It was a dark and stormy night ...

[Crusty]

The pancake batter looked almost perfect, like the morning sun shining on the cream-colored bare shoulder of a gorgeous young blonde driving 30 miles over the speed limit down a rural Nebraska highway with the rental car's sunroof open, except it had a few lumps.

Jim Thomas
Gilbert, AZ

It's that time of year folks - time to submit your entry to the Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest.


Read the details and last year's winners (?) at
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest .

[N2XBW]

The steps in front of the old town hall were dimly illuminated by one light bulb set in a reflector that looked like a daisey, only it was green and white where a daisey is usually yellow, like the sun up in the right-hand corner of a child's drawing of his house with green at the bottom, blue at the top and nothing in between.

[AIR-Quarius]

...Those three rolaids I popped fifty miles back were still stuck to the back of my tongue in little 'gravelies' paste. People had not yet perceived what that exactly meant. I didn't have time to explain it. As I turned off the engine-I must have slipped and pushed the key a little too far...maybe I was nervous, maybe I wasn't...it didn't matter now. I had only realized that if I did not correct the keys exact position I would be dealing with a dead battery later. Too bad - I cunningly caught myself trying to fool myself again. ...so I said to my self, 'Self, stop this. At that exact moment I turned towards the light only to have a small moth fly into one of my nostrils. I reacted with an immediate 'blow out' , but with no kleenex mind you, Time was getting short....

[N2XBW]

As twilight turned to total darkness the trees around him seemed to close in like ghouls at a brainfeast, only the trees were taller than ghouls and would've made a good log cabin if they were cut, squared up and notched at the ends like the Lincoln Logs he'd played with as a child back in his New Hampshire hometown after they'd moved there from Washington when his father was transferred.

[AIR-Quarius]

...From thereon, I reflected even more on how a Kleenex tissue could be made from a tree. I had never thought about that before and my skin crawled like a baby trying to learn how to walk...standing, then falling. Standing, then falling down again. Over and over its tiny voice crying like I used to do when mom was pulling the chewing gum out of my hair when I was a toddler. I stepped further into the woods...

[Crusty]

Here's my entry for this year's contest. I think that I wrote a contender.

Miss Horton sat stiffly in the bus seat hurtling toward an impending metropolis with nervous perspiration on her perfectly formed upper lip and as she strained to discern the hushed words of her teen charges suspiciously huddled together, it became clear upon hearing a loud "qui" that the ruffians in the Latin club were deliberately missubstituting relative pronouns for interrogative.

If the depth of my depravity isn't immediately apparent, consider that the latin "qui" is a form of the english "who" to uncover the hidden literary allegory.

[76sovereign]

HUH?

Originally Posted by Crusty

Here's my entry for this year's contest. I think that I wrote a contender.



If the depth of my depravity isn't immediately apparent, consider that the latin "qui" is a form of the english "who" to uncover the hidden literary allegory.

[Crusty]

It just occurred to me that for some reason you can't see what I posted in the quote box, so here it is again in plain text.

Miss Horton sat stiffly in the bus seat hurtling toward an impending metropolis with nervous perspiration on her perfectly formed upper lip and as she strained to discern the hushed words of her teen charges suspiciously huddled together, it became clear upon hearing a loud "qui" that the ruffians in the Latin club were deliberately missubstituting relative pronouns for interrogative.

Otherwise, then consider what Miss Horton heard. She heard a "qui" (who), as in Horton Hears a Who. I thought that may have been buried too deep, but the people judging the contest ARE English professors.

[N2XBW]

Driving alone across the Arizona desert, he knew he was in trouble as steam started pouring from under the front of the car. Pulling over and opening the hood, he immediately noticed the missing fan belt. "Nuts!" he thought to himself, "How am I going to get help way out here with no traffic or cell phone service?"

Just as he was about to start walking, this old Indian pulled up with a beat-up Winnebago. "Got trouble?" he grunted.

"Fan belt." was barely spoken when the Old native opened the door and stepped out into the midday heat with a used fan belt in his hand.

"This one work," he grunted.

With a few deft motions, the old man had the new belt on and said, "Ok now, all fixed."

"What do I owe you?" asked the greatly-relieved man reaching for his wallet.

"No pay," said the Indian, holding up his hand. "My tribe always swap, no body have money, everyone trade, then no bad feelings."

"Um, how about my watch, then?" He tried.

"Good, I take."

As they prepared to part, he asked the old man, "What is your tribe?"

"My tribe is the Kwidprokwo"

[Crusty]

It's time to submit your entries to the 2010 Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest.

Here's one of mine that I think might be a contender.

Surveying his herd of cattle raising a cloud of thick white dust as they began the drive to Dodge City at the shouts of his cow hands, a rough and belligerent bunch of misfits that wouldn't have any problems eating their own horses and who he was well familiar with from past adventures except for the one new hand that had been hired unseen by mail and who had showed up for the drive in a pretty blue gingham dress and with blue ribbons streaming from his hat, Captain Jack mused "This'uns gonna be a long'un".

[Wabbiteer]

The original from a 1830 Novel...

It was a dark and stormy night ...

"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."

Past Winners

[overlander63]

The child's balloon drifted in the air in much the same manner bricks don't.

[Crusty]

WOOHOO! I just got this email from the contest organizer:

You are the runner-up in the Historical category of this year's Bulwer-Lytton Contest with

The band of pre-humans departed the cave in search of solace from the omnipresent dangers found there knowing that it meant survival of their kind, though they probably didn't understand it intellectually since their brains were so small and undeveloped but fundamentally they understood that they didn't like big animals that ate them.

[Crusty]

I forgot to post the outcome of last year's contest. I had a another hit below.

It's time to submit your entries for B-L 2012 BTW so get those pencils scratchin'.

You are the runner-up in the Adventure Category of this year's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for the sentence below:

Sensing somehow a scudding lay in the offing, Skipper Bob tallied his tasks: reef the mains'l, mizzen, and jib, strike and brail the fores'l, mizzen stays'l and baggywrinkles, bowse the halyards, mainsheets, jacklines and vangs, turtle and belay fast the small cock, flemish the taffrail warps, batten the booby hatch, lay bye his sou'wester and find the bailing bucket.

[Crusty]

And I just heard from the BLFC Grand Panjandrum that another one of my drecklets won the BLFC Children's Literature category for 2014. I'm on a roll!

Justin was happy, like a clam at high tide, but abruptly ending his musings he recalled that he had every reason to be happy (in his own small way) because he was a Quahog and it was the highest of tides, and he squirted with delight.

A local newspaper columnist has been interviewing me via email for a couple of days and he says that he's going to write a column about my win (must be a slow news week). My 15 minutes are here.

[Wabbiteer]

Rereading congratulatory emails while wholly incredulous over the dozen publishers offers and artfully dodging interview requests, Crusty became aware the micro-LED lasers in flat screens had fatigued his vision receptors, blinded by the ultra high contrast collapsing neu░al░░ransmit░░ ▒un▒ll▒▒▒ ░░░░░░those 15 mi▒ute░▒of fame wer▒▒l st▒░░istory░░░▒░░░░.

"A clam dredged from icy Arctic waters is being hailed as the world's longest-lived animal. Climate researchers at Bangor University in the United Kingdom recently counted 405 annual growth rings in the shells of a quahog clam." (Link)

May your quahaug live long and prosper!

[cwf]

I had a little lizard
His name was Blue
He could Change any color that he wanted to
When I think how he died how my eyes filled with tears
Tried to match an Easter egg and stripped all his gears

[N2XBW]

The morning started fresh and clean as the little VW van cheerfully putt-putted along winding country roads lined with thousands of colorful wild flowers. As the sun warmed the air, the flowers seemed to hum with honey bees, which are extremely endangered by hive-wasting diseases, thus dooming us all to slow starvation.

[CoolCat]

The aging editor uncapped his favorite Parker fountain pen, freshly refilled with the red ink of his life's passion, silently prayed the student submissions piled high before him on the worn leather lined blotter occupying that particular space on his antique roll top desk since 1946, would at least contain New York Times Style Guide parameters, and sighing wearily, began the laborious task of whittling away superfluous descriptive adjectives and offending dangling participles, losing himself to the ocean of typed double spaced amateurish prose liberally splashed with the bright red ink freshly excreted from his Parker pen, gripped with arthritic fingers moving as though they were controlled by an absent omnipresent spirit of the wordsmiths of ages past wielding the ancient tools that formed the civilizations of the millenia congealing into the present day form of written and spoken word, such as it has become.

[cwf]

My grandkids can't run my fountain pen... the little nibs!