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Bare Bone
Bare Bone #7
With a surgeon's skill editor Kevin L. Donihe stitches a diverse collection of fiction and poetry together to bring Bare Bone to life. Another Dr. Frankenstein, he assembles the pieces of others, birthing one complete monster to send lurching towards the darkness. Stories from past issues have received Honorable Mentions in The Years' Best Fantasy and Horror #15 and #17 and another was reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror #13. Bare Bone is a bi-annual anthology. #7 continues the spine-tingling tradition of the series featuring the fiction and poetry of today's most exciting authors. From the twisted poetry of Michael Arnzen to the taut stories of Ronald Damien Malfi and Donald R. Burleson this issue is more haunting than ever.
140 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2005
25 people want to read
About the author
Kevin L. Donihe
43 books99 followersKevin L. Donihe is one of the originators of the Bizarro Fiction literary movement. He is the author of the Wonderland Award-winning novels HOUSE OF HOUSES and SPACE WALRUS, among other books published by seminal Bizarro publisher Eraserhead Press. He was also the editor of the horror anthology series BARE BONE for Raw Dog Screaming Press. His work has appeared in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF LEGAL THRILLERS and John Skipp's PSYCHOS: SERIAL KILLERS, DEPRAVED MADMEN, AND THE CRIMINALLY INSANE. Hailing from the mountains of Tennessee, he now lives in Astoria, OR.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 24, 2013
I know this may shock you, but that rating… actually hurt. Kevin L. Donihe has done such wonderful things with Bare Bone Magazine that I seriously considered not writing this review for fear of discouraging him; thus, impeding further issues. Don’t roll your eyes at me; you never know when someone might take me seriously. Plus, my mother always taught me to be conscious of other people’s feelings. (Hey mom, look, I finally listened.)
First let me say, the cover is hauntingly beautiful. Unfortunately, that’s where the pretty creepy stuff stops. The moment you open the book, eerie goes right out the door and in walks a full entourage of Public Service Announcements, complete with annoying sirens and whistles to slow down your reading enjoyment; eleven, to be exact. And those PSA announcements about the deterioration of our society, while intriguing, are completely blatant to the point that they overshadow the actual stories. While there were a few in there, such as “Household Goods”, “Picture Man”, “The Café on the Corner”, and “The Glad Street Angel” that were very powerful and intense, they weren’t enough to salvage this poor, dead horse everyone keeps kicking. And yes, even I wanted to take a boot to the wretched beast.
**POSSIBLE SPOILERS**
Take for example “The Ghosts of York”. Here we meet Kat Onatade, a photographer on assignment. Her job? To capture the ghosts that haunt York. But all throughout the time she’s looking, she keeps spotting homeless people. The spots on them aren’t brief little notations; their descriptions are long and may as well have neon signs attached to them.
**
So, instead of enjoying the story, you’re silently cursing the author (I’m pointing at you, Mr. Lynch) for being so transparent about their agenda and really angry that he couldn’t at least have gone the long way around and not made the connection so obvious. This isn’t the only story suffering from Blatant-to-the-Point-of-Annoying-Syndrome: the same goes for “Fatty”, “The Script”, “Shards from the House of Glass” “In a Church with No Walls”, and “Pearlmutter”. In each the message was first, and the story suffered for it.
In fact, I was so distracted and annoyed with the overtone of the collection, that I completely missed each author’s style. In the stories that were more obvious than Tom and Katie, I wanted to cry in pain. In the stories that were actually subtle and subliminal, I wanted to weep tears of joy. And pace? Again, Donihe’s burden carried me through. What I didn’t miss though, was the editing. Far less clean than its predecessors, there were missing words, misspelled words, and grammatical errors. Dear God, what happened?
Now, while there were obvious messages in “Pink Leatherette”, “With Me”, “0.05”, “Country Living”, and “Spiders and Saints”, they were just too damn original to get a hate on. In fact, “With Me” surprised the hell out of me. I was expecting the story to unfold in a completely different way. Which, in of itself, is pretty amazing considering the story is only three pages long. Actually, if you think about, the entire atmosphere of each story in the book was constantly surprising me. Moody and unpredictable, the ambience is constantly shifting and adding to the stories. I liked it.
What truly saved this collection from getting a 2 was the poetry. Thirteen poems in all, I liked them purely for being what they were- subtle, intense clues into the story and into the author’s soul. Good Job!!
My rating? I give it 2.5. Bare Bone Magazine is normally a smooth, pleasant ride. This time some of the bones showed through and a few of them were broken and had jagged edges. If you really want to read it, borrow it!!
-As reviewed for Horror-Web.com
First let me say, the cover is hauntingly beautiful. Unfortunately, that’s where the pretty creepy stuff stops. The moment you open the book, eerie goes right out the door and in walks a full entourage of Public Service Announcements, complete with annoying sirens and whistles to slow down your reading enjoyment; eleven, to be exact. And those PSA announcements about the deterioration of our society, while intriguing, are completely blatant to the point that they overshadow the actual stories. While there were a few in there, such as “Household Goods”, “Picture Man”, “The Café on the Corner”, and “The Glad Street Angel” that were very powerful and intense, they weren’t enough to salvage this poor, dead horse everyone keeps kicking. And yes, even I wanted to take a boot to the wretched beast.
**POSSIBLE SPOILERS**
Take for example “The Ghosts of York”. Here we meet Kat Onatade, a photographer on assignment. Her job? To capture the ghosts that haunt York. But all throughout the time she’s looking, she keeps spotting homeless people. The spots on them aren’t brief little notations; their descriptions are long and may as well have neon signs attached to them.
**
So, instead of enjoying the story, you’re silently cursing the author (I’m pointing at you, Mr. Lynch) for being so transparent about their agenda and really angry that he couldn’t at least have gone the long way around and not made the connection so obvious. This isn’t the only story suffering from Blatant-to-the-Point-of-Annoying-Syndrome: the same goes for “Fatty”, “The Script”, “Shards from the House of Glass” “In a Church with No Walls”, and “Pearlmutter”. In each the message was first, and the story suffered for it.
In fact, I was so distracted and annoyed with the overtone of the collection, that I completely missed each author’s style. In the stories that were more obvious than Tom and Katie, I wanted to cry in pain. In the stories that were actually subtle and subliminal, I wanted to weep tears of joy. And pace? Again, Donihe’s burden carried me through. What I didn’t miss though, was the editing. Far less clean than its predecessors, there were missing words, misspelled words, and grammatical errors. Dear God, what happened?
Now, while there were obvious messages in “Pink Leatherette”, “With Me”, “0.05”, “Country Living”, and “Spiders and Saints”, they were just too damn original to get a hate on. In fact, “With Me” surprised the hell out of me. I was expecting the story to unfold in a completely different way. Which, in of itself, is pretty amazing considering the story is only three pages long. Actually, if you think about, the entire atmosphere of each story in the book was constantly surprising me. Moody and unpredictable, the ambience is constantly shifting and adding to the stories. I liked it.
What truly saved this collection from getting a 2 was the poetry. Thirteen poems in all, I liked them purely for being what they were- subtle, intense clues into the story and into the author’s soul. Good Job!!
My rating? I give it 2.5. Bare Bone Magazine is normally a smooth, pleasant ride. This time some of the bones showed through and a few of them were broken and had jagged edges. If you really want to read it, borrow it!!
-As reviewed for Horror-Web.com
Displaying 1 of 1 review