As promised yesterday, Smiley Anders has written of the two other Louisiana winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest today:

On Thursday, I promised to run the other two category winners from Louisiana in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

Put on by the English department at San Jose State University, it honors, more or less, the author who penned "a dark and stormy night" by seeking the world's worst opening paragraph for a novel.

Sen. Jay Dardenne, as we mentioned Thursday, won the "Vile Puns" category.

Here's the winner of the "Grand Panjandrum's Special Award," by Ken Aclin of Shreveport:

"India, which hangs like a wet washcloth from the towel rack of Asia, presented itself to Tex as he landed in Delhi (or was it Bombay?), as if it mattered because Tex finally had an idea to make his mark and fortune and that idea was a chain of steak houses to serve the millions and he wondered, as he deplaned down the steep, shiny, steel steps, why no one had thought of it before."

Staff Sgt. Kevin Craver of Fort Polk won the "Fantasy Fiction" category with this one, which you have to be an avid reader of fantasy tales to really dig:

"Why does every task in the Realm of Zithanor have to be a quest?" Baldak of Erthorn, handyman to the Great Wizard Zarthon, asked rhetorically as he began his journey to find the Holy Hammer of Taloria and the Sacred Nail of Ikthillia so Baldak could hang one of Zarthon's mediocre watercolors, which was an art critique Baldak kept to himself unlike his predecessor, whom Zarthon turned into the Picture Frame of Torathank."

For other winners, see here.

Sorry, Terry, but there are a lot of bad writers out there.

UPDATE: I like this offering in the fantasy fiction category:

The dragon cast his wet, rheumy eyes, heavy-lidded with misery, over his kingdom-a malodorous, rot-ridden swamp, with moss cloaking brooding, gloomy cypresses, tree trunks like decayed teeth rising from stagnant ponds, creatures with mildewed fur and scales whom the meanest roadside zoo would have rejected--and hoped the antidepressants would kick in soon.

Constance Barrett
Ruby, NY