Legal Name

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City, ST ZIP

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email

Word Ct: 2553

[4) Make sure your contact information is on the manuscript.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Title

(name as you wish it to appear whether legal or pen name)

 

 

 

 

[1) Do not indent]

 

“Hey, Billy Ray did you see the lights in the sky last night?” Jimmy Lee asked.

    

[2) Single spaced with an extra space between paragraphs. Create the extra blank line using the enter key.]

“Yep. Most likely swamp gas or some such,” I said looking up at my younger cousin. As usual the boy was a mess. Most of the time he reminded me of the “pig pen” character from the Charlie Brown Christmas special. If we’d ever had snow here in the bayou I just knew he’d build a gray snowman.

 

“Ned says he heard noise like an engine. Maybe were airplanes,” Jimmy Lee said.

[6) Please use xxx said not said xxx as the format for dialogue tags. (This is a house style request)]

[5) Please use double quotation marks "xx" to denote direct dialogue. (This is a house style request)]

 

I shook my head; the boy still seemed to think the stories about the way the world was before the last war, were the way it was now. Guess the kid needed something to believe in. And there really weren’t no harm in hoping things might eventually return to normal. “Naw, been no airplanes around here for a while now,” I finally said. Unfortunately, hope was all it was.

 

“Maybe it was one of them unidentified flying objects?”

 

“Now Jimmy Lee, you know better than that. UFOs was nothing more than secret government projects designed to keep people talking bout them and not prying into other secret government projects. Since there be no more government; there be no more secret government projects and no more UFOs.”

 

“Well, it weren’t no swamp gas. Ned says he heard engine noises and I believe him.”

 

“And Ned’s the one who took you snipe hunting as well,” I said with a grin. “Guess that makes him all trustworthy and what not now don’t it.”

 

Jimmy Lee’s face turned red and he turned to walk away. I’ll never understand why that boy continued to listen to Ned after that. Granted, taking youngsters on the infamous snipe hunt is a tradition that has been around for longer than any of us can remember. Since the changes that took place since the last war we do have to plan them a bit more carefully.

 

No one rightly knows what truly caused the changes; some say it was use of nukes in the atmosphere that shut down all the tech stuff and caused the mutations. Whatever it was, the cities were no place to be anymore, particularly at night. Them so-called civilized folks had become nothing more than feral dogs; scavenging and hunting in packs.

 

Ned decided to do this particular hunt on a night of the full moon; a night when the wild ‘uns are usually out. And he thought it would be funny to plan the hunt near town. I think he was hoping for one of them mutants to wander into the area in order to scare Jimmy Lee. I doubt he was planning on Jimmy Lee having to fight his way through a small horde of them to get back that night.

 

“Jimmy Lee, you want a chance to get even with Ned?” I held out a burlap sack, just like ones we used on a snipe hunt.

 

“Ned ain’t stupid enough to fall for a snipe hunt,” Jimmy Lee said.

 

“I reckon not, but he might be fool enough to fall for an _alien_ hunt.”

[3) Use _to indicate italics_]

 

That made Jimmy Lee smile and he glanced up at the sky. “Yeah, I think he might just be fool enough for that.”

 

#

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“Looks like the boy may have been right bout them being UFOs,” Ned said as he pointed to a nearby tree.

 

I only nodded as Ned touched a small pool of silver liquid that lay in a small hollow on the branch. Now I understood why Jimmy Lee had collected several old thermometers before he left to lay the trail for the hunt. This couldn’t be a true snipe hunt in the traditional sense as neither of us would have been able to convince Ned to hold a bag while we chased the “alien” down a ravine for him to capture. So, Jimmy Lee had figured on laying a false trail through the bayou and leading Ned around half the night before we ended up back at my cabin. I was along to make sure Ned didn’t shoot Jimmy Lee if he actually caught up to the boy.

 

 

[Also note that when each person speaks – their dialogue is a separate paragraph – do not group multiple lines of dialogue from different speakers into one paragraph]