Bulwer-Lytton 2005

Since my efforts at publishing good fiction have thus far come to naught, I momentarily turned my focus to bad fiction, and entered the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2005. The contest, named in honor of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton ("It was a dark and stormy night...") is "a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels" which is sponsored by the English Department at San Jose State University.

Here's the winning entry for 2004, by Dave Zobel:

She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight...summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a shrimp's tail...though the term "love affair" now struck her as a ridiculous euphemism...not unlike "sand vein," which is after all an intestine, not a vein...and that tarry substance inside certainly isn't sand...and that brought her back to Ramon.

And the runner-up, by Pamela Patchet Hamilton:

The notion that they would no longer be a couple dashed Helen's hopes and scrambled her thoughts not unlike the time her sleeve caught the edge of the open egg carton and the contents hit the floor like fragile things hitting cold tiles, more pitiable because they were the expensive organic brown eggs from free-range chickens, and one of them clearly had double yolks entwined in one sac just the way Helen and Richard used to be.

Good (or, technically, bad), but I think my entry is better than (worse than?) either of them. Julie thinks so, as well, and I don't think that's just "endlessly supportive spouse of unpublished writer" talk. I'll post my effort here in a few months in the event that the fickle gods of literary taste snub me once again.