The contest is named after Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, a British novelist who, in 1830, wrote the novel Paul Clifford. Doesn't ring a bell? Bet you'll recognise the novel's opening phrase.

"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."

All these years I've watched a certain Snoopy Demidenko sit at a typewriter and tap out: "It was a dark and stormy night." That cartoon beagle is clearly a plagiarist.

Anyway, in honour of bad opening sentences, Professor Scott Rice of San Jose State University started the Bulwer-Lytton competition to which (as the official website says) wretched writers are welcome. Hurrah!

Back to Zobel's winning entry which he came up with while cleaning fish in his kitchen:

"She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight - summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a shrimp's tail - though the term 'love affair' now struck her as a ridiculous euphemism not unlike 'sand vein', which is, after all, an intestine, not a vein, and that tarry substance inside certainly isn't sand, and that brought her back to Ramon."

Runner-up went to Pamela Patchet Hamilton of Quebec with this: "The notion that they would no longer be a couple dashed Helen's hopes and scrambled her thoughts not unlike the time her sleeve caught the edge of the open egg carton and the contents hit the floor like fragile things hitting cold tiles, more pitiable because they were the expensive organic brown eggs from free-range chickens, and one of them clearly had double yolks entwined in one sac just the way Helen and Richard used to be."

Special congratulations go to Australia's Michelle Hefner from Bema, Victoria who won the science-fiction section with this:

"The scorched pasture, with its charred and smoking remains of dead cattle, was the least of Jessica's worries, and as she pondered her shredded gown, newly shaved head, and the quickly disappearing spaceship in the Nevada twilight, she realised if she were going to hitchhike back to Carson City, she'd have to show a damn sight far more leg than she had ever intended."

And three cheers for Geoff Blackwell of Bundaberg who received a "dishonourable mention" for this beauty: "The day dawned much like any other day, except that the date was different."