Queen of Candesce is already available in hardcover and in audiobook format as well.  The paperback edition is on its way, and you can order it now from Amazon.

If you've been holding off buying QofC because it's only in hardcover, I heartily encourage you to give this edition a look.  While Pirate Sun has been selling like hotcakes and is getting a very good critical reception, Queen of Candesce is my personal favourite of the Virga books to date (is an author allowed to say stuff like this?  My editor may kill me).  Rollicking adventure aside, QofC is set in a unique environment even for Virga:  the inbred, decadent wheel-world of Spyre.  It also features Venera Fanning, who has been one of the most fun characters I've ever written about.  Not only that, I think it's the funniest book I've written.  It continues the saga of Virga, opening the world, characters, and situation out in new directions.  If you enjoyed Sun of Suns, you'll love Queen of Candesce.

And for all of you who complain that I don't promote my work enough:  so there!

You can try out Metatropolis, the shared world anthology from Audible.com, before buying.  There's a sample from my own story, "To Hie from Far Cilenia", or if you want you can listen to Jay Lake's excellent story, "In the Forests of the Night" in its entirety.  

Audible and I have been collaborating on other projects as well.  In fact, you can now download the first three Virga books, unabridged, in audiobook format from Audible.  I've been having a rollicking good time listening to them myself--it's quite an experience when your own words come back to you through someone else's voice! 

Well, I guess I can finally relax.  I'd been worried about my choices in crafting the Virga series, because everybody seemed to have opinions about where the story should go next, and their ideas never seemed to jibe with my own.  "Hayden Griffin has to come back in book three!"  "The third book needs to go outside Virga and look at Artificial Nature!"  And on and on.  I had this terrible feeling as I was writing Pirate Sun that I was crafting a book that would please no one, and I let it go to Tor's production department with something of a feeling of dread.

Yet now, Ernest Lilley, over at SFRevu.com, has this to say:

In the Virga saga, Schroeder demonstrates that he is capable of rich characters, exciting action, compelling plot, and very solid science. ...It's fun in the same league as the best SF ever has had to offer, fully as exciting and full of cool science as work from the golden age of SF, but with characterization and plot layering equal to the scrutiny of critical appraisers.

Britain's Sci Fi UK website has a smashing review of Pirate Sun.  It's worth quoting at length:

This series by Schroeder succeeds remarkably on two distinct levels. Actually, three levels if you count the hybrid fusion of its two modes as a separate success itself.

On the one hand, the series exemplifies all the many wonders inherent in the Big Dumb Object-or "extremely alien environment"-mode of SF. ...Schroeder has conjured up a mind-croggling "steel beach" to add to the genre's rich roster of such places, worked out its mechanics and cultures with masterful ingenuity, and then figured out what kind of adventure such a place would best support...

But on top of this, he has found a way to legitimately recreate the melodramatic thrills found most prominently in the literature from what editor and critic David Pringle calls "the Age of the Storytellers." The exploits of Chaison and Venera, and the gleeful yet bloody-minded pellmell tone and pace of the telling, hark back to Robert Louis Stevenson, Alexander Dumas and, of course, Edgar Rice Burroughs.

As previously mentioned, Sun of Suns is out in audiobook format; you can get it at audible.com and also download it directly into your iPhone or iPod Touch from iTunes (i think).  But, as promised, the other Virga books are following quickly, and now Queen of Candesce is out!

Pirate Sun should follow in short order.  Since each of these books clocks in at about 10 hours in length, they should provide plenty of jogging, exercise-biking, or commuting time. 

I'm finding it really interesting listening to these books.  I've started with Sun of Suns, and thought initially that it would be really weird and, well, narcissistic if I did more than listen to the first chapter.  But the thing is, though I know what's happening and what's to come, and often wince at what I actually wrote down, the experience of hearing the story told by someone else actually changes it.  For the very first time since I started writing, I'm having the (partial) experience of encountering my own work as a reader.

There's a certain melancholy to being a writer, in that sense:  you write the books you want to read, but once they're done you can't read them.  But, while the experience of encountering the books through the readers isn't completely fresh, it's different enough to greatly reduce that sense of melancholy.  And I never expected that.

Sales seem brisk on Amazon, even though the official release date is tomorrow; and people are telling me that they've been seeing it in the stores and buying it already (thanks, Fred!).  There seems to be a gratifying level of interest out there, and early reviews have been highly favourable.

Let me warn you, though:  Pirate Sun is the most adrenalin-packed of the three Virga books.  I know the first two just tore along, with sword-fights, boarding parties, naval/aerial battles and lots of intrigue.  Pirate Sun ups the ante on all this stuff.  It's a cross between The Odyssey and The Three Musketeers, and starts with a prison-break unlike any you've ever heard of (I guarantee that!).  Along the way you'll encounter a Virgan flood (also unlike anything else you've seen) and a battle between two cities where they throw whole neighbourhoods while trying to encircle and absorb one another.  (A little hint about that:  the fantastic cover art by Stephan Martiniere is actually an accurate rendering of a scene from that part of the book.)

 I'm now in the middle of editing the fourth book, The Sunless Countries.  Don't despair:  Pirate Sun wraps up the major plotlines that were kicked off in Sun of Suns.  The Sunless Countries will expand the world of Virga in new directions, introduce some new characters, and answer some of the questions raised in the earlier books.  

Oh, this is going to be fun. 

It's got short stories and (for a while) free ebooks.  It's got some of the best fantasy/scifi art you can find.  It's got John Scalzi...

The Tor.com website is now live.  

This place is going to become a major hub, and it's not going to take long.  With the kind of talent they've got blogging over there--and with the kind of talent they've got writing original short fiction--this site is gonna be flypaper for every SF and Fantasy fan out there.  And deservedly so:  Tor has lavished a tonne of care and ingenuity on this portal, and more importantly they've invited the readers to come in and play too.  Tor.com isn't some arms-length advertising exercise, it's a social networking site for fans of cyberculture.  Go check it out.

And while you're there, check out the jaw-dropping list of free novels and art you can download for a limited time.

You can listen to the complete text of the novel, read by Joyce Irvine.  This is the first of three rapid-fire releases coming from MacMillan audio--the next two books in the series, Queen of Candesce and Pirate Sun, should be made available within the next few weeks.

To get it, bounce on over to the page at Audible.com.  And enjoy!

 “One thing I can guarantee,” said Venera Fanning. “There has never been a prison break quite like this one.”

 The barrel-shaped tugboat was so old that moss had spread continents over its hull, and tufts of grass jutted from its seams like hairs from an old man’s chin. The powerful drone of the vessel’s engines, as its small crew tested them, put a lie to any impression that it was feeble, however. In fact the bone-rattling noise of the test quickly drove Venera and her small group away from the drydock framework that enclosed the tug.

Venera turned away from it and squinted past the light of Slipstream's sun. The city of Rush spread across half the sky, its gaily bannered habitat cylinders turning majestically among wisps of cloud. It was mid-day and the air was full of airships, winged human forms, and here and there cavorting dolphins.

 One figure had detached itself from the orderly streams of flying people, and was approaching. Venera saw that it was a member of her private spy network, a nondescript young man dressed in flying leathers, his toeless shoes pushing down on the stirrups that drove the mechanical wings strapped to his back. He hove to and she admired the sheen of sweat on his shoulders as he saluted. “Here's the latest photos.” He proffered a thick envelope; Venera took it, forgetting about him instantly, and tore it open.

 Her fingers rose of their own accord to touch the scar on her jaw as she looked at what the pictures revealed: the planes and corners of a stone prison that hovered alone in cloudy skies. Not one building, but six or seven that had been lashed together over the decades, the blocky, boulder-like edifice hung half-wreathed in its own fog bank. The blocks, spheres and triangles of the Falcon New Prison were of various architectural styles and colors, literally thrown together and hybridized with clumsy wooden bridges and rope-and-chain lashings into one cancerous monster whose only common element was that all its windows were barred.

 With no gravity to flatten it, the composite prison was stable enough; storms were rare on the edge of civilization and there were no obstacles for the place to run into in its endless drift. The New Prison was a child of neglect, a forgotten mote on the fringe of the vast cloud of worker's dormitories, collective farms and planned cities that was Falcon Formation. Most of the cargo delivered here was on a one-way journey.

 Venera intended to make an unscheduled pick-up.

 continued...