"It was a dark and stormy night..."

The winner of the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was announced last week. According to the contest website, entrants are challenged "to compose bad opening sentences to imaginary novels." The contest takes its name from the Victorian novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, famous for beginning his 1830 novel Paul Clifford with the line, "It was a dark and stormy night."

The winning entry, from Sue Fondrie of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, reads as follows:
Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.

For runners-up and winners in specific categories, see http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2011.htm.