BONE CHIPS A Collection
by Keith Hopkinson
hardback / $26.95 / ISBN: 978-1-58790-248-2 / 264 pages / 6” x 9”
Literary / Collected Work / Short Stories / Poetry / Essays / Plays
ABOUT THE BOOK
The word that describes Bone Chips is variety.
Finding a pair of serial killers, Ed MacMahon, ancient dinosaurs and the arch-villain, Satan, along with a crowd of disperate others putting in an appearance certainly brings diversity.
Bone Chips, a new work of fiction by a new writer, employs a variety of forms opening with a group of short stories and ending with one-act plays and includes a number of what the writer calls, “Brief Orations,” a category that might be titled mini-essays, or even rants, but that are meant by the author to be read aloud.
Whether by chance or design, the collection is bracketed by the eternal triabgle. The first story, “The Trophy,” has the trio pursuing different goals with ruthlessness prevailing. The last entry, a short play, finds the three at the gates of hell, stunned by their ill fortune.
Let It be your good fortune that you found the entertaining diversity of Bone Chips.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Keith Hopkinson, born and bred in rural western Massachusetts, left home early in life. After one or two false beginnings, he found his profession is structural engineering, buildings, bridges, offshore oil platforms, etc. and retired from the discipline as Senior Designer.
Writing, too, he found attractive and did a quantity of it over the years, a part of which he has collected in Bone Chips.
WHY BONE CHIPS
You have volunteered for the sorrowful task of distributing the ashes of the loved one, according to their wishes. Now you gingerly open the small cardboard box you picked up at the crematory, face averted from the rising ash. You find, to your surprise, the box stuffed not with ash but with dry and polished flakes sliced from human bone.
The analogy is plain. From an intimate and regenerating core, word or art or music is culled. Packaged in an appropriate form, your work is presented to fellow human beings, hopefully to be as kindly received as a box from the crematory.
POSTSCRIPT
Here the analogy fails.
Turning the box over you find a label on the side. It is a disclaimer. “Some or all of the contents,” it declares, “may or may not be those of the deceased.” Though upset, you soon realize the ritual of prayer and remembrance was all that truly mattered.