When I was younger, we used to have a piece of paper
        and one person would start the story, and we'd pass the paper
        around several times. 
        
                This is where I would like to start a story for the
        same spirit. I'll start the story, and let your responses be
        additions unto the story.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                Once upon a time there was a man who committed a
        horrible crime....



                

13 responses total.

...and almost got away with it.  What tripped him up was not fingerprints,
nor DNA, nor any other piece of modern technical investigative wizardry,
but instead just a very simple, elementary thing.

Poor personal hygiene.

  But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

  It all began on a steamy August day in New York City, with an NYPD motor-
cycle patrolman named Millard Fillmore.  Milly, as he was called by those
few fellow officers who still had enough kindness in their hearts not to
call a man "Filly," had had a bad day.  He had somehow allowed himself to
be talked into trying to rescue a cat from a tree, and while he was at it,
someone had stolen his police motorcycle.  He had almost succeeded in rescuing
the cat, but it turned out not to be a cat at all, and he had fallen out of
the tree.

  "Since when do fucking skunks climb trees?" he muttered as he limped down
Wall Street, with the crowd clearing magically around him.

  Wall Street wasn't really on his way back to the stationhouse, and in fact
he didn't really need to walk anywhere since he still had his police radio
at his belt, but Milly wasn't feeling enthusiastic about reporting back in.
He wasn't sure he ever wanted to report back in.

  Then, suddenly, he stopped in his tracks.  He had just seen something that
gave him a completely new idea.  A solution to all his problems.

  It was a manilla envelope, lying on the ground beneath the mailbox on the
corner.  The address was clearly showing -- Miller, Schwartz, and Stimpson,
the top stock market trader -- in the upper right hand corner.  The 
addressee was none other than Jerome Hyatt, the self-made millionaire
who had gone from thousandaire to millionaire overnight but shrewd and
cutthroat stock trading.  

  How did it get there?  A sloppy courrier, perhaps, or maybe the  mailman
himself -- someone, somehow, had dropped it there for him.
  
It was fate.  Kismet.  It was what was meant to be, Milly knew this.

What was in the envelope?  He had to know.  He nonchalantly picked it up, 
and slipped into the local coffeehouse to open it.

He gently slid his fingers around the edges- savoring the feel of doing
something  forbidden. He licked his lips, one of his many nervous habits. Then
he scanned the crowd to see if anyone was watching him. The coast is clear, he
thought. Shocking himself with the guilt he was feeling. He gently bounced the
letter on his hand trying to guess at its contents. Should he open it? What if
it contained some sort of cash, or a good tip on the exchange? Or should  he
respect the law, and return it to it's owner? What if he opened it, and if it
was  nothing interesting, then return it to it's owner? He  could always say
he'd found it that way.

"Can I get you something?"

Milly jumped at the waitress' voice, and the envelope flew from his fingers, 
coming to rest on the waitress' shoes.  She bent over to pick it up.

"Sorry," she laughed, hnading it back.  "I didn't mean to startle you.  Can
I get you something?"

He started to shake his head, then a thought occured to him.  Steam... he
could steamit open.  He ordered hot tea, with extra water.  

When the waitress returned, then disappeared again, he nervously steamed 
the envelope open.  With nervous fingers, he pulled the flap open and
reached in, pulling out the documents inside.  There was no money.  No
cash, at any rate.  Just what looked like a boring old report.

With boring annotations in ink.

Typical.  His luck would never improve.  He would put the envelope in the
mail and get on with his useless life.

Something caught his eye.  On the last page, in bright red ink:  "Call in the
shepherds!  The cows are falling asleep.  Let them go, for the sheep will
have them.  Take up the dream-makers instead."

Whatever could that mean?

Whatever indeed.

  Officer Fillmore scratched his head, perplexed by this odd find.  It didn't
seem to make a lot of sense.  It looked important, but it might equally be
nothing more than the idle scribblings of some bored clerk.

  "It's probably worthless," he said to himself.

  Gazing dully out the window of the dinner, Milly noticed a man in a trench
coat approaching the mail box where he had just found the envelope.  The
trench-coated man looked furtively up and down the street, and then drew a
crowbar out from under his coat, and proceeded to try to pry open the access
panel on the side of the mailbox.

  Milly, started out of his seat, thinking he should go out and arrest this
man for tampering with federal property.  But before he could take a single
step toward the door, a long black limosene pulled up next to the mailbox.
Three hefty men in dark suits sprang from the doors, weilding guns, and
surrounded the trench-coated man.

  The trench-coated man stepped away from the mailbox, raising the crowbar

as if to defend himself, though it seemed to Milly a weak defense against 
three men with guns.  But before anything further could occur, another
vehicle appeared on the scene.

  "My God," said Milly.  "An armored personel carrier!"
  
  The APC rammed the black limosene, pushing it over the curb and into a
storefront.  As dozens of riflemen in US Army uniforms boiled out of the
hatches, a second APC appeared from the other direction.  The three gunmen
dropped their guns and raised their hands as they were surrounded by army
troops.  The man in the trench coat fled the scene, with a few soldiers in
pursuit.  A bearded officer shouted something to some of his men, pointing
at the mailbox.

  Then the air was filled with the sound of gun fire.  The soldiers scattered,
hiding behind APC's, as a dead black helicopter gunship appeared flying down
Wall Street, guns blazing.  As the 'copter circled back, the soldiers began
returning fire.  Now a burning streak of light shot from the side of the
helicopter, striking the ground just next to the mailbox, and setting off
an explosion.  The mailbox was torn from the ground, and thrown through the
air by the force of the explosion until it crashed down on top of the black
limosene.  As the helicopter hovered, sweeping the ground with machine gun
fire, a second, larger helicopter appeared and hovered over the limosene.

  The second helicopter dropped an electromagnet on a cable, and then rose,
the battered remains of the mailbox dangling beneath it.  The two helicopters
turned and raced away, as some of the soldiers fired after them.

  As silence fell on the scene, Milly sat back down at his table, still
clutching his envelope.

  "Well," he thought.  "Maybe it is something important."

He reread the words on the page.  "Call in the shepherds!  The cows are
falling asleep.  Let them go, for the sheep will have them.  Take up the
dream-makers instead."

It must be some sort of code.  If only he knew how to figure out what it
meant.  Shepherds could be a group of people.  Cows would be another
group.  It sounded like someone thought someone else wasn't doing their
job very carefully and wanted a third party to take over.  But who was
the them?  Who would the sheep have?  And what on earth did the dream-makers
refer to?

He suddenly heard a song in his head.  From long long ago.  Junior high
music class.

"Star maker, dream breaker, soul taker..."

Could that be a play on words?

This is ridiculous, he told himself.  You're letting your imagination
get carried away with you again, just like you did as a child.

But the little voice in the back of his head said, "This time, it's real."

        Can you post more?

 
I am a begining writer and would like to know if someone could tell me how
to write a decent query and what I should and should not include.

Humm al I know is there are many good books with lists
of publishing houses and how to go about doing so.
For me, i got the "Children's Writers" book <shrug>
there's whol series of them..

I have this years "Writers Market" and that is really helpful, also a
book called something like "How To Get Happily Published For The
First Time" that has hints for writing query letters, and for
getting agents and the like.

        Hmmm... I'll have to purchase a copy, but unfortunately, I no longer
        hace access to a printer.

Eek, that could make things difficult...

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