It was a dark and stormy night…

Jim Guigli of Carmichael, California is the winner of the 24th annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. The Bulwer-Lytton competition is named for the Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words “It was a dark and stormy night,” hence the name of the contest.

This year’s winning opener runs thus:

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you’ve had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.

Femme fatale, indeed.

Thanks to The Kentucky Literary Newsletter for the link.