2009
8/28/2018 2009 Contest Winners » The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
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2009 Contest Winners
Winner
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 itwas 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. --- David McKenzie, Federal Way, WAThe winner of the 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is David
McKenzie, a 55-year-old Quality Systems consultant and writer from
Federal 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.Runner-Up:
The wind dry-shaved the cracked earth like a dull razor -- the double
edge kind from the plastic bag that you shouldn't use more than twice,
but you do; but Trevor Earp had to face it as he started the second
morning of his hopeless search for Drover, the Irish Wolfhound he had
found as a pup near death from a fight with a prairie dog and nursed
back to health, stolen by a traveling circus so that the monkey would
have something to ride. --- Warren Blair, Ashburn, VA
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Grand Panjandrum's Special Award
Fleur looked down her nose at Guilliame,
something she was accomplished at, being six foot three in her
stocking feet, and having one of those long French noses, not pert
like Bridget Bardot's, but more like the one that Charles De Gaulle
had when he was still alive and President of France and he wore that
cap that was shaped like a little hatbox with a bill in the front to
offset his nose, but it didn't work. --- Marguerite Ahl, Prescott
Valley, AZWinner: Adventure
How best to pluck the exquisite
Toothpick of Ramses from between a pair of acrimonious vipers before
the demonic Guards of Nicobar returned should have held Indy's full
attention, but in the back of his mind he still wondered why all the
others who had agreed to take part in his wife's holidayscavenger hunt had been assigned to find stuff like a Phillips
screwdriver or blue masking tape. --- Joe Wyatt, Amarillo, TXRunner-Up:
In a flurry of flame and fur, fangs and wicker, thus ended the world's
first and only hot air baboon ride. --- Tony Alfieri, Los Angeles, CADishonorable Mention:
Karen Buffalo, sensing that her 1894 Brassic & Middon .45 calibre
revolvers, mounted with mother-of pearl grips and clasped by ivory
buttons carved in the shape of elephants at play, were no match for
"Duke" Bunton's double-barreled shotgun, muttered under her breath
"Darn that Parisian gunsmith in the Fourteenth Arrondisement!" ---
Mark A. Gray, Wokingham, Berks., U.K.Winner: Detective
She walked into my office on legs as long
as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida -- the pink
ones, not the white ones -- except that she was standing on both of
them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she
wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which
those birds usually aren't. --- Eric Rice, Sun Prairie, WI
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Runner-Up
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?" --- Tony
Alfieri, Los Angeles, CADishonorable Mentions:
The appearance of a thin red beam of light under my office door and
the sound of one, then two pair of feet meant my demise was near, that
my journey from gum-shoe detective to international agent had gone
horribly wrong, until I realized it was my secretary teasing her cat
with a laser pointer. --- Steve Lynch, San Marcos, CAAfter quickly scrutinizing the two dangerously buff men coming toward
her in the dark and wondering whether she could take them both out,
P.I. Velma Plusch mentally inventoried her arsenal -- two pistols, two
stiletto-clad feet, two leather-gloved hands, two each eyes, ears,
lips, and breasts -- and decided that she could. --- Donna Kain,
Ph.D., Greenville, NCDetective Pierson mentally reviewed the group of suspects milling
around the recent crime scene -- two young siblings eating
gingerbread, a young girl in a red hoodie, a beautiful girl with
narcolepsy, and seven little people with the profession of miners --
then gave his statement of "It's a grim tale" to the press. ---
Shannon Gray, Wichita, KSDarnell knew he was getting hung out to dry when the D.A. made him
come clean by airing other people's dirty laundry; the plea deal was a
new wrinkle and there were still issues to iron out, but he hoped it
would all come out in the wash -- otherwise he had folded like a cheap
suit for nothing. --- Lynn Lamousin, Baton Rouge, LAI entered the bedroom again, looking for anything the killer might
have missed in his obvious attempt to clean the crime scene, when it
hit me, the victim hadn't been eating just any potato salad, it was
German potato salad, the kind usually served warm, with bacon and
although most people prefer the traditional American potato salad, it
was clear that this victim didn't, oh no, he didn't prefer it at all.
--- Lisa Lindquist-Perez, Daytona Beach, FLIt was a quarter 'til eight in the ninth precinct when I got the call
of a possible two-eleven at a nearby Seven-Eleven that turned out to
be just a four-fifteen -- that is until my number two from the ninth
discovered the one-eight-seven under the Tenth Street Bridge, some
two-bit mob soldier with a blossom of five .357's right in the
ten-ring. --- Jeff Riley, Fort Worth, TXWinner: Fantasy Fiction
A quest is not to be undertaken lightly
-- or at all! -- pondered Hlothgar, Thrag of the Western Boglands, son
of Glothar, nephew of Garthol, known far and wide as Skull Dunker, as
he wielded his chesty stallion Hralgoth through the ever-darkening
Thlargwood, beyond which, if he survived its horrors and if Hroglath
the royal spittle reader spoke true, his destiny awaited -- all this
though his years numbered but fourteen. --- Stuart Greenman, Seattle,
WA
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Runner-Up
Towards the dragon's lair the fellowship marched -- a noble human
prince, a fair elf, a surly dwarf, and a disheveled copyright attorney
who was frantically trying to find a way to differentiate this story
from Lord of the Rings. --- Andrew Manoske, Foster City, CAWinner: Historical Fiction
The Cunard "Carinthia" glided through the
starry waters of the Bering Sea, 843 passengers aboard, including
Harriet Dobbs, resignedly single for over a decade, while a nautical
mile due west slunk the K-18 submarine, under the command of lonely
Ukrainian Captain First Rank Nikolai Shevchenko: ships that passed in
the night (although the second technically a boat). --- Dr. Sarah
Cockram, Edinburgh, U.K.Runner-Up:
On a fine summer morning during the days of the Puritans, the prison
door in the small New England town of B----n opened to release a
convicted adulteress, the Scarlet Letter A embroidered on her dress,
along with the Scarlet Letters B through J, a veritable McGuffey's
Reader of Scarlet Letters, one for each little tyke waiting for her at
the gate. --- Joseph Aspler, Kirkland, QC, CanadaWinner: Purple Prose
The gutters of Manhattan teemed with the
brackish slurry indicative of a significant though not incapacitating
snowstorm three days prior, making it seem that God had tripped over
Hoboken and spilled his smog-flavored slurpie all over the damn place.
--- Eric Stoveken, Allentown, PARunner-Up:
Warily -- as if his hands were a green-bean casserole in a
non-tempered glass dish that had just come out of the freezer, and the
patient was an oven that had been preheating for a good 75 minutes at
450F -- the surgeon slowly reached into the incision and groped for
the bullet fragment in the pancreas, at last finding it nestled near
one of the Islets of Langerhans like a small wrecked lifeboat
foundered on a sandbar as it floated in the fog, adrift in the Sea of
John's Innards. --- Christin Keck, Akron OHDishonorable Mentions:
Mortimer froze in his tracks; the rhythmic clicking on the stones of
the path (well ... not really a clicking sound so much as a kind of
clinking sound, more like the noise made by shaking a charm bracelet
filled
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with Disney characters to a salsa beat) made him suddenly realize he
had forgotten to buckle one of his galoshes. --- Rick Cheeseman,
Waconia, MNWithout warning, their darting tongues entwined, like a couple of
nightcrawlers fresh from the baitshop -- their moist, twisting bodies
finally snapping apart, not unlike an old man's muddy galosh being
yanked away from his patent leather shoe. --- Matt Dennison, Erie, PAShe expected a beautiful morning after the previous night's hard rain
but instead stepped out her door to a horrible vision of drowned
earthworms covering the walkway -- their bodies curled and swirled
like limp confetti after a party crashed by firefighters. --- Rita
Hammett, Boca Raton, FloridaThe first time I saw her she took my breath away with her long blonde
hair that flowed over her shoulders like cheese sauce on a bed of
nachos, making my stomach grumble as she stepped into the room, her
red knit dress locking in curves better than a Ferrari at a Grand
Prix. --- Harol Hoffman-Meisner, Greensboro, NCHe slowly ran his fingers through her long black hair, which wasn't
really black because she used Preference by L'Oreal to color it
(because "she was worth it"); her carrot-colored roots were starting
to show, and it reminded him of the time he'd covered his car's check
engine light with black electrical tape, but a faint orange glow still
shone around the edges. --- Lisa Mileusnich, Willoughby, OHTheir relationship hit a bump in the road, not the low, graceful kind
of bump, reminiscent of a child's choo choo train-themed roller
coaster, rather the kind of tall, narrow speed-bump that, if a school
bus ran over it, would cause even a fat kid to fly up and bang his
head on the ceiling. --- Michael Reade, Durham, NCIt was a dark and stormy night, well, not pitch dark so much a plumby,
you know, that time of night where it turns into that kind of eggplant
color, which I hate -- eggplant not the time of night -- and it wasn't
stormy so much as drizzly, like a cold that's not so bad but really
annoying, where you sound a little plugged up and all your mucus just
sort of hovers at the edge of your nostrils or drips down the back of
your throat, it was like that. --- Maisey Yates, Jacksonville, ORWinner: Romance
Melinda woke up suddenly to the sound of
her trailer being pounded with wind and hail, and she couldn't help
thinking that if she had only put her prized hog up for adoption last
May, none of this would be happening, no one would have gotten hurt,
and she wouldn't be left with only nine toes, or be living in a mobile
home park in Nebraska with a second-rate trapeze artist named Fred.
--- AdaMarie Finkel, Boston, MA
Runner-Up:
The first time I saw her she took my breath away with her long blonde
hair that flowed over her shoulders like cheese sauce on a bed of
nachos, making my stomach grumble as she stepped into the room, her
red knit dress locking in curves better than a Ferrari at a Grand
Prix. --- Harol Hoffman-Meisner, Greensboro, NCDishonorable Mention:
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As she slowly drove up the long, winding driveway, Lady Alicia peeked
out the window of her shiny blue Mercedes and spied Rodrigo the new
gardener standing on a grassy mound with his long black hair flowing
in the wind, his brown eyes piercing into her very soul, and his white
shirt open to the waist, revealing his beautifully rippling muscular
chest, and she thought to herself, "I must tell that lazy idiot to
trim the hedges by the gate." --- Kathryn Minicozzi, Bronx, NYWinner: Science Fiction
The golden, starry wonders of the dark
universe unfurled before the brave interstellar vessel "Argus" like a
black flag of victory with a whole bunch of holes in it as the
mysterious mission buoyantly commenced that would one day resolve
critical questions about space, time, and the appropriate ratio of
nuts to chips in a perfect chocolate chip cookie. --- Robert Friedman,
Skillman, NJRunner-Up:
George scratched his head in abject puzzlement as he tried to figure
out where he'd parked the rocket this time in the 100-acre parking lot
of Nallmart 75B, but then he remembered that a ship-boy had taken his
DNA key -- but which one, the kelly-toned humanoid or the
atmosphere-of-Rylak-hued android; scanning the horizon, he at last
turned to Babs and asked "how green was my valet"? --- Harol
Hoffman-Meisner, Greensboro, NCWinner: Spy Fiction
Oliver Smith, spy on Her Majesty's
service -- not that she knew about it, because that tended to spoil
the whole secrecy thing and really, who'd want an un-secret spy,
anyway? Not to mention that any spy worth his salt would kill anybody
who knew his identity ... so I wouldn't go around mentioning that I
read this if I were you -- looked both ways before crossing the
street. --- Rafaela Canetti, Rio de Janeiro, BrazilRunner-Up:
The serrated butter knife tossed capriciously onto the 38th Street
sidewalk amid the detritus of Salem cigarette butts and a Mentos box
was devoid of zero trans fat margarine, but glinted invitingly in the
sunlight nonetheless, poised for the opportunity to be repurposed to
cut up a Snuggie, and Vladimir took it. --- Amy E. Gross, Fair Lawn,
NJWinner: Vile Puns
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Using her flint knife to gut the two
amphibians, Kreega the Neanderthal woman created the first pair of
open-toad sandals. --- Greg Homer, Placerville, CARunner-Up
Medusa stared at the two creatures approaching her across the Piazza
and, instantly recognizing them as Spanish Gorgons, attempted to stall
them by greeting them in their native tongue, "Gorgons, Hola!" ---
Eric Davies, Dunedin, New ZealandDishonorable Mention:
Eyeing the towering stacks of food colouring that formed the secret to
his billion-dollar batik textile empire, grumpy Old Man Griffington
was forced to admit that dye mounds are a churl's best friend. ---
Janine Beacham, Busselton, Western AustraliaWinner: Western
He was the desert nightmare whose name no
one dared breathe, this deadly gun slinger Garth Tedder, whose face
struck terror in the hearts of man and beast, its macabre, round,
maroon cheeks almost exactly like the pickled beets that farmers'
wives force-fed their horrified families. --- Brett Hawkins, Burleson,
TXRunner-Up
There stood Tex Omaha, fillin' his canteen with his last bottle of
Fiji water -- a case of which, oddly, he'd got off an Irishman
travelin' west on the railroad -- 'cause it's good water, better than
the dirt-brown stuff at the waterhole that tastes like a rusty nail,
worth the two buffalo hides he traded for it, and it'll keep him cool,
calm and well-hydrated while he's huntin' down that dirty, no-good
Scots-English cattle rustler, Angus "Shorthorn" Hereford. --- Eric
Davies, Dunedin, New ZealandMiscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions
"I want you to follow my husband," said my newest client, the
enigmatic Mrs Yogi, estranged wife of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. ---
Steve Heckman, Taylors, SCAutomotive power and the color red proved fatal to Santino; Sophia
found his body wrapped around the exposed custom pistons of his ruined
Ferrari Testarossa, and remembered the morning she found a sowbug on
her red anthurium, a racy flower with an exposed pistil. --- Denise
Welding, Amesbury, MA
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As Laurel made her way through the plaza, she couldn't help but notice
the gorgeous co-anchor for the morning news show, out yet again
signing autographs, smiling broadly, and infusing everyone around her
with happiness, and she wondered, just for a second mind you, how good
it would feel to punch her right in her stupid little face. --- Nikkia
Daniel, Marietta, GA"They clang to me like horse flies on cow dung," said angry, shivering
onion farmer Jesper Lunk, whose clothes had been eaten off him by a
plague of locusts except for his boxer shorts, which were a
comfortable cool blend of rayon and nylon in a floral pattern with a
three-button fly and a snug elastic waistband. --- James Macdonald,
Vancouver, B.C.From my car I took thorough stock of the loose group of illegals
standing around outside the Home Depot -- plasterers, roofers,
painters, all for hire ... girls, too -- and fingered the FEMA money
in my pocket ruminatively; my house was a mess, but so was my love
life -- what was my pleasure? --- Jeff Eller, New Orleans, LAAs Oedipus watched his mother gracefully glide across the great hall,
he felt a stirring in his loins which he immediately regretted but
then quickly dismissed, for he knew if these wanton desires for his
mother were wrong then someone would have named the condition by now,
thus proving once again that wherehis emotions were concerned there was only one description for Oedipus
... complex. --- Ted Begley, Lexington, KYRosalita came in looking, with a look of surprise not unlike that of
Hedy Lamarr in the 1947 version of "Samson and Delilah" when she
learns that Samson will marry the woman, portrayed by Angela Lansbury,
but with less fervor than that of Joan Crawford's 1948 version of
"Mildred Pierce" discovering her daughter, played by Ann Blythe, was
to run away with her, (Mildred's) boyfriend, to discover that Ernesto
had once again left up the toilet seat. --- James Biggie, Melrose MAAs Lieutenant Baker shrank his lips back to their normal size, he
tried desperately to think of a situation in which his new-found power
might be useful, as have I, your narrator. --- Dan Blaufuss, Glenview,
ILShe had whispered wantonly, "Come to bed, Yul," but was now staring in
utter disgust because the green lava lamp was too revealingly bright
as he fumbled to adjust his new Merken, a $300 pubic toupee that had
looked like a steal on eBay, but now looked just like a wet Tribble
that had inexplicably crawled up his crack from an old "Star Trek"
episode. --- Barry Bozzone, Allentown, PAHer kiss grasped his lips like an aroused sea barnacle; her breath
smelled like wet feet mated with ham -- marinated, salty, delicious;
and the sea wailed around them like lovers in a trailer park. ---
Matthew Brady, Seattle WAPeter shaded his eyes from the brilliant April morning sunlight as it
suddenly illuminated the Bunny Trail, contemplated his handiwork,
(separating all of those pearly white chicks-to-be from their mothers)
and prepared for the final task to complete his mission -- yes, this
was a good day to dye. --- Trent Bristol, Mandan, NDThere were earthquakes in this land, terrible tsunamis that swirled
flooding torrents of water throughout, and constant near-blizzard
conditions, and not for the first time, Horatio Jones wished he did
not live inside a snow globe. --- Rich Buley-Neumar, Amityville, NYGrimly aware of the rapidly approaching disaster, Spiderman leaped
from rooftop to flagpole, from flagpole to fire escape, hurling
himself recklessly from building to building, darting glances through
every window in his desperate search for one vital room, while
silently cursing the fact that the last thing he had done before
donning a one-piece skintight costume, was to eat a large bowl of hot
chili. --- David J Button, South Australia, Australia
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They said that his writing was rich in metaphor ... not the type of
rich that one likens with the amassing of great wealth, but rather the
richness that one might associate with a Pot Pourri pasta meal
available at Spaghetti Factory, featuring a mix of Brown Butter and
Mizithra Cheese, Meat, Clam, and Marinara sauces -- yes, that's how
rich his metaphors were! (for John Updike-RIP) --- John Drew, Santa
Clarita, CABefore she was Tabloid Sally, the impossibly foxy movie star who
destroyed marriages like a busty ball peen hammer, before she was
Nobel Sally, the mercurial chemist who cured chronic halitosis, and
before she was Pulitzer Sally, the honey-dipped scribe who brought
Washington to its knees, she was just little Sally Barns from Crow's
Neck, Neb., Bill and Margie's daughter, a doe-eyed pixie who loved
fairy tales and onion rings. --- Roger Collier, Ottawa, OntarioI awoke in my sleeper on the way from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, my
nightmare riven by a train of thought that abruptly stopped me in my
tracks with cataclysmic, explosive, and yet equal and opposing force,
like a train on its way from Rotterdam to Amsterdam; then I realized I
was on the wrong train and headed for Rotterdam, instead of Amsterdam.
--- Joe Dykes, Denver, COThe skydiver jumped out of the plane and felt his skin being pulled
back like that of a dog sticking its head out of a car going 110 on
the highway, owned by a driver rushing to be on time for work or else
he would get fired by his boss with the curly mustache who owned a
large speedboat. --- John Faherty, Queensbury, NYSwain had always come out of bar fights unscathed, built as he was
like a '70 Dodge pickup (with that "Adventurer" styling package), but
after tangling with Big Luther tonight, he felt like he'd been in a
wreck, not a five-car pileup, exactly, but a pretty bad fender bender,
busted headlights, maybe a bumper knocked loose, and, for sure, his
tailgate dragging. --- John Hardi, Falls Church, VAIt was a dark and stormy night, dark like the inside of a spare tire
in the trunk of a 1957 Chevy sitting up on blocks in a tumbledown barn
somewhere in rural Ohio, and stormy like the romance of Pete Kimball
and his girlfriend Betty Lou, who used to make out in the back seat of
that Chevy when it was new and shiny and the Dell-Vikings were singing
"Come Go With Me"; but this is not their story, it just starts out
dark and stormy like that. --- David G. La France, Burbank, CAPerry had come a long way in the nine years since being arrested by a
park ranger in his '81 Firebird tenderly holding a spiral-cut,
honey-glazed ham (with the bone removed). --- Jesse Kolman, Goodyear,
AZCrickets chirped in the lawn, katydids made that annoying grating
sound in the trees, a mosquito whined near the ceiling, squirrels
snuggled down in wherever it is they sleep, somewhere -- probably
Africa -- a lion roared, ants gathered together in their underground
tunnels like so many, well, whatever, and -- in spite of the fact that
it was night (dark and stormy) -- Jimmy cracked corn and no one cared.
--- Dorinda Partsch, Chesterton, INIf she wasn't the poster girl for the word voluptuous, with her not
exactly "bedroom," but definitely "walking-down-that-hallway" eyes,
her hair a palomino mane rather than platinum blond, lips reminding me
of Marilyn Monroe not Angelina Jolie, and that slow hip-swaying walk
that sweet-talks a man's thoughts into dim, smoky rooms where R&B is
played, she should've been. --- Sandra Trentz, Yakima, WALady Rowena, fresh from her bath, knew she had time to be ready to
meet the Prince at 6:00 o'clock even though the mantle clock was
striking six, because the brass escapement lever mechanism that
engages the teeth of the large gear which drives the smaller gears
that send the hour and minute hands on their circular paths, was worn.
--- Frank J. Weidler, Placentia, CAOn a lovely day during one of the finest Indian summers anyone could
remember -- a season the Germans call "old wives' summer," obviously
never having had Native Americans to name things after, but plenty of
old wives, and "Indian summer" in German would refer to the natives of
India in any case, which would
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make even less sense than the current naming system -- on such a day,
however named, John Baxter fell in the creek and drowned. --- Deanna
Stewart, Heidelberg, GermanyFenwick was concerned when his voices returned, but they hadn't been
troubling him much until now -- now that they were singing an old tune
by the Shirelles, or the Crystals, or the Ronettes, or the Angels, or
the Chiffons, or one of those damn girl groups he couldn't keep
straight, the uncertainty making him very agitated again, although he
had to admit the harmonizing was quite good, really. --- Jim Seamon,
Punta Gorda, FLAs my darling Jean-Claude entered the salon, with a single rose bud
bouquet, I felt a wave wash over me, like the full brunt of Napoleon's
forces at 9:05 am on the second of December 1805 ripping through once
fertile fields to the Prutzen Heights, and I knew that Paris in
printemps would be to my liking. --- Andrew Pitt, Paris, FranceAs always, that morning he awoke to the melodious sound of a stream of
water cascading into a still pool, punctuated by several ominous
silences -- and he could judge, by the length of the silences and the
volume of the cascade, just how much of his three-year-old son's urine
he would have to wade through to get to the sink. --- David Pellicane,
Highland Park, NJTinkerbell landed softly on the bedpost in a sparkle of Industrial
Light & Magic, handed the packet of cigarettes to a rather stubbly
"Pete" Pan and, seeing his little green tights strewn carelessly on
the floor and a still sleeping Wendy lying naked beside him, quickly
realized they were now a very long way from Never Never Land. --- Hugh
Trethowan, Bath, U.K.Harvey placed the muzzle of the .45 against his head, and as the cold
steel touched his temple a sudden shiver raced along his spine, and
the hair-trigger took on the frisson, his brains missing Marlene's
photo, where he wanted it to go, and splattered across his burgundy
nightgown, so he got the color combination right. --- Edward Vincent
Tennant, Cape Town, South AfricaIt could have been no more than midnight's icy incipit when Clifford,
stumbling in hitherto sanguine emprise through the tombstone teeth of
the raven lit Kirk-yard like some well-performed but lichen-hushed
human bullet-catch, heard the manifest bactrian vociferation which
betrayed with desperate flourish the inexplicably wretched fact that
his camel was out there, out on the ice -- and she was in mortal
peril. --- Mr. S. J. Crawford, Redlynch, QLD, AustraliaNo man is an island, so they say, although the small crustaceans and
the bird which sat impassively on Dirk Manhope's chest as he floated
lazily in the pool would probably disagree. --- Glen Robins, Brighton,
East Sussex, U.K.A dark and stormy night it was; in torrents fell the rain -- except at
occasional intervals, when, by a violent gust of wind was it checked,
as up the streets it swept, (for in London it is that lies our scene),
along the housetops rattling, and the scanty flame of the lamps
fiercely agitating, that against the darkness, struggled. (The story
of Paul Clifford, is Yoda, to a padawan telling) --- Jay Clifton,
Berkeley, CAFans, Stalkers, and Others
Mariann Simms, winner of the 2003 contest, [writes about the BLFC in
her blog]{.underline}. (April 2006) Celine Shinbutsu: [Fantasy
Category winner's blog from Japan]{.underline}.[Suite.101.com interviews 2008 Winner Garrison Spik]{.underline}
(August 16, 2008)[Suite.101.com interviews the Grand Panjandrum]{.underline} (August
16, 2008)[Guillaume Destot interviews the Grand Panjandrum]{.underline} (2002)
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["The Great Bulwer-Lytton Debate"]{.underline} (Manchester Guardian)
[Sticks and Stones]{.underline} (a "new" contest, last updated August
2010)[Bulwer-Lytton\'s Ancestral Estate]{.underline}
Bulwer-Lytton's Bicentennial Birthday Celebration at Knebworth House.
[With pictures]{.underline}. (May 20-23, 2003) [Literary
Locales]{.underline}: Over 1,350 picture links to places that figure
in the lives and writings of famous authors [The Eye of
Argon]{.underline} (a Sci-Fi conference classic)[Dead White Guys]{.underline}
[Dead Dogs]{.underline}
[Shakespearean insult?]{.underline}
[Bad Sex in Fiction Award]{.underline}
[It Was a Dark and Stormy Night --- the game for people who love to
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