The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (for the best opening line to a fictitious novel) was won by this gem of a sentence:
“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 it was 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.”
Runners-up and dishonerable mentions galore can be found at the contest website.
I entered that contest back in 1984 or 1985: didn’t win.
that was back when I had to create symbols on sheets of paper, insert the paper into another folded sheet of paper called an envelope and seal it by wetting a gummed substance with saliva, create more symbols on that second sheet, apply a postage stamp with more saliva, insert the envelope into a mail box and then wait almost a year to hear nothing because I didn’t win.
You forgot …
… that you had to walk to the mail box, barefoot, in the snow, uphill both ways!
Kids these days!!
Sharon E. Dreyer
“It was a dark sultry night . . ..” Had no idea that there was a contest for the best opening line of a novel! I’ll have to remember that in my next novel! Check out my first and recently released novel, Long Journey to Rneadal. This exciting tale is a romantic action adventure in space and is more about the characters than the technology.
Lame
It is pretty lame how you are hawking your book – Long Journey to Rneadal. If your book is as lame as the little blurb you wrote on LISNEWS you will not get many readers. A Google search shows that you are spamming other sites to no avail. (There are five pages of spamed sites shown when you run a Google search for the title of the book) You have not sold a single copy of your book according to Amazon. I can tell this because your book has no sales rank. You will not have a sales rank until you sell a copy. You are with a POD publisher and this causes the price to be very high. With most POD publishers they set a base cost for printing the book and then the author selects how much they want to make on each copy. I would suggest that you set your earning on the book to zero. Then a copy might sell for under $20, instead of for $32.50. Of course, with the laughable description of what the book is about I don’t think you could sell copies if they were $4.99.
Here is the description of the book on Amazon: A romantic action adventure that ascends into space and gravitates onto the RELENTLESS-a star cruiser captained by the dashing Jake Granger, who narrates this voyage. Dr. Jessica L. Hunter, a wealthy and telepathic genius, joins his crew to create new systems for his ship. Jake is fascinated by Jessi’s abilities during several critical assignments. After the first modifications are installed, Jessi learns the truth about herself while on rescue mission. She discovers that she must travel to Rneadal to protect the Rtuii. Jake loves Jessi and has a difficult time convincing her of his feelings. He is elated when she accepts his marriage proposal. After their lavish wedding, the newlyweds leave on their honeymoon. Jessi is later required to renegotiate another peace treaty. The time arrives when Jessi must make the perilous; although pregnant, Jessi travels to Rneadal and risks all to rescue the Rtuii.