The Attack Of The Mutant Alien Query Letter

And then, as he sat down to revise the last little bit of his novel, he realized that he still had to write his query letter.  The one thing that every agent and editor would expect him to be able to do.  Dammit.  He bit his lip.  That last little piece was still dangling and he still had no idea what to do with it.

Maybe he could include a sticky note.  Something heartfelt that would assure agents that yes, he was a real person with a real novel and not some plagiarizing yahoo.  Perhaps it would read, "Hey!  I'm Steve and this is my novel.  Hope you like it.  P.S. I am a real person and not an alien from Xanthu 4.  Please take me seriously."  Yeah.  That might not work.  Even aliens have sticky notes.

His next idea was a photo of himself sitting at his keyboard.  Cup of coffee in hand.  Black-rimmed glasses and copy of War and Piece to look smart.  Surely, that would prove to them...something.  What were they even looking for anyway?  And what would they do if he didn't have a query letter?  Do the literary people employ a secret police force?  Some Black Water-esque band of trigger-happy crazies?  Maybe they hunt down other offenders, too.  Make them put commas and hyphens in the right spot or else, dammit.  Capitalize that sentence or I'll get angry.  Now use proper grammar in your dialogue too, buddy.

He flinched away from the keyboard.  Maybe this was his last chance to leave the country before the Literary Police caught on.  He'd been a bad bad writer after all.  Being all willy-nilly with commas and sentence structures.  Leaving fragments dangling out in the open like that.  Frequently using made up words like he was different from other writers.  Sheesh.

It wasn't too late yet.  He could still charter a boat and take his typewriter to some other country that didn't have query letters and agents, or all the long series of tiring, hair-ripping, nail-biting hoops he had to jump through to get meaningfully published.  Maybe some place in the mountains between Spain and India.  Come to think of it, he didn't think those countries were next to each other.  He'd have to brush up on his geography.  But there would plenty of time for that in the mountains of wherever.  Yes, that was where he would go.  The mountains.  They'd never find him there.