Bulwer-Lytton 2024 Winners
October 4, 2024
As you faithful readers recall, we annually present a handful of our favorite Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest winners.
For you new readers, the Bulwer-Lytton Contest is named after novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton who wrote many famous novels including “Paul Gifford” which started with the immortal words, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Supposedly that’s often-parodied bad writing (although it is better than anything I ever do).
The Contest rewards rookie writers composing intentionally bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Pretty clever stuff.
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It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents- except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scantly flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford
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She had a body that reached out and slapped my face like a five-pound ham-hock tossed from a speeding truck. (Grand Prize Winner)
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That sweltering Friday evening she not so much walked but slithered into my shabby strip mall P.I. office, showing off all her curves, and I knew then I was in for a weekend of trouble because Dave’s Reptile Emporium next door, from which the ball python had escaped, was closed until Monday.
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Mrs. Higgins’ body was found in the pantry, bludgeoned with a potato ricer and lying atop a fifty-pound sack of Yukon golds, her favorite for making gnocchi, though some people consider them too moist for this purpose.
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As Nils Nordgrund struggled mightily treading water to stay afloat, while grimly watching from a distance the Norwegian oil tanker he captained slowly sink in the treacherously dark and stormy seas off Murmansk- he gave no thought to whether the Giants had any chance at a pennant win this year.
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However Unlikely an event, Lucy’s flight had made a water landing, and as she clutched her seat cushion, which was useable as a flotation device, she waited patiently for the lifeboats to pick up first the Plutonium-class members, active service personnel, parents traveling with small children, and those passengers with special needs.
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As he mustered the platoon for another patrol on a moonlit Mekong night, Lieutenant John “Hoseman” Walker, Jr., USMC, remembered what his dad- a fellow devildog, who survived the previous generation’s island-hopping campaign against Japan that had sealed the Corp’s legend- had told him as he shipped out from Coronado fourteen months earlier: son, when you’re a Marine, rank is what you smell, not what you pull.
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It had seemed a good idea at the time, the first night of my two-week all-inclusive vacation, spent with an affable stranger in a tapas bar oiled by an excess of Corona Extra and tequila shots, but now, in a fancy dress holding a red cape, under a pitiless noonday sun, while 1000 pounds of snorting horned beefsteak eyed me malevolently, hoofing a hole in the dirt, the packed spectators oléing for all their worth, I, a junior sales rep in kitchen utensils from Milwaukee, wasn’t so sure.
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It was a dark and stormy night, which makes perfect sense when you realize we’re on Neptune, with a mean distance from the sun of 4.5 billion kilometers (or 30 astronomical units), and winds that howl at 100 meters per second, composed of mostly hydrogen and helium (and only trace amounts of methane), which is way better than Uranus, which stinks to high heaven.
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To be continued…
Jim Porter is a retired attorney from Porter Simon licensed in California. Porter Simon has offices in Truckee California and Reno, Nevada. These are Jim’s personal opinions. Jim’s practice areas included: real estate, development, construction, business, HOA’s, contracts, personal injury, accidents, mediation and other transactional matters. He may be reached at jameslporterjr@gmail.com. Like us on Facebook. ©2024