IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT - 2023

It was a dark and stormy night are the first words of an 1830 novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton that have become a metaphor for bad writing. The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (BLFC) is an annual celebration of joyful, deliberately awful writing in which the "winners" are those who compose the worst possible opening sentence to a novel or other literary genre. For more information on the BLFC, please see the DARK AND STORMY NIGHT post of July 8, 2014.

From thousands of entries, the BLFC's Panel of Undistinguished Judges has chosen the following "Winners" and Dishonorable Mentions:

Grand Prize:

She was a beautiful woman; more specifically she was the kind of woman who had an hour-long skin care routine that made her look either ethereal or like a glazed donut, depending on how attracted to her you were. 

Maya Pasic, New York, NY

 

Grand Panjandrum's Special Award:

It was a sunny day in Los Angeles, hot and bright, and I was in my office, playing Mahjong against myself and losing, when she walked in, 120 pounds of dynamite, a blonde with legs that began at her ankles and ended in trouble.

Daniel Bradford, Lexington, KY 

 

Adventure - Winner:

The man closed his eyes as the blistering cold winds battered  his rugged face, his eyes darting about, desperately hoping, daring to dream that amidst the frozen wasteland, he would find the last Klondike  Bar that he had hidden in his freezer. 

Oliver Mauser, Jacksonville, FL

 

Children's Literature - Dishonorable Mentions:

Having attended Oktoberfest, taken in the beautiful foliage of New England, gone apple-picking, roamed through a corn maze, and visited a pumpkin patch, one thing was certain - Humpty Dumpty had a great Fall.

Mark Meiches, Dallas, TX

 

For the third time this week, Lassie dragged Timmy form the well, and while she performed CPR wondered when the Martins would  have the good sense to connect to the public water supply instead of living in their libertarian fantasy-world of-self-reliance. 

Joel Phillips, Weston Trenton, NJ 

 

Crime and Detective - Dishonorable Mention:

Chief Homicide Inspector Gerald "the Bloodhound" McClean regarded the list of victims - a corporate litigator, an investment banker, a hedge-fund founder, and a Tony-winning playwright - and wondered what he could make of their only identifiable connection: membership in the long-dispersed punk rock band John Vomit and the Leather Scabs, rare copies of whose only record, "Picked Off the Litter," now traded hands for a thousand bucks a pop on eBay.

G. Andrew Lundberg, LosAngeles, CA

 

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 London that our story lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. 

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Paul Clifford

 

Dishonorable Mentions :

It was a dark and stormy night and the bitterly cold wind bit into her old bones like a chainsaw, the feeling of which she remembered sharply from the time she used one on her left arm to be excused forever from high school gym class. 

Judith W. Hughes, Bremerton, WA

 

It was a dark and stormy night and, having only cans of chili, corn, and sauerkraut in my meager larder, I mixed my supper, knowing that if the electricity went out I, at least, would have gas.

Michael Karasik, Novato, CA

Historical Fiction - Dishonorable Mention:

Sitting on the saloon stool, Cody downed some liquid courage before reading what he thought would be grim news about his brother at the Battle of Shiloh, but the telegram turned out to be from that mysterious company who kept offering to extend his horse warranty. 

Douglas Purdy, Roseville, CA 

 

Purple Prose - Winner:

She was just like Greta, who'd poisoned her family, burned down my house, bombed six embassies, and used a gun on anyone she wanted: short.

Frederick Ankowski, Santa Monica, CA 

 

Dishonorable Mention:

Having sent his wife Rosemary to their cabin (for it was an unlit and turbulent night at sea), Basil maintained his position at the helm while the driving rain peppered his graying ginger hair, and the old salt thought sagely that it was a good thing he was a well-seasoned sailor.

Donna Parsons, Tulsa, OK

Romance - Winner:

It was love at first sight - he was tall and broad-shouldered, with a dimpled smile, twinkling green eyes, and in keeping with his combination of statistically unlikely but alluring features, type AB blood, and that condition where cilantro tastes like soap.

Ananya Benegal, St.Louis, MO 

Dishonorable Mention:

Tom and Sarah basked in the glow of the fire and new love, watching the flames dance a seductive rumba and listening to the dry oak and cedar logs snap, crackle, and pop not entirely unlike a bowl of Rice Krispies cereal in a bowl of cold 2% milk.

 

Dishonorable Mention: 

That night she looked like a million dollars, which, when considering the sum of her lifetime outlay on her cosmetic surgery, her wardrobe, her hair and make-up, and her jewelry, was a poor return, indeed a hefty deficit.

Joseph Williams Devizes, Wiltshire, England

Dishonorable Mention:

They had gone through fire and ice to be together, but the general mood of the wedding would have been improved if he wasn't suffering from second-degree burns and she hadn't lost several toes to frostbite.

Eliza Frost, Bellingham, WA

 

Vile Puns - Winner: 

While she had no regrets about throwing the lever to douse her husband's mistress in molten gold, Blanche did feel a pang of conscience for the innocent bystanders whose proximity had caused them to suffer gilt by association.

Adam Chmelka, Olathe, KS

 

Odious Outliers - Dishonorable Mention:

The clouds drifted lazily through the crystal blue sky like cotton candy from last summer's county fair except that if a plane flew into cotton candy the engine would ingest so much sugar that it would lock up the engine and force the pilot to make an emergency landing, perhaps in the river below where the body of a white male in his mid 50's with no identification floated face down, which is where our story begins.

Ken Hill, Elkville, IL