“I bet it’s not real,” I said. “It looks like one of those little rugs you can buy, with a black hole on it.”

My boss Joey caught my bluff. “Oh, yeah, Ollie? If it’s not real, why don’t you step on it?”

I wasn’t going to, and neither was he. Nor were any of the dozen or so customers who happened to be inside Joey’s Creamery on that nondescript July afternoon, seeking some respite from the sweltering heat, when a hole, perfectly round and blacker than any black I’d ever seen, opened in the floor.

Robert was getting concerned. He was floating in the ocean in a glass bottle as broad as his shoulders. Its neck accommodated his own, leaving his head poking out of the top.

He was looking for his hat.

When things go wrong in my life, I blame it on the fact that no one in my family knows what day my birthday is.

It was the morning of my eighth birthday when it was brought to my attention that I’d had the wrong date for my birthday.

For eight years.

Please accept this as the cover letter for my story, Exactly What Happened to Me “That” Day, and Why.  I hope you like it.  But more than anything, I especially hope you get this letter and that you answer it.  I can’t tell you how excited I am.  Though you wouldn’t know it, I have quite a history with you, and seeing your name (Is Bigfoot your name?  If not, what is your name?) and your picture on the Defenestration website was such a bolt out of the blue that, well, it just has to be a sign.

If you have aspirations of publishing a novel, you might think that once you’ve finished writing the manuscript, you’ve conquered the hardest part. Although this is a great accomplishment and an important step, it’s a relative piece of cake compared with what lies ahead. To realize your goals, you’ll probably need to secure representation by a literary agent, and for that, you’ll need a query letter. You may have heard that the agent query letter is the most important letter you will ever write, and likely rewrite upwards of 17,500 times.