Gardner Dozois has posted the table of contents for his 26th Annual Year's Best SF collection.  He's selected my short story "The Hero" as one of the featured stories, which puts me in fine company indeed. 

"The Hero" is the first short story I've set in the world of Virga (setting for my last three novels) and it's a pretty intense little romp through some of the stranger places in that world.  It was published originally in Eclipse Two, edited by Jonathon Strahan; in fact, it leads off that collection.  "The Hero" is peripherally connected to the grander plot of the novels, but as with the books themselves, it's also a stand-alone piece that doesn't require familiarity with the rest of the series.

Needless to say I'm thrilled--enough so that I've started on a couple more Virga short stories.

Queen of Candesce is already available in hardcover and in audiobook format as well.  The paperback edition is on its way.

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.