Toasted Cheese Literary Journal

Est. 2001

Forced Entry? by Bill Lockwood

Posted on September 1, 2022 by TC Editors

Candle-Ends: Reviews
Ruth Ticktin

Forced Entry? by Bill Lockwood

The novel Forced Entry? by Bill Lockwood (The Wild Rose Press, 2022) is a fun twist on the usual who-done-it.

In the first chapter, after an intriguing excerpt and a historical note, we meet Henrietta and her new boyfriend plotting to terrorize Henrietta’s mother. In the course of the novel, we follow other characters who are trying to figure out who’s behind the fear-inducing, yet bumbling, clues that continue to occur.

Lockwood’s main narrator, Max, is having a great time playing detective. A rock musician turned history professor between gigs, he loves both performing and connecting the past to present. He believes there is a relationship between the Dark Ages, about which he is teaching a course that semester, and the New Age movement gaining momentum in California, where he is working in 1971.

Living next door to his friend Leila that spring, Max meets her adult daughter Henrietta who has recently come to stay with Leila. He is asked to help when Leila calls him, frightened by the notes that appear on the doors, windows, and mirrors of her house. The paint and lipstick scribbles are made-up verses with obscure threats about killing Henrietta.

Max tries decoding the numbers in the messages by comparing them to the witchcraft events of the Dark Ages in his lectures. Unsuccessful, it’s his girlfriend’s teenaged daughter who figures out the codes in the end. Max concocts a little scheme and then a final act to discover who is behind the scare tactic actions.

The dialogue of the teenager was not always believable and Max’s college history lesson plans didn’t always actually relate, but the story sailed through to a quite smooth reading experience. Some of the characters’ development, like Max’s girlfriend and his grandpa, were cursory. Some characters were typecast, like the aging actress and the witch. Ultimately that mattered less because we clearly had our heroes and the tongue-in-cheek writing was riveting.

Lockwood gave the reader valuable food for thought. We learned of our misunderstanding about modern witchcraft and their harmless lifestyle. We realized that the happy endings of English folklore don’t always take into account the plight of the Irish and their fight for independence.

Significantly, one moral of the story lasts: good and bad is not simply black and white. There is a lot of gray area. Involving the police was done with just the right light touch, as was purposefully not villainizing the wrongdoers. In this case there was no major reconciliation but rather a realization that there are important times to let it be and move on. A bit like Agatha Christie, we readers were left reassured by this cautionary but lighthearted tale.

Bill Lockwood is a retired social worker having had a lifelong passion for writing and participation in community theater. He currently writes articles about the arts and interesting people for The Shopper/Vermont Journal and covers local community theater for the Eagle Times of Claremont, NH. The Wild Rose Press has published six of his Historical Fiction novels: Buried Gold (2016), Megan of the Mists (2017), Ms. Anna (2018), The Monsignor’s Agents (2020), Gare de Lyon (2021), and Forced Entry? (2022). His short story “The Kids Won’t Leave” appeared in the Fall 2020 issue of Two Hawks Quarterly, and his story “Pizza, Pizza” appeared in The Raven’s Perch, April 28, 2021. Bill Lockwood is a frequent contributor to Toasted Cheese.

Ruth Ticktin coordinated programs, advised, and taught ESL in Washington DC and Maryland since 1977. Always inspired by shared stories, she’s the author of Was Am Going, Recollections Poetry & Flash (NewBayBooks, 2022), coauthor of What’s Ahead? (ProLinguaLearning, 2013), coeditor of Psalms (PoeticaPublishing, 2020) and a contributor to BendingGenres Anthology (2018-19), Art Covid-19 (SanFedelePress) and more.

Was Am Going by Ruth Ticktin

Posted on September 1, 2022 by TC Editors

Candle-Ends: Review
Bill Lockwood

Front cover of the poetry/flash collection "Was Am Going" by Ruth Ticktin. Image of a body of water looking toward the horizon. The sun is setting and the sky is pink-orange with clouds.

Was Am Going: Recollections in Poetry & Flash by Ruth Ticktin

Ruth Ticktin’s Was Am Going is a short book of poems and flash fiction, some of them excerpts, and some of both forms that have been published previously in various journals and publications. The start of her introduction really sets out what her work is all about:

Was Am Going: Recollections in Poetry and Flash speaks out to life experiences. Tales enfold and themes evolve, forming a camaraderie between reader and author. Merging the past, from the mid-1950s—a girl grows up, observes and discovers—to the 21^st Century when a woman considers, recognizes, and carries on.

The title is quite clever. It tells where she was, where she is now, and where she is going.

The recollections she presents are both memoirs and reflections on her life and, actually, life in general, and the times she has lived through. Intriguing and imaginative were the two words that kept coming to mind as I read through the book. Both because of what she is telling and the way she has chosen to tell it.

Her journey through life and across the US starts in the Midwest, and it is broken into three parts. The first part takes her from growing up in Madison, Wisconsin to a post-college solo trip to the west coast and Mexico. It starts with her as a little girl by “the water’s edge,” which is the title of her first poem and a great image as well. Part One ends with her, a young adult, alone, stranded, and broke in El Paso, Texas and calling her parents for a ticket home.

The opening poem, “Wisconsin Waters,” is a two-verse quick introduction that sets the tone. It is focused on a river, and it bounces between its summer and winter states. It also sets up the first short story, “We Didn’t Have a TV,” which also then sets the time of the 1950s when she was growing up. It gives a very accurate description of the TV stars and shows of that era showing how she remembers it well. She also proudly proclaims herself “a reader of books,” though which ones and when, etc. are left to our imagination.

It then goes on with a few more flash fiction pieces describing her growing up. The fiction pieces are written in a pattern of one short line after another, mimicking the look of poetry though the words definitely have the feel of prose. I go back to intriguing and imaginative again. Then when she intersperses actual poetry again, it keeps things fresh and changing, and it certainly makes one want to read on.

I particularly liked one poem, “Ode to Stories.” It evokes all kinds of stories and fairy tale images that are somehow familiar. It starts with “Charlotte unravels her web…” and takes on “elves, witches, and phantoms hiding.” It is a very clever intertwining of all the images it evokes. So, too, is “Home for a Visit,” an image-filled recollection of working as a waitress and bringing home leftovers to her roommates.

Part One ends with “Haiku”, a poem that addressed the status of her was, am, going at the time, certainly appropriate to moving on.

Part Two finds her “a mom in a house.” It goes on with poems and stories of learning, passings, loss, and life. She covers it all. Some of the pieces in this section have been published previously, many of them in DASH Literary Journal. This section includes reflections on a “perfect mom,” the Jewish tradition of marking time after death, and a mail carrier who jumped in and stopped a car that rolled away with a child on board. She isn’t afraid to be political either. “Footsteps, a pantoum” compares the Nazis coming for loved ones to US immigration enforcement.

Part Three takes the title of the first poem in the book, “The Water’s Edge.” It covers the forty years she spent living in Washington, DC. “To Us,” a poem, and “To Washington, DC,” a flash, are both memoirs of her protesting and demonstrating for liberal causes. She has some very good images of Cuba, and she includes thoughts on the recent pandemic of 2020, noting in “A Perspective” that, “Historic fiction about the spring of 2020 will be written.” Prophetic, for sure, but then cryptic in its last line: “It is possible that some stories just end where they end.”

Not to say I loved all her pieces, but the ones I couldn’t “get into” were few and far between.

The book ends on a very optimistic note with a poem called “A Peace Prayer.” This does summarize the tone of the book, optimistic and uplifting. I would recommend it to anyone.

Ruth Ticktin has coordinated international programs, advised and taught English Language Learning in Washington, DC and Maryland since 1977. From Madison and Chicago, graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Ruth encourages sharing stories. Inspired by students, family and community, she is the author of Was Am Going, Recollections Poetry & Flash (NewBayBooks, 2022), coauthor of What’s Ahead? (ProLinguaLearning, 2013), coeditor of Psalms (PoeticaPublishing, 2020) and a contributor to BendingGenres Anthology (2018-19), Art Covid-19 (SanFedelePress, 2020), PressPausePress #6 and several other literary journals.

The Dime by Mark Paxson

Posted on December 1, 2021 by TC Editors

Candle-Ends: Reviews
Bill Lockwood

The Dime by Mark Paxson

Starting with Another Night in Bridgeport (King Midget Press, 2012), Mark Paxson has written five books and, as he says on his website, “somewhere around 50 short stories.” He identifies himself as an “indie writer,” one who is “writing and publishing stories the traditional publishing world doesn’t want to touch.” His latest novel, The Dime (King Midget Press, 2021), fits that description quite well with an unconventional situation, very real-life characters, and a number of intriguing plot twists that take you so often in the opposite direction of what a reader might be expecting in mainstream popular fiction. If for no other reason, his cleverness makes this book certainly worth reading.

Paxson also uses an intriguing device. He keeps shifting the viewpoint from which the story is told. Instead of just one narrator or protagonist, the reader is shifted from one character to another, seeing the developing story from pretty much all the points of view of those involved. Most often the viewpoint is that of one of the three main characters around which the story revolves. They are all very plain, normal, everyday people who in many ways could be seen as simply losers. It is a story of each trying to salvage a tragic life. In the end they all may or may not end up as heroes, all part of Paxson’s genius as well.

Sisters Lily and Sophie live in a house in the small town of Northville, New York. It had been their home until they and their parents were all involved in a tragic car accident that killed the parents and left the younger sister, Sophie, in a wheelchair. The sisters then lived an unhappy life under the rule of an aunt on the prairie in Nebraska until Lily became eighteen and gained guardianship of Sophie. They returned to the family home that had been held in a trust for them, a trust that neither was able to fully access until age 25. The story begins with Lily, now 20 and working in a five-and-dime store called by everyone simply “The Dime,” and Sophie, sixteen and in high school, locked in uneventful and unsatisfying lives. Enter Pete, recently arrived member of Sophie’s class, who is trying without success to fit into the small town teenage society. Feeling guilty that Sophie has “withered” in their life situation, Lily has a sudden idea when she catches Pete shoplifting a Yankees T-shirt. She makes him a deal. She won’t turn him in if he will ask her sister Sophie to the school dance. At this point, the story about a girl in a wheelchair and a guy who comes to meet her under duress could turn out to be quite sappy. But that is not the case at all. This story is off into its intricate twists and turns from there.

Paxson takes on many issues such as death, sadness, hopes, dreams, and love as the story progresses. He adds an element where he shows that these three lead characters do care for each other, and as a result the reader starts caring for them, too. Who is the strongest and who is the most vulnerable shifts just as Paxson shifts the point of view. He also throws in some flashback scenes shifting the time-frame as well. And there is also a strong positive element in that all the characters appear to be on a kind of journey toward healing. The character Lily expresses some real wisdom:

I learned in the weeks that followed that the actions you think will make a difference frequently don’t, while the ones that seemed insignificant in the moment can spread ripples far and wide. (134)

Shortly after she says that, Paxson throws the reader another plot twist and surprise. It is a very good read.

Mark Paxson is a semi-retired attorney living and relaxing in California. He has been published in Toasted Cheese, The First Line, and the Disappointed Housewife, among others. He also has published two collections of short stories, the novel One Night in Bridgeport (King Midget Press, 2012) and the novella, The Irrepairable Past (King Midget Press, 2019). He blogs at King Midget’s Ramblings. He can be reached at mpaxson55[at]gmail.com.

Bill Lockwood is a retired social worker with a lifelong passion for writing and participation in community theater. He currently writes articles about the Arts and interesting people for The Shopper/Vermont Journal and covers local community theater for the Eagle Times of Claremont, NH. The Wild Rose Press has published five of his historical fiction novels: Buried Gold (2016), Megan of the Mists (2017), Ms. Anna (2018), The Monsignor’s Agents (2020), and Gare de Lyon (2021). His short stories “The Kids Won’t Leave” appeared in the Fall 2020 issue of Two Hawks Quarterly, and “Pizza, Pizza” appeared in The Raven’s Perch April 28, 2021. Lockwood has written several reviews for Toasted Cheese.

Gare de Lyon by Bill Lockwood

Posted on December 1, 2021 by TC Editors

Candle-Ends: Reviews
Anne Greenawalt

Gare de Lyon by Bill Lockwood

Gare de Lyon (Wild Rose Press, 2021) by Bill Lockwood describes the adventures of Mary O’Riley, an art student from Boston studying in Paris in the late 1930s. When her art school closes at the start of WWII, Mary, who changes her name to Marie to better fit her Parisian lifestyle, doesn’t want to go home yet, so she takes a job as a bakery assistant. There, she finds herself mixed into the French Résistance movement. While she’s helping a British RAF pilot find sanctuary in one of the French safe houses, the Gestapo raid her apartment, take her passport, and arrest her boss at the bakery, which leaves her stranded. The Résistance leaders ask her to escort the pilot, Freddy Winston, until they can take him home. Marie helps willingly even though no one seems motivated to help her get home safely, too.

Together, Marie and Freddy move from safe house to safe house, waiting for the next plan, but with each new move, the Résistance asks Marie to take greater and greater risks as they face new challenges in dodging the Gestapo, gendarme, and others who are not sympathetic to the Résistance.

Although the story follows the adventures of Marie and Freddy, Marie is clearly the star. She’s the one who works in several different bakeries, delivers messages, and assists the French Résistance, which she is able to do well because of her cleverness and strong French language skills. Through most of the story, Marie bares her burdens and responsibilities without complaint, rarely questioning what’s happening to her, and largely seems unconcerned by her lack of money and plan to return home.

Her calmness stems from an innocence about war and her status as an American in France. While delivering a message, one of the Résistance leaders says to her, “Your country has not yet entered the war. We are waiting. We need your help” to which she replies, “I don’t have any influence on that” (73). As the story progresses, she becomes better at advocating for herself and her right to go home:

I came to France as a student. The war took that away. I don’t belong here any longer. You just told me all I have done for you. I have risked my life frequently for a cause that I agree with, but a cause that is not really mine. (152)

Although she could be outspoken prior to this, it is a relief when she speaks up for herself.

On the other hand, Freddy doesn’t speak French and barely understands it, so he depends on Marie to translate and, at times, seems more like a whiny piece of luggage. He also makes unwelcome sexual passes as Marie—more because he thinks it’s expected of him than because he’s attracted to her. He complains about sleeping on the floor when Marie sleeps in a single bed, he asks her why they can’t hug, and he invites her to visit him at night. To this, Marie replies:

Like I told the boy when he made the pass at me and accused me of being like some kind of nun, I’m certainly not pure. I took plenty of chances when I was a student in Paris. I’ve had my fun. But now, I’m on the run. The last thing I need now is a pregnancy. I intend to sleep on my own. (68)

In addition to the vulgarities of war, she also protects herself from the vulgarities of men. I’m glad this is an adventure story and not a love story because there is no chemistry between them and I don’t respect Freddy’s behavior.

A few quirks in the writing, such as an overuse of “quickly” during the fast-paced scenes, took me out of the story a few times and made me wish some of the adverbs would be replaced with stronger descriptions, but overall, Lockwood deftly moves readers from scene to scene through a linear narrative at an appropriate pace.

This is an exciting, fast-paced story that fans of WWII fiction and stories with strong female protagonists will enjoy. Both Marie and Freddy agree they have been “lucky” (158) during their journey, but the author keeps readers guessing until the end whether the two heroes will ever make it home.

Bill Lockwood is a retired social worker with a lifelong passion for writing and participation in community theater. He currently writes articles about the Arts and interesting people for The Shopper/Vermont Journal and covers local community theater for the Eagle Times of Claremont, NH. The Wild Rose Press has published five of his historical fiction novels; Buried Gold (2016), Megan of the Mists (2017), Ms. Anna (2018), The Monsignor’s Agents (2020), and Gare de Lyon (2021). His short stories “The Kids Won’t Leave” appeared in the Fall 2020 issue of Two Hawks Quarterly, and “Pizza, Pizza” appeared in The Raven’s Perch April 28, 2021. Lockwood has written several reviews for Toasted Cheese.

Dr. Anne Greenawalt is a writer, competitive swimmer, trail adventurer, educator, and dog lover. She earned a doctorate in Adult Education from Penn State University and a master’s degree in Creative Writing: Prose from the University of East Anglia, and works as the training manager for a nonprofit that provides residential and clinical services for youths who have experienced trauma. Her latest work, The Shot (GreenMachine, 2021) was reviewed in September TC. She writes for WOW! Women on Writing, TrailSister.net, and StoryTerrace. Twitter: @Dr_Greenawalt

The Monsignor’s Agents by Bill Lockwood

Posted on September 1, 2020 by TC Editors

Candle-Ends: Reviews
Shelley Carpenter

The Monsignor’s Agents by Bill Lockwood

In the warm months of July and August I go off my diet of literary fiction and academic nonfiction and escape into my favorite pastime: summer reading. From May through September, one can see summer books in artful window displays in Main Street bookstores, on lawn chairs and colorful beach towels often flipped over with their pages fanning in a downward direction. Some can be spied poking out of a tote bag on a bus or train with just a hint of their titles showing. Some have their pages dogeared purposely to hold the reader’s place while their owner takes a reading break to splash in the pool, the ocean or other inland waters.

Novels filled with adventure, thrills, romance, mystery or history, which is a particular favorite of mine. Historical fiction hooked me into reading at a young age and today I am still drawn to this genre about people and places from eras gone by, some from the distant past to others at an even closer time that I can recall with a certain nostalgia because I was there somewhere. Somehow. Of course, not in the novel but existing in the real world as a younger version of myself, living and working and finding adventure on a much smaller scale.

I recently had the pleasure to read Bill Lockwood’s latest historical novel, The Monsignor’s Agents (The Wild Rose Press, 2020). Lockwood’s novel is filled with all those elements that I love: adventure, intrigue, danger, romance, and that recent historical context that made me think about where I was and what I was doing when Lockwood’s characters went about their bookish business of capturing my attention and literally traveling with me as I, myself, went about my summer business from place to place hoping for fifteen minutes here or there of stolen reading time so that I could catch up with my new summer friends. I spent a wonderful two weeks with Lockwood’s characters. Full disclosure: this is not my first Lockwood novel. Nevertheless, I was very pleased to see all his hallmarks in his latest work.

The setting of The Monsignor’s Agents takes place in two locations: Rome and on the island of Malta, located off the coast of Italy in the Mediterranean Sea, in 1983, which I thought very interesting. The 1980s were more than crazy hair and clothes and the birth of MTV. They were a very political time in the world and in the Catholic Church as well. In the novel, Lockwood puts a spotlight on the Vatican and Pope John Paul II with speculation of a possible third assassination attempt brewing, and he does this beautifully using television news as a delivery vehicle, showing and not simply telling the reader. Lockwood does this right out of the gate in the first line:

Alison flipped on the TV while she waited for her morning coffee to brew. “May 1, 1983,” the announcer gave the date in Italian at the start of the local newscast for Rome.

Indeed, Lockwood clearly and succinctly orients the reader to the big picture while introducing his main character, Alison, a 27-year-old army intelligence officer stationed in Rome. The reader soon learns Alison’s role. Great writing here and throughout. Lockwood’s story is full of details and character movement.

He also adds a History and Author’s Notes in the beginning pages of his novel that supply some details and explanations of the numerous historical references peppered throughout the story that once more grounds the reader, gives authority to his characters, and also provides context to the exotic locations where the story takes place.

In this regard, authority is further heightened because the setting details are equally important to the plot. In the third chapter, Lockwood blends Alison with the setting in a historically evocative manner:

She had dressed European as cover, to blend in. The light summer dress she wore had, like the little island, a mix of European and Mediterranean cultures. The dress was thin to make her feel cool in the African heat and European in style to show she hadn’t worn a bra. Neither had she worn any jewelry except for a simple watch on her wrist. The guidebook had said that in the eighteenth century young girls in Maltese society were given simple coral necklaces believed to ward off evil. She was trusting in her training and experience to take care of that.

Alison’s character is reminiscent of a time when women were just beginning to break the gender barrier, particularly in the armed forces. Alison refers several times to the famed World War I spy, Mata Hari, who was a double agent spying on the French and Germans and ultimately died violently by a firing squad. Hari used her sexuality to get the job done and while that may have been true to history and the time, it made me pause. In a time of the women’s movement, Me Too, a heightened political climate and social awareness, to read about Alison using her sexuality in a flippant, provocative manner stopped me. It was unexpected and I had a moment of dislike for Lockwood’s character.

However, I recalled that 1980s pop culture was indeed graphic in terms of violence and sex, and women were commonly objectified by men as well as by themselves and had been for centuries. This is why historical female spies like Hari were able to stay under the radar of suspicion. I got that. This notion gave way to another thought. Perhaps Lockwood was showing the gender disparity of then and now in a micro-social commentary through his characters. How different they are to their modern contemporaries. Less serious, for sure. Playful. These qualities attracted me to them in the first place. My new summer besties. People whom I would invite to my house for a barbecue and cocktails had they been flesh and bone.

Returning to the other characters, overall they were very round and robust, charming, funny, and surprising, too. I liked them all, particularly Max, who I suspect may be a favorite of Bill’s. Max is a character I had met in a previous Lockwood novel and was delighted to be reacquainted with. Max and Alison’s points of view are the main plot vehicle as Lockwood switches between them in his linear narrative.

The novel builds to an exciting moment where the reader may guess what is about to happen but doesn’t know for sure, mirroring the character’s exact same sentiment. It’s a true page-turner followed by a traditional and quick falling action and character wrap up.

Bill Lockwood is a retired social services worker for Maryland and Vermont. Currently he writes articles on the arts and interesting people for the weekly Shopper/Vermont Journal and the daily Eagle Times. He was awarded the Greater Falls Regional Chamber of Commerce Person of the Year in recognition of his work as Chairman of the Bellow Falls Opera House Restoration Committee. Lockwood published his second novel, Megan of the Mists, in 2017, and third, Ms. Anna, in 2018. He has five published short stories. His short story “The Kids Won’t Leave” is scheduled to appear in the Fall 2020 issue of Two Hawks Quarterly, the literary journal of Antioch University, Los Angeles. Bill lives in Vermont.

Shelley Carpenter is TC’s Reviews Editor. Email: reviews[at]toasted-cheese.com

Ms. Anna by Bill Lockwood

Posted on September 1, 2018 by TC Editors

Candle-Ends: Reviews
Shelley Carpenter

Ms. Anna by Bill Lockwood

Bill Lockwood has done it again. In his third novel, Ms. Anna (Wild Rose Press, 2018), Lockwood puts together a curious and salty mix of romance, danger and adventure on the high seas. Set in 1990s Mayaguez, Puerto Rico—the tuna canning capital of the world—Mayaguez is “a working port city… on the opposite end from the upscale shops and restaurants of old San Juan and very different from the Jimmy Buffet world that tourists might imagine.” Lockwood’s historical notes in the first pages provide a detailed history of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Key West that ground the reader in local history and lore before diving into the story’s exposition. A notable hallmark of Lockwood’s writing.

The story begins in action. Protagonist Anna pilots her father’s fishing boat and her namesake, the Senorita Anna, into the dark port of Mayaguez at the end of a secret cruise. Told in third-person omniscient narration, Anna’s backstory is revealed early on: “She and her father were ex-patriots from the mainland who had come to the island about five years ago…” Lockwood adeptly uses the exposition not only to chronicle the characters’ backstories, but also to foreshadow the major conflict. Pay attention, readers. Lockwood likes to drop subtle hints and red herrings.

Then along comes Max, the second protagonist, in Chapter Two. Max is an academic from a wealthy New England family sent to the Caribbean to investigate fraud in his family’s tuna canning business. Max’s character is immediately appealing because he is humble, friendly, and courteous—a very likeable underdog. Max talks to everybody he meets. He tells a cab driver about his stuffy family and another funny story about why they invited him to Thanksgiving Dinner:

I’m the black sheep… They only get in touch with me when they need something… They think I once worked for the CIA, and my skills at checking things out are useful to them… Of course I can’t tell you, or them, for that matter if I ever really worked for the CIA. The mystery of it all works fine for me…

Max is a very round character, much more rounded than the other characters, even Anna. He has another interesting exchange with a stranger on the plane to Mayaguez, a stranger that seems very like one of the other main characters the reader meets later in the novel. This stopped me as I wondered about the purpose of this early moment. Was it to foreshadow Max’s future? Or perhaps to show that Max isn’t as smart as he thinks and may have been played from the get-go? Both? Neither? It is no surprise that Max clashes with another important character, Senor Confresi, whom he is investigating and who may or may not be the villain in the story. This intriguing character is written well because even if he is a villain, Confresi has some truly likeable qualities much like Max: good manners, a pleasant appearance, charm, and genuineness in his interactions. Senor Confresi doesn’t lie, yet the reader knows he isn’t telling the truth either. This is good character writing.

Returning to the women characters. There is much more to be said. They are sexy, smart characters and familiar in their objectivity. Anna and Miss Parker are both noted for their appearance first and then their intelligence later, a sexist stereotype that continued well through the nineties and whose treatment is heightened by the hot, tropical setting.

Lockwood describes Anna:

At age twenty-two, Anna was a recent graduate in the class of 1991… She had on the school’s maroon T-shirt with the bold gold letters “RUM” across the front. That shirt, or others similar, and a bikini bathing suit bottom was all she usually wore for either of her two part-time jobs.

The variety of Anna’s bikini bottoms are also noted once or twice more which seems more of a distracting sidenote than an important detail.

Also noteworthy is that Miss Parker is compared to Anna from Max’s point of view.

A mainlander, about Anna’s age. She was dressed in a sleeveless flowered dress that had a very short skirt. Like Anna, she was barefoot and had a full tan as if she were frequently outside.

It makes sense that Max would compare them, yet he only speaks of appearances. And later, she is seen by a disapproving Anna “sunbathing on the bow of the ship without her top on.” Miss Parker stands out to say the least. She is cast as a sexy siren character. Although beautiful like Anna, Miss Parker is much more calculating and worth watching closely.

Lockwood’s characters are also reminiscent of noir: a stranger rides into town on a mission. The stranger is a detective-type, searching for something or someone and meets two female characters. One is innocent, a girl-next-door, and the other, a femme fatale—much like Lockwood’s Max, Anna, and Miss Parker, who reminds me of a leading female character from one of Ian Fleming’s novels. (I can’t recall which novel, but I do think she’d be an awesome Bond Girl.) Conversely, I do like how the two women play off each other with their similarities as seen through Max’s male gaze and how these women quietly control the plot. Both are important. And as stereotypical as these women characters might appear, Lockwood is true to the times in his treatment of their sexuality. He gets full points there.

Lockwood is also adept at building worlds in his evocative adventure story which is frequently peppered with Spanish language and local colloquialisms and customs. There is authority in the writing and a strong sense of place. When the characters are on the Ms. Anna, the reader can feel the sway of the ship and smell the salt. When Max is running for his life at the tuna factory, the reader can see Max trying to find his way out of the factory labyrinth.

Max describes La Salida, the bar where he first meets Anna:

The place would have been very dark except for the many slatted shutters that were open to let in any breeze that might pass through. Salsa music, similar to that in the cab, blared from speakers that seemed to be all around. Max noted that what little wall space was left was heavily paneled, with ropes, nets, lanterns, and other nautical ware hung everywhere. A group of obvious locals sat in groups or as couples at various tables scattered around. Max went up to a deserted part of the bar and climbed up on a stool.

Then along comes Anna and the story takes off. The reader is the cliché fly on the wall.

Ms. Anna wraps up nicely in the end. Lockwood takes his time as the story rounds the climax, allowing the reader to savor the falling action and see the effect that the resolution has on the characters.

Bill Lockwood is a retired social services worker for Maryland and Vermont. He was an avid community theater participant in the early 1990s where he wrote reviews and feature articles for the Baltimore Theater Newsletter and the Bellows Falls Town Crier of Vermont. He was awarded the Greater Falls Regional Chamber of Commerce Person of the Year in recognition of his work as Chairman of the Bellow Falls Opera House Restoration Committee. Lockwood has four published short stories and published his second novel, Megan of the Mists, in 2017. He lives in New Hampshire.

Shelley Carpenter is TC’s Reviews Editor. Email: harpspeed[at]toasted-cheese.com

Laughter and Early Sorrow and Other Stories by Brett Busang

Posted on June 1, 2018 by TC Editors

Candle-ends
Bill Lockwood

Laughter and Early Sorrow and Other Stories by Brett Busang

Laughter and Early Sorrow and Other Stories (Open Books, 2017) is a collection of nine intriguing short stories by Brett Busang. The book jacket describes the author as a “prolific essayist, a playwright, a painter, an ambivalent anglophile, and a failed ballplayer.” The collection is based on recollections and insights from Busang’s childhood and coming of age in Memphis, Tennessee during the sixties and seventies. His stories also have a touch of the fifties as well, as the first-person protagonist and narrator in “Year of the Falling Santa” insightfully says that “The sixties were just like the fifties until people started squawking about civil rights more audibly than they’d done before, or maybe it was just The Beatles.”

For someone like me, who had a similar growing up and coming of age, Busang’s stories resonate times and places that I can certainly relate to. The stories cover the rites of a boy’s childhood and young adolescence such as baseball, accordion lessons, backyard camping, summer camp, road trips before our interstate highway system was completed, stays at grandma’s house, and saying “damn” for the first time. The stories are told in the first person with the same unidentified male narrator and protagonist. It is interesting that adult female characters are significant characters in the collection and girls, although mentioned, are never really an important part of the action. Busang’s lead characters seem just short of the part of coming age where the sexes become really aware of each other.

It’s obvious Busang has a love of baseball, as do I. “The Great Walkout” is my favorite in this collection. The author shows very good knowledge of the game from the players point of view. A comment made near the end illustrates an insightfulness that Busang brings to all of his stories in various ways. After the opposing pitcher does a very un-baseball thing, the narrator expresses the wisdom that “Baseball is one of the few games I know that is actually designed for losers, and if you couldn’t live that way, you couldn’t play.”

The images he creates by his description of scenes is excellent. In “Moment Musicale” the narrator describes the “stability” of the suburbs where he lives to the city where he hopes to find “glamour, dissolution, danger” in “an alternative universe of unpainted clapboards and half-assed repair.” Busang also shows his diversity in “Year of the Falling Santa” where the narrator attributes a couple poems to his grandfather, poems that Busang wrote as well.

The stories, however, are not always presented to us in simple, easy-to-read language. Busang uses complicated comparisons and “high language” in a very erudite—that’s a word I think Busang would use—style. His word choices challenge the reader to think as you read. But then, that’s not such a bad thing. His stories really capture a certain generation’s adolescent boys’ experiences, desires, and hopes through their coming of age. For the younger among us, this collection provides insight to mid-twentieth-century America. For those of us of Busang’s time and place, it is a real trip down memory lane.

Brett Busang was born in St. Louis but claims his publisher thinks he was born in Memphis. According to Busang, like many people whose birthplaces have been switched, he states that he’s geographically challenged which is why, when he decides to go somewhere he stays—as he has done in Washington D.C.—long past the time when its welcome mat is cleanly stitched and the only word it has ever needed etched, between all the needlework, in letters any guest might read from the curb. The condition of having been transplanted by others has, however, prompted a salutary reflex: “If they’re going to make up things about me, I’ll do the same for, and with, them. Having said this… are there any questions?” Busang is the author of I Shot Bruce (Open Books 2016), a novel about the fifth Beatle. His writing has appeared in print and in numerous collections, magazines, and journals such as the Loch Raven Review, Open Letters Monthly, The Bacon Review, Cobalt Review, Overtime, Saranac Review, and Toasted Cheese.

Nikolai Delov by James Dante

Posted on December 1, 2017 by TC Editors

Candle-Ends: Reviews
Bill Lockwood

Nikolai Delov by James Dante

James Dante’s second novel, Nikolai Delov (Omsk Publishing, 2017) is a fast-paced, riveting thriller set in the post-Communist Russia of today. As in his first novel, Tiger’s Wedding, set in South Korea, once again Dante’s picked another exotic and timely setting frequently in the news. Dante takes the reader immediately to a world where the shrewd and the lucky make their fortunes navigating unwritten rules among honest and corrupt bureaucrats and police, and forge alliances with dangerous rivals with mob-like behaviors.

Nikolai Delov, both the title and name of the protagonist, is a self-made trucking baron from Moscow. He has risen into Russia’s new business elite with his brother, running the family business started by their father after the collapse of the Communist government in the early 1990s. The story starts out revealing a familiar conflict between Nikolai and his son, Valentin. Nikolai wants his son to join the family business. The son is an artist with a vision of the profits that an upscale gallery might bring to the “New Russia.” He is not interested in his father’s business. Nikolai wants the company to expand into air transport against the skepticism of his brother and other senior staff. He sees them as “comfortable with the company’s success.” Nikolai wants much more.

Other characters are introduced. Nikolai meets the intriguing Inessa Zorina who has come to his office soliciting donations for a foundation and its shelter for victims of the Russian sex trade. Nikolai’s company makes a significant contribution, and soon Nikolai discovers that his company’s archrival is the major supporter of the foundation’s shelter.

Suddenly, the plot twists and Nikolai becomes involved in helping Inessa save a seventeen-year-old prostitute from a john in an apartment in a ‘bad’ section of Moscow. Nikolai and Inessa have an affair and fall into a complicated relationship. Although the driving force of the story then becomes the relationship, for a while Dante skillfully leaves you guessing as to which conflict is the major one. Is it with his son, with his brother and others in the company, the rival trucking company’s owner, or perhaps, is it really a love story told among the intrigue of new Russia?

As the story progresses, Dante shows a great sense of place, setting many scenes in locations differing from a fashionable restaurant in Moscow, to an upscale dacha in Odintsovo, to a strip joint in industrial Novosibirsk. Likewise, his keen attention to detail also showcases his knowledge of Russian culture and customs when the residents of Inessa’s shelter celebrate Christmas.

Although Nikolai and Inessa’s affair is predictable from the start, their relationship becomes interesting and multifaceted and complicated for both characters. They become involved with each other’s family. There is a bit of “Hollywood” when Nikolai saves Inessa from the ‘bad guys’ in a joint attempt to stop a sex-traffic operation using Delov trucks in Omsk, southeast of the Ural Mountains. Here Dante also keeps the reader guessing: Who is the real villain? Do Nikolai and Inessa go riding off into a Russian sunset? And then unlike a “Hollywood” ending where characters often remain stagnant, Dante’s characters show growth and introspection as the various subplots are wrapped up in the end.

James Dante lives in Northern California. He graduated from the University of California at Davis and majored in international relations. His fiction has appeared in Rosebud and Toasted Cheese. His debut novel was The Tiger’s Wedding. James presently teaches adult education classes. In addition to his website, you can find James on Facebook.

Bill Lockwood is a retired social services worker for Maryland and Vermont. He was an avid community theater participant in the early 1990s where he wrote reviews and feature articles for the Baltimore Theater Newsletter and the Bellows Falls Town Crier of Vermont. He was awarded the Greater Falls Regional Chamber of Commerce Person of the Year in recognition of his work as Chairman of the Bellow Falls Opera House Restoration Committee. Lockwood has four published short stories and published his first novel, Buried Gold, in 2016. His third novel, Ms. Anna, will be published in Spring 2018. He lives in New Hampshire.

Megan of the Mists by Bill Lockwood

Posted on September 1, 2017 by TC Editors

Candle-Ends: Reviews
Shelley Carpenter

Megan of the Mists by Bill Lockwood

I had the pleasure of reviewing Bill Lockwood’s second novel, Megan of the Mists (Wild Rose Press, 2017) published this spring. The story is historical. Its setting is the Northern Ireland turmoil of the 1970s, a time in history that was interesting to me as well as a familiar subject on TV and in kitchen table conversations back in the day. For readers who may be unfamiliar with this time reference, Lockwood introduces the historical backdrop in his Author’s Notes on History and Myth in the first pages, detailing the struggle for Irish freedom from 1690 to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

In the novel, Lockwood explores this through two lenses: the Irish protagonist, of course, but interestingly, also the reader. He says, “For us Americans in the ‘Irish’ bars of this country the revolution and ongoing struggle in Northern Ireland was in the 1970s as romantic as the fairy stories of old.” In addition, he shares his own historical ancestry and points a finger to that “romanticism” in American settings such as Long Island that kindled and fueled Ireland’s politics in their rebel music, the stories retold, and in the many “donations” funneled from Irish-Americans to the IRA when the “hat” was passed around the bar.

Lockwood’s first chapter begins with a bang, full of action in Ulster. Shortly after, he introduces his main character, Megan. She is a lively young rebel who transports a mysterious contraband over the border: “I’m using my running talents for the nation.” She doesn’t know what it is that she carries in her backpack and is shocked when she finally does. The juxtaposition of this knowledge and the fact that she is a Catholic elementary school teacher is disturbing to Megan. She begins to come around to this idea when she experiences firsthand how deep the politics run in her community when she receives unexpected and unpleasant visits from the family of one of her students. Megan’s eyes are finally opened wide when she fully understands the oath of allegiance her boyfriend and handler told her after her recruitment: “Once you’re with us, don’t ever say no.”

Translation: She’s not helping them, she is one of them and they will never let her go.

“Here’s how they explained it,” Brian said. “Ya go in the pub, an’ ya sit it down by your chair, under the table, maybe. Then you pull that extra strap they got comin’ out the top. Then ya got ten minutes. Ya go to the loo an’ slip out the back door…”

Lockwood builds the story, cranking up the tension page by page, chapter by chapter, as Megan’s involvement becomes more personal when she is assigned to spy on people very much like her own. She is no longer a courier but an active player in the most dangerous game of her life. When she falls for a British officer in a northern “proddy” pub that she is assigned to case, the game becomes high stakes and takes a sharp turn that catapults Megan into more trouble and terror when the game moves to America.

Lockwood’s Megan of the Mists is plot-driven and with much of the detail focused on action. Megan’s backstory is revealed mainly through character introspection and in some of the dialogue. The only off-note is the resolution. Though satisfying, I would have liked to have seen it in play. I also think an opportunity was missed with the fairies mentioned so frequently throughout the novel. I was hoping this thread would have been further explored perhaps in Megan’s character development.

Overall, Lockwood’s writing is superb. He sets up the reader with historical fact and then grounds the reader in the setting with description and character movement that is clear and succinct. The dialogue is spot on. I heard the Irish brogues and slang clearly. Even when the story shifted from one continent to another, the voices continued to be distinct. Another hallmark of Lockwood’s writing was that, in essence, I could see movement as well as hear the characters: I was the proverbial fly-in-the-room hovering above them. I was there.

Bill Lockwood is a retired social services worker for Maryland and Vermont. He was an avid community theater participant in the early 1990s where he wrote reviews and feature articles for the Baltimore Theater Newsletter and the Bellows Falls Town Crier of Vermont. He was awarded the Greater Falls Regional Chamber of Commerce Person of the Year in recognition of his work as Chairman of the Bellow Falls Opera House Restoration Committee. Lockwood has four published short stories and published his first novel, Buried Gold in 2016. He lives in New Hampshire.

Shelley Carpenter is TC’s Reviews Editor. Email: harpspeed[at]toasted-cheese.com

Sure Things and Last Chances by Lou Gaglia

Posted on March 1, 2017 by TC Editors

Candle-Ends: Reviews
Bill Lockwood

Sure Things & Last Chances by Lou Gaglia

Lou Gaglia has done it again in his second collection of short stories, Sure Things and Last Chances (Spring to Mountain Press, 2016). His first collection, Poor Advice, received the 2015 New Apple Literary Award for Short Story Fiction and the 2016 New York Book Festival Award for Fiction.That sets a pretty high bar for his second collection, and I don’t know if it is up for any awards. But, if I had any say, he’d get one for sure.

The first collection of his stories was reviewed in TC’s Candle-Ends Reviews in 2016 following the journal’s publishing of his story “Flat Iron” in Toasted Cheese’s March 2012 edition. “Flat Iron” is about a kid who has just returned to school following spending the summer helping his father care for horses at a New York race track where the kid falls in love. The story is one of the twenty-three stories in Gaglia’s second collection, Sure Things and Last Chances. Most of them have also appeared in various literary publications.

In a collection sometimes the stories are all related, and sometimes they are not. In Sure Things and Last Chances, the kinds of characters and what they face in life seem very much a unifying factor even though the stories themselves are not necessarily related to each other. Also notable are Gaglia’s characters that continue to be quirky, such as the mail room supervisor in “Penance” who is obsessed by killing ants at home. They are well-depicted by good writing, like the guy in “Private Eye” who says preposition when he means proposition and refers to two security guards as the “one with a mustache and the other without.” And they often find themselves in imaginative situations and storylines, such as the guy whose encounter with a pool hustler inspires him to find a Christmas gift that is unexpectedly well received by his father in “Winging It.”

There are some constants. Lou Gaglia’s stories are all set in the greater New York City area going on rare occasion to Upstate New York. And his characters are all the “little guys” of the world, not the rich and famous and certainly not the best and brightest. They are most likely the less successful, almost all are somehow losers who are often focused on insignificant details that overwhelm their lives. Even his most uplifting stories seem to have lost souls trying to find their way. And, in a broader sense, they are all the everyday man trying to find his place in an overwhelming world. The last line in his story “Private Eye” is a good clue as to how many of his characters see the world: “It is not safe in this world at all, even if your life is just nothing.”

Gaglia’s stories are brief little scenes pulled out of the various characters’ lives. That’s what short stories are—not long narratives that tell where they came from, but rather the actions that show development and where the characters are going. In these brief glimpses, Gaglia draws us briefly into the characters’ worlds really well. He crafts his New York with a great sense of place, and he leaves you rooting for these lost little people of the urban world.

One or two of the stories stood out to me, as they were a bit out of his mold. “Burned Widow” is very different from the others. First it is told from a woman’s point of view, the wife, whose husband is the quirky, loser character. In fact, he is not real. He is made of straw. This one is a fantasy, science fiction, or perhaps just a metaphor. The guy joins the Fire Department and is burned up on the first fire call he goes out on. The other story is called “Fifteen Submissions to The Gibberish Review.” Here, Gaglia quotes a few lines from the published works of famous authors from Tolstoy to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Then he provides a humorous editor’s rejection for each one. It is very imaginative and should be well appreciated for anyone who has ever submitted anything for publication.

The final story, “About Beauty,” is about a guy who takes his daughter on a nightly walk through Chinatown in New York City and thinks about how much he loves it all in light of a job offer that would necessitate a move to upstate New York. It is very nostalgic, and one wonders, if here, Lou Gaglia is really talking about himself since he moved from New York City to upstate New York. Gaglia’s collection is definitely a good read.

Lou Gaglia is the author of Poor Advice (2015) and Sure Things & Last Chances (2016). His short stories have appeared in Eclectica, Columbia Journal, Loch Raven Review, Menda City Review, Toasted Cheese, and elsewhere. He lives and teaches in upstate New York and is a long-time teacher and T’ai Chi Ch’uan practitioner.

Bill Lockwood is a retired social services worker for Maryland and Vermont. He was an avid community theater participant in the early 1990s where he wrote reviews and feature articles for a Baltimore Theater Newsletter and later the Bellows Falls Town Crier of Vermont. He was awarded the 2006 Greater Falls Regional Chamber of Commerce Person of the Year in recognition of his work as Chairman of the Bellow Falls Opera House Restoration Committee. Lockwood has four published short stories. His first novel, Buried Gold, was published in 2016. A second novel, Megan of the Mists, will be released April 5, 2017. He lives in New Hampshire.