Erica Ridley just sold her book TOUCHED to Kensington, in a two book deal!

I would say it is very exciting to see Erica sell, but knowing how talented and awesome she is, I have been expecting to hear news along these lines from her for, oh, ever.  The most exciting part is finding out that she’s going to have a book on the shelves, and I can buy it and read it and give it away to friends and family.  Congratulations, Erica!  You’re a superstar, and I can’t wait to find out details.

But as I said, today is a double squee.  Take a look at the comment trail here and you can see Lori Brighton (that would be Lori from FanLit, the Lori who finaled, oh, only about a million times, who has a ton of talent) has also sold to Kensington, and her book will be out at the end of this year.  This sale happened a few months ago, apparently, but somehow she has managed to be cool as a cucumber, and hasn’t shouted about her sale to the winds.  So I have to do it for her!

Squee for Lori and Erica!

One last thought.  At RWA Nationals in Dallas, a group of eight unpublished, unagented authors met for dinner and plotting.  We talked for a very long time.  Eighteen months later, five of the eight authors have sold (Tessa, Jackie, me, Sara, and now Erica)–and having read full books from two out of the remaining three, I am convinced we’ll see awesome sales for the remaining three soon.

Nine months ago, I talked to Lori at Chicago North’s Spring Fling conference.  We were both unpublished, unagented, and we talked about how crazy this business is.  We practiced our pitches with each other.

In some sense, publishing is a competitive business.  There are a finite number of slots for debut authors.  Not everyone can be published; not even half of everyone, or a quarter of everyone, or even a one-hundredth of everyone can be published.  But just because the business may be in some sense competitive doesn’t mean that you must be competitive with your friends.  Because the truth is, unless you are the Kevin Bacon or the Paul Erdos of publishing, there are more slots available for new authors in publishing than you can possibly have friends.

All of your friends really can get published.  I expect that all my friends will.