

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.

Featured Sci-fi: The Void War (Empire Rising Book 1) by D. J. Holmes

by

Featured Sci-fi: The Void War (Empire Rising Book 1) by D. J. Holmes

FREE as of August 28, 2026
Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

It’s the year 2465, two hundred years since the stars were opened to Humanity by the invention of the shift drive. Its discovery began the First Interstellar Expansion Era, catapulting Humanity into a deadly race for the limited resources of navigable space. Now tensions between the Human nations are threatening to boil over into open hostility.

Into this maelstrom steps the exiled Commander James Somerville of the Royal Space Navy. Banished from London to the survey ship HMS Drake, he is about to make a discovery that may change his fortunes and throw Britain into a deadly war with its closest rival. With only his wits and the courage of his crew to see him through, he will be challenged like never before.


The Void War is a military science fiction novel and the first book in the epic twenty-two novel Empire Rising series that charts the rise of James Somerville’s career and Humnaity’s desperate struggle for survival in a hostile galaxy.

Featured Sci-fi: The Ravagers Box Set Episodes 1 – 3 by Alex Albrink

by

Featured Sci-fi: The Ravagers Box Set Episodes 1 - 3 by Alex Albrink

FREE as of August 26, 2026
Click for current price: Amazon US (Full-price: United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia)

Free everywhere: Apple, B&N

In the distant future, humanity staggers against wave after wave of population decimating catastrophes, and hope fades as the extinction point draws near.

They find a time capsule carrying with it the knowledge of the past, technology that allows them to rise above their meager existence. Within a few generations, they’ve built walled cities to protect them from predators they’d learned to fear, bustling commerce, and telecommunications capabilities that connect people and businesses.

They’ve also restored the means to make war. Two great factions control East and West, each preparing to fight while hoping war never comes. Humanity wouldn’t dare fight a great war so soon after nearing extinction.

But there are some who would prefer those astonishingly low population counts. And they’ll unleash a weapon unlike any other in human history to achieve those ends.

Five people with varying levels of knowledge and responsibility of those plans live their last normal day, unaware that they’ll be fighting for their lives against a weapon which cannot be stopped.

But somehow, they’ll all need to figure out how to survive the unleashing of… the Ravagers.

Featured Fantasy: Shattered Past (A Dragon’s Blood Novel) by Lindsay Buroker

by

Featured Fantasy: Shattered Past (A Dragon's Blood Novel) by Lindsay Buroker

99¢ as of August 25, 2026
Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

Apple, Kobo, GooglePlay

An elite forces officer with a dreadful reputation.
A bookish paleontologist with a love for mysteries.
An ancient stronghold full of secrets that will take both of them to unearth.

Professor Lilah Zirkander (yes, she’s related to the famous pilot, and no, she can’t get him to autograph your undergarments) is looking forward to a summer in the paleontology lab, researching and cataloging new fossils. But that summer takes an unexpected turn when the king sends her into the Ice Blades to a secret mine where ancient dragon bones have been discovered. Rumor has it that they’re cursed and dangerous, but Lilah is more concerned about dealing with the outpost commander, a fierce officer with the temperament of a crabby badger.

As punishment for irking the king, Colonel Vann Therrik is overseeing the hardened criminals working in the remote Magroth Crystal Mines. He would like a chance to redeem himself—and escape the loathsome duty station—but nothing is going his way. Cursed fossils have delayed production, miners are trying to escape, and now a scientist has shown up, making demands on his time. Worse, she’s the cousin of his nemesis General Zirkander. As if one Zirkander in his world wasn’t bad enough.

Investigating the fossils leads Lilah and Vann into the depths of Magroth Mountain where centuries-old secrets lurk, and a long-forgotten threat stalks the passages. To have any chance at survival, they’ll have to work together and perhaps learn that neither is what the other expected.

Shattered Past is a stand-alone novel set in the author’s Dragon Blood world.