It was a dark and stormy night when the 2009 Bulwer Lytton awards were announced

It was David McKenzie of Federal Way, Washington, who penned this year's winning entry in the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest, that annual extravaganza that looks for clever, but awful (in a clever way) renditions of prose that will make you say, "Wha???" but then go on to inspire you to write a really stinky opening sentence for today's blog post.

Way back in 1830, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton penned the immortal opening to his novel Paul Duncan:

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.

Sponsored since 1982 by the English Department at San Jose State, the competition looks for the "opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels." Entries are in fact limited to a single sentence, and competition administrators admonish entrants to try to keep their concoctions below a 60-word limit.

Ready to read the winning entry?

Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.

Click for more information, or to read winners in some of the 2009 contest's subcategory genres (e.g., Adventure, Detective, but so far, no category for Appellate Briefs).

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