This year's Bulwer-Lytton winners are in...

The Bulwer-Lytton prize goes to the best awful opening line to a novel, named for the author who penned the immortal (ok, "undead" is more accurate):

"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."

This year's winner, against stiff competition, was Molly Ringle:

For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss--a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil.

That, my friends, hurts so good.

HJ