At last a really, really rich person who is happy about having money. God bless you, Oprah. God bless you. If I ever have a billion dollars I will rest just as easily.

I’m working on an approach for the literary agent the Wife stumbled across. This business about having a contact in common is an unusual situation, as by circumstance I reach out to agents cold and whatever happens, does. Last project, somewhere around fifteen percent of those solicited expressed an interest in the manuscript — a project which was neither developed properly nor ready for representation. I can say that now; I had no business trying to sell that book. As far as I’m concerned, if it stays in the file cabinet in perpetuity the world shall be no poorer.

But this round I have something good enough. Perfect? Hell no. Good enough? Yes. Of the two I spoke with from Team Eagle Eye, neither expressed qualms about showing the first 50 pages in the present condition. And from one of them, this is a real coup, as he loathes formula fiction and mysteries, and puts the anal in analytical. If there’s a glitch, he finds it. Bug tally thus far: 1, and it’s a point so minor I honestly consider it an observation.

In any case, contact by Thursday is the goal…

Nothing like continuous bed rest for a few days to reframe a busted perspective. Before breaking down, I was starting to hate everything around me out of fatigue. Even the cats wore on the nerves.

On the plus side, I read more books in the last 72 hours than in the past two weeks. Finally got around to Christopher Moore’s Practical Demonkeeping. Moore blends comedy and suspense in a unique — probably unparalleled — way. The neat part is that he’s funny in the most unexpected junctures, which makes the jokes all the more hilarious. He started out as a cult author, but no more. A Dirty Job, his latest, debuted at number 9 on the NY Times Bestseller list. Yet for all the success, he eludes the standard genre classifcation; his works are neither squarely suspense nor drama. And neither are they just comedies. Moore is more than that. He’s a special blend of all three, and a quick read, too.