I'm sure Mudcatters can come up with some "first lines of a bad novel" aka "Dark and Stormy Night".

Here is mine:
"Heather's preparation for this night had been a long creative struggle, but finally,
as she edged her way through the crowd with her acoustic guitar, tossing her many
long, thin, braided and beaded strands of blonde hair, the spotlight on
the microphone at the far end of the pub beckoned her forward, and she knew in
her heart that all those rhymes written on the pages of her tear-stained diary would
reveal at last to the world that she will be the greatest singer-songwriter of her
generation."

Alice

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TOP 10 BULWER-LYTTON CONTEST WINNERS

This year's 10 winners of the Bulwer-Lytton contest, aka "Dark and Stormy Night
Contest" (run by the English Dept. of San Jose State University), wherein one
writes only the first line of a bad novel:

10) "As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the
echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it."

9) "Just beyond the Narrows, the river widens."

8) "With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned,
unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep azure-blue
eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied for competition, and a
small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied description."

7) "Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept along the
East wall: 'Andre creep... Andre creep... Andre creep.'"

6) "Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism, was
about to give his body and soul to a back alley sex-change surgeon to become
the woman he loved."

5) "Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from eeking
out a living at a local pet store."

4) "Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins often
do."

3) "Like an over-ripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the corpulent
remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor."

2) "Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the meaning of
the word 'fear'; a man who could laugh in the face of danger and spit in the eye
of death -- in short, a moron with suicidal tendencies."

AND THE WINNER IS...

1) "The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the
greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing
the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at
the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the
frog's deception, screaming madly, 'You lied!"