It Was a Dark and Stormy Night ...

As I was going through some old emails I had saved (hundreds and hundreds of emails but I'll save that compulsion for another day) I ran across a contest entry I'd submitted in 2003. The contest was called "The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest" and required entrants to compose an appalling and horrific sentence that would begin a book of a particular genre. The contest was and has been based on the wretched opening sentence of a book by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton written in 1830. You, no doubt, have heard at least the first seven words many times before -

"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 scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

Rather ghastly, don't you think?

I thought my entry in 2003 was a formidable competitor to all things frightfully bad in writing. But alas, there was no prize for me; not even a "Your sentence wasn't horrible enough to make the cut" or "Sorry, Betty Lou, but you're not bad enough to the bone." Looking at my sentence again three years later made me want to share it with those who might stumble across this page and wonder to themselves, "What the Hell is this blog about?"

Quite frankly, it's about this:

"In walked an angel but not an angel with wings or halo but an ethereal vixen nonetheless who was wearing a dress that made her cleavage look as deep as the well in the backyard of my childhood home, except that my well had a dead cat in it and my brothers used to pee in the well, unlike her cleavage."

I don't have the winning entry from 2003, unfortunately, but the following sentence was the big winner in 2005:

"As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual." Dan McKay, Fargo, ND

If you're interested in checking out the contest (I have nothing to do with it, by the way. I just want to be bad enough to be rightfully recognized for my abominable talents) go to www.bulwer-lytton.com for details of how to enter (you have until June) and may the most putrid writer win!