And the winner is ...

"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."

David McKenzie of Federal Way, Washington, won the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest with that opening sentence. The award is named after Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose novel Paul Clifford famously began with the lines "It was a dark and stormy night ..."