It was a dark and stormy night...

This week the highly awaited Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest winners were announced! This is an annual event that I look forward to every year.

In case you are not familiar with the contest- entrants are challenged to submit their worst opening sentences to non-existent novels. The contest honors the memory of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton of "It was a dark and stormy night" fame...

I have submitted entries to the contest in years past, but unfortunately (or fortunately?!!) have never made it as a finalist... But, anyway- without further ado (drum roll, please)...

The winning entry was submitted by Jim Gleeson from Madison, WI-

Gerald began--but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them "permanently" meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash--to pee.

My personal favorite, however, was written by Julie Jensen of Lodi, CA-

Mary had a little lamb; its fleece was Polartec 200 (thanks to gene splicing, a diet of force-fed petrochemical supplements, and regular dips in an advanced surface fusion polymer), which had the fortunate side effect of rendering it inedible, unlike that other Mary's organic lamb which misbehaved at school and wound up in a lovely Moroccan stew with dried apricots and couscous.

The rest of the winning submissions and runners-up are posted on the official contest website. So if you have a couple extra minutes, check it out and enjoy a chuckle or two!