Bulwer-Lytton winners announced!

Just too much of a joy for me to contain: this year's winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced.

For those unaware, Bulwer-Lytton (named after Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, the originator of the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night") is an annual contest to see who can come up with the worst opening sentence to the worst novel never written.

This year's winner, from the mind of David McKenzie, "a 55-year-old Quality Systems consultant and writer from Federal Way, Washington":

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.

More winners and runner-ups can be found here.