My older son, about whom I have written before, but much less than about my daughter because he doesn't much like attention, turned seventeen today.  For him, it meant he got a holiday from working for Dad, and for me it meant a day of having to accept how much I like it more when he is working with me.  It helps that we have a really incredible project to work on together, but it is also a great opportunity to get to know him better, and to see what he is turning into and how he is developing.  All I can say is that I am very, very proud of him, and that no matter how hard it is to face his growing up (notice it took me until a few minutes before midnight to write this), I can't believe how well he is turning out.

Copyright © 2007 Genii Software Ltd.

Yes, the results are out for the 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, celebrating the worst and most convoluted opening sentence to a nonexistent novel.  And the winner is:

"Gerald began -- but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them 'permanently' meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash -- to pee."

although there are lots more great entries to choose from, including:

"The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife, not even a sharp knife, but a dull one from that set of cheap knives you received as a wedding gift in a faux wooden block; the one you told yourself you'd replace, but in the end, forgot about because your husband ran off with another man, that kind of knife."

and my favorite short entry:

"Danny, the little Grizzly cub, frolicked in the tall grass on this sunny Spring morning, his mother keeping a watchful eye as she chewed on a piece of a hiker they had encountered the day before."

Ahh, to write so badly!  It is inspiring. 

Copyright © 2007 Genii Software Ltd.