file under: research for tomorrow’s wedding speech

The “winners” of this year’s Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been posted. The contest challenges entrants to compose bad opening sentences to imaginary novels and takes its name from the Victorian novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who penned the original It was a dark and stormy night.

This year’s grand prize goes to Sue Fondrie, for “Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.”