It was a dark and stormy fiction contest...

One of my favorite yearly emails is the one that goes out when the winners of The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest are announced (Bulwer-Lytton was the author who coined "It was a dark and stormy night," the beginning of one of the worst book-opening lines ever. )

The contest (dis)honors the worst opening lines from works of fiction in categories from Puns to Poetry, from Romance to Sci-Fi. Every year it provides me with a rollicking good time when I read the winners.

However, this year - I could not be more proud. An Alaskan has joined the ranks of the literary "rank" as a winner in the "Spy" category!

Charles Jaworky of North Pole, Alaska has given us this gem:

The double agent looked up from his lunch of Mahi-Mahi and couscous and realized that he must escape from Walla Walla to Bora Bora to come face-to-face with his arch enemy by taking out his 30-30 and shooting off his nemesis' ear-to-ear grin so he could wave bye-bye to this duplicitous life, but the chances of him pulling this off were only so-so, much less than 50-50.

*sniff, sniff*

I have a lump in my throat!