![]() ![]() See them here:Ĭheryl’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. The 2011 contest results have just been announced. The contest has been going strong since then. But nevertheless, thanks to the contest, it has been the inspiration for some of the most awful and funny opening sentences ever penned. The challenge was to create a badly-written opening sentence for the worst of imaginary novels, while keeping the tone and style of the opening sentence from "Paul Clifford." While the original sentence was a little awkward and contained a shift in perspective, I never found it that bad an opening sentence. It was begun in 1982 by the English department of San Jose State University. "It was a dark and stormy night the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."This sentence has spawned an interesting literary contest called, appropriately enough, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. But what you might not realize is that those are only the first few words of the sentence which begins the novel: Why? Because they were immortalized by Snoopy in the comic strip "Peanuts." These first words are: "It was a dark and stormy night." Yet the first words of his novel "Paul Clifford," written in 1830, are familiar to almost everyone. ![]() Even of the most avid readers, most have never read one of his books. ![]() Most people have never heard of Victorian author Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. Keep your eyes open the next time you browse a bookstore. Seen enough? I could go on and on with examples of similar or identical cover art, but your mouse-clicking finger would tire. Here are two examples that are not identical photos, but they might as well be! The first is a very popular book that most people will recognize by sight: The Memoirs of Cleopatra, by Margaret George The same painting is often used on a variety of historical novels: Skeletons at the Feast, by Chris Bohjalianīlaming, by Elizabeth Taylor (no, not THAT Elizabeth Taylor)Įventide, by Kent Haruf (Australian edition) What happened to the scarf? You think that's a lot of deja vu? The following piece of cover art is on so many books I'm only going to list some of them: War Stories of Conflict, by Michael Morpurgo Here's an example of the same image on not just three, but five book covers: The Decoding of Lana Morris, by Laura and Tom McNeal Next Thing on My List, by Jill Smolinkskiįalling Apart in One Piece, by Stacy Morrison I don't want to hog too much bandwidth to display all the images here, so I'll merely provide the links and you'll have to do your own clicking to see the copycat book covers. But how many other examples of this are there that I've never noticed?Īs it turns out, the amount of lookalike book covers is amazingly high. Even large publishing houses, which might have the resources to buy all rights for more expensive stock art pieces, are also feeling the pinch right now, so those exclusive rights to an image might make the difference between the book going to print, or not.What made the example above so obvious was the fact the books were published within a few months of each other. The ability for a publisher to buy exclusive rights for life for a photograph or other form of illustration is often simply too costly for many a small press. Looks very familiar, doesn't it? After some digging around, I found out that the use of stock images for covers is a fairly common occurrence. ![]()
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