There’s a great scene in the movie Dumb & Dumber where Lauren Holly’s character tells Jim Carrey she’d only go out with him if he were the last guy on the planet.

And his response is, ”So…there’s a chance!”

That was what I thought of when I checked my agent’s blog this morning. Kristin posted her numbers for the year, which were downright humbling.

I knew she and Sara received about 20,000 queries from prospective authors each year. But with Ms. Snark’s retirement, Kristin’s PubRants has taken over as the most widely-read agent blog out there. That extra readership is probably what’s helped push her queries to over 30,000 this year––that’s 500+ queries a week.

Of those 30,000 queries, she requested 74 full manuscripts. Of those, she signed eight new clients. Eight. The few, the proud, the soon to be published.

So congrats to Brook Taylor, Sarah Rees Brennan, Helen Stringer and Kristin’s other new authors. It’s humbling to be one of the chosen few––the eight.

Did I mention that eight is a lucky number in Chinese? I know this because my grandmother, Yin Yin, never let me forget it. She was thrilled that I was born 8 pounds, 8 ounces. The number “88” can also mean double joy––or double the labor pain, as I’m sure my mom would have said.

How significant is the number eight? So much that a man in Chengdu, China paid $270,000 for the telephone number 8888-8888. And he still gets those annoying feng shui telemarketers, go figure. Even the Summer Olympics in Beijing are scheduled to open on 8/8/08 at 8:08:08 p.m.

And for the record, my favorite Karaoke bar is a place in Hawaii called 8 Fat Fat 8.

Just sayin'.