IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT  - 2022

Below are some "winners" of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest of 2022. Please see the DARK AND STORMY NIGHT post of JULY 8, 2014 for an explanation of this contest. (Short version: Write the worst possible opening sentence to a novel.)

Grand Prize

I knew she was trouble the second she walked into my 24-hour deli, laundromat, and detective agency, and after dropping a load of unmentionables in one of the heavy-duty machines (a mistake that would soon turn deadly) she turned to me, asking for two things: find her missing husband and make her a salami on rye with spicy mustard, breaking into tears when I told her I couldn't help - I was fresh out of salami.

John Farmer

Aurora, Colorado

 

Adventure - Winner

"Hoist the mainsail, ye accursed swine," shouted the Captain over the roar of the waves as the ship was tossed like a cork dropped from a wine bottle into a jacuzzi when the faucet is open and the jets are running full blast and one has just settled into the water with a glass of red wine to ease the aches and pains after a day of hard labor raking leaves from the front yard.

Joe Tussey

Daniels, West Virginia 

Children's Literature - Dishonorable Mention

These stories, my children, are about Prince Charming and his three girlfriends: Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella.

Emily Ho

Los Angeles, California

Dishonorable Mention

The director of Child Protective Services was aghast, and needed clarification, "Let me get this straight - You were rocking your baby in the tree top, and when the wind blew, the cradle rocked and the bough broke, the cradle fell, and down came baby, cradle and all?"

JohnTracy

Palm Desert, California

Crime and Detective

The detectives wore booties, body suits, hair nets, masks, and gloves, and longed for the good old they days when they could poke a corpse with the toes of their wingtips if they damn well felt like it.

Jim Anderson

Flushing Michigan

Dark and Stormy - The Inspiration

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.

First sentence of Paul Clifford

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

It was a dark and stormy night, made darker still by the melancholy that gripped the drainpipes of my soul in a plumber's wrench of despair that opened the U-trap of my consciousness to remove the last, great greaseball of hope.

Jim Anderson

Flushing, Michigan

Purple Prose - Dishonorable Mention

"The clouds resembled a roll of runaway toilet paper that unspooled  itself into a massive, fluffy pile, the sound of the lighting banged like hundreds of inadvertently dropped toilet seats, and the rain quickly flooded the street and spilled over the curb like a toilet clogged with who-know-what," reported eye-witness to the sudden storm and flash flood Steve Talbot of Steve's Plumbing. 

Mark Meiches

Dallas, Texas

Romance - Dishonorable Mention

Tony Angel walked Fiona back to the car and handed her the leash - if only he hadn't thrown the ball so hard; it had marred an otherwise perfect date on the White Cliffs of Dover.

Lizzie Nelson

Wheaton, Illinois

Gloria's feeling for Boris were nowadays like the warm affection you feel for a pet dog, not a boisterous, extroverted dog, but a cuddly, slightly lethargic dog, or even an old cat that sleeps all day in its favorite spot so that most of the time you hardly even realize it's there until one day it just dies without warning, rather than the fiery, intense passion of their early years together.

Terry Drapes

Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Odious Outliers

Apart from his undergraduate degree in Art History and several years under the tutelage of Simone d'Poisson, pre-eminent Monet scholar at the Louvre, truckin' was all Billy knew.

Mike Christensen

Washington, D.C.

Life on a hardscrabble fourth-generation family farm in the dust bowl of western Kansas was no picnic, thought Hank Metzger as he wearily took his seat at the kitchen table, and sure enough, here was your proof - first to play, and seven consonants staring dully up at him from his tile rack.

G. Andrew Lundberg

Los Angeles, California