The Literary Bone

(Reposted with the author's permission)

The Literary Bone was meant to be an anthology magazine. I think it was originally meant to be semi-annual, but after the first issue it was announced that it would become an annual publication.

The editor, Lawrence Dagstine, made the mistake of buddying up to Nickolaus Pacione. They had a quid pro quo agreement that Pacione would print a story of Dagstine’s in his Tabloid Purposes 4, and Dagstine would print a story of Pacione’s in the second issue of The Literary Bone.

Had he done his homework, Mr. Dagstine would have known that any association with Pacione is, for all practical purposes, career suicide. Perhaps he knew this, and thought he could use Pacione ’s reputation to garner publicity for himself, escaping the taint that Pacione leaves in his wake. A few have, but precious few.

The Literary Bone has shut down. There will be no issue #2. The flashpoint was an interview that Dagstine did with Pacione and uploaded to his MySpace. As usual, Pacione spewed venom at virtually everyone he erroneously credits with being responsible for his stalled/failed career as a writer. Nevermind the fact that his own threatening demeanor and lack of command of the English language have far more to do with it than anything else.

That interview attracted too much attention and many comments; it has since been removed, and the entire MySpace has gone friends-only. That is not a good sign for a publication that wanted to get its name out there in cyberspace.

Today on his Blogspot, Dagstine made this momentous announcement:

“Sad news… After One-Year, The Literary Bone says farewell. There will not be an Issue #2… I would say that there will most likely never be an Issue #2. Authors have been notified or they have emailed me, and I have told them that their short stories are released.”

We may never know the real story behind the closure of The Literary Bone. Dagstine at first professed to have no knowledge whatsoever about Pacione’s reputation. That doesn’t ring true because he had been associating with the guy for a good year; anyone can do a Google search, which would have turned up tons of information.

I have to conclude that Dagstine knew all about Nicky’s reputation, yet proceeded with the interview anyway to garner publicity for himself and his self-published magazine. The ploy backfired. It got him publicity alright, but not the kind any editor would want.

When challenged about his lack of knowledge regarding Pacione’s reputation, he changed his story to claim that he knew all along about it, and cultivated the phony friendship to expose Pacione for the jerk that he is. No news there. Anyone who has received a death threat from Pacione already knows he’s a jerk.

The final straw was when he sent Janrae Frank a personal message on her Xanga account. She made it public and gave people, including me, permission to post it elsewhere; that is her prerogative to do. That’s when Dagstine started leaving thinly veiled threats on her blog, and she called his bluff.

Dagstine lost that cockfight, and folded his magazine.

Nickolaus Pacione has a habit of turning everything he touches to dust. It’s unfortunate that Mr. Dagstine got caught up in this, but on one level, I sort of suspect that he got what was coming to him. He might have been able to make his gamble pay off, but he didn’t play his cards right.