A Federal Way man named David McKenzie has won the 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which is a yearly challenge to write the worst first line of an imaginary novel.

Here's McKenzie's winning 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.

That is some fine, awful work, Mr. McKenzie. You have made Washington proud. Seattle is home to a winner, too; our own Stuart Greenman won the Fantasy subcategory of the awards:

A quest is not to be undertaken lightly—or at all!—pondered Hlothgar, Thrag of the Western Boglands, son of Glothar, nephew of Garthol, known far and wide as Skull Dunker, as he wielded his chesty stallion Hralgoth through the ever-darkening Thlargwood, beyond which, if he survived its horrors and if Hroglath the royal spittle reader spoke true, his destiny awaited—all this though his years numbered but fourteen.

And here is the winner of the Detective Fiction subcategory of Bulwer-Lytton. The author is not local, but I found this sentence to be particularly awesome:

She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones - except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren't.

That last sentence is the only one that makes me want to read the rest of the novel. You can read all the runners-up and other categories here.