A Screaming Wins the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2009

[Robin Landseadel]

	The winner of 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is David
	McKenzie, a 55-year-old Quality Systems consultant and writer
	fromFederal Way, Washington. A contest recidivist, he has
	formerly won the Western and Children's Literature categories.

	David McKenzie is the 27th grand prize winner of the contest
	that began at San Jose State University in 1982.

	An international literary parody contest, the competition honors
	the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward
	George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest
	is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad
	opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known
	for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made
	into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is
	mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great
	unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his
	novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the
	"Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark
	and stormy night."

	Most entries are submitted electronically through the Contest's
	Web site: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/.

David McKenzie's 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."

My fave:

	The dame sauntered silently into Rocco's office, but she didn't
	need to speak; the blood-soaked gown hugging her ample
	curves said it all: "I am a shipping heiress whose second
	husband was just murdered by Albanian assassins trying to
	blackmail me for my rare opal collection," or maybe, "Do you
	know a good dry cleaner?"

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2009.htm