Dark and Stormy Writing
"It was a dark and stormy night..." So begins Edward George Bulwer-Lytton's now infamous 1830 novel, Paul Clifford. For nearly 30 years -- thanks to The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest -- we've been treated to opening lines that make that one look good. From the website: "Since 1982 the English Department at San Jose State University has sponsored The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels." Here are the 2011 winners. You're gonna love hating them.
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Much Ado About Publishing
Moron Press: The Fall Catalogue
Here they are, the lead titles from the Fall 2011 Catalogue of Moron Press: The Finest in Dreck Lit: SELF-HELP
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As a journalist, columnist, essayist, and media critic, Nina L. Diamond's work has appeared in many publications, including Omni magazine, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and The Miami Herald. She was a regular contributor to a number of "late, great" national, regional, and newspaper Sunday magazines, including Omni; the award-winning South Florida magazine; and Sunshine, the Ft. Lauderdale (now South Florida) Sun-Sentinel's Sunday magazine. She covers the arts and sciences; the media, publishing, and current affairs; and writes feature articles, interviews, commentary, humor/satire/parody, essays, and reviews. Ms. Diamond is also the author of (Lotus Press) and the unfortunately titled (Three Rivers Press/Crown/Random House) , a book of natural health reporting which has been a selection of The Book-of-the-Month Club's One Spirit Book Club and the Quality Paperback Book Club. For its entire run from 1984-1998, she was a writer and performer on Pandemonium, the National Public Radio (NPR) satirical humor program, which aired on WLRN-FM in Miami. She has appeared on Oprah, discussing the publishing industry, but, in a case of very bad timing, that appearance was two years before her first book was published. She has written her Much Ado About Publishing column for Independent Publisher since 2003.
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* * * * * Read some of Nina's previous Much Ado About Publishing columns:
- Fighting Free-Floating Flab: The Real Housewives of the Mothership's Guide to Weightless Weight Loss
- Surviving Nopocalypse Withdrawl: What to Do When You Find Out There Is No End of the World
- Spot the Hipster: How to Tattoo Your Dog MEMOIR
- Call Me Schnooki: A Jersey Shore Girl's Quest to Find a Nice Jewish Boy Instead
- Dead Drunk: Tales from Afterlife Celebrity Rehab
- The Notes I Passed in 5th Grade in 1967: Buy My e-Book for Only 99 Cents! SOCIAL MEDIA
- F**k Off: How to Be Anti-Social on Social Media
- Twurning Twords Twinto Tweets: A Tweep's Twitter Twibute to Elmer Fudd
- Gimme Back My Face: The 100 Secret Steps to Un-Tagging Facebook Photos SCIENCE
- There Is No Such Thing as Science
- We Told You: There Is No Such Thing as Science
- Seriously: There is NO SUCH THING AS SCIENCE