Side Trail
Tom Sheehan
Western short stories Bio. of Tom Sheehan
Sheehan (31st Infantry, Korea 1951-52; Boston College 1952-1956) has multiple works in Rosebud, Linnet’s Wings, Serving House Journal, Literally Stories, Copperfield Review, Literary Orphans, Indiana Voices Journal, Frontier Tales, Western Online, Faith-Hope and Fiction, Eastlit, Rope & Wire Magazine, The Literary Yard, Green Silk Journal, Fiction on the Web, The Path, etc. He has 16 Pushcart nominations, 6 Best of the Net nominations (one winner).
Later book publications include The Cowboys, Beside the Broken Trail, In the Garden of Long Shadows, Between Mountain and River, Catch a Wagon to a Star, and Jock Poems and Reflections for Proper Bostonians, by Pocol Press, and Jehrico by Danse Macabre. Back Home in Saugus (a collection) is being considered, as is Beneath My Feet This Earth Slips into the Far-side of Another’s Telescope and Pages from Fallen Books. In production status is The Grand Royal Stand-off at Darby’s Creek and Other Stories at Pocol Press.
Recent releases include Small Victories for the Soul VII, from Wilderness House Literary Review, and Alone, with the Good Graces from Pocol Press. He was Danse Macabre’s 2016 Writer-in-Residence in Las Vegas.
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Beau Geste Murtaugh, Veteran of Wars
Tom Sheehan
“Here I am,” says his imperative argument in undertone, “eighty-seven frigging years old, my knees gone to hell and back, my gut talking about all the beer I’ve sailed my life across barrels of it talking to me all at once, and this little kid out in front of my house crying his head off. This little kid, this little shaver, one of the ones we did our thing for, our future. Read the full story HERE>>
This Old House of Mine
Tom Sheehan
For history and legend sakes, certain attributes, character traits if you will, have to be appointed here at the beginning of This old house (B. 1742), home for over half a century of my life, and This old room, dressed with computer by me for the last 27 years. Yet I swear thick-cut Edgeworth pipe tobacco bears its welcome as strong as my grandfather’s creaking chair, diminutive Johnny Igoe’s chair. This most memorable compartment was also his room for 20 years of literate cheer, storied good will, the pleasantries of expansive noun and excitable verb, and his ever-lingering poems, each one a repeated resonance, a victory of sound and meaning and the magic of words. Yet be of stout spirit, for the chair mocks time only in the clutch of darkness thick as the eternal void, and the tobacco’s no longer threatening in its gulp. Read the full article HERE>>
Western Pulps and Such Magazines
Tom Sheehan
In my early years, in the ‘30s, the Depression in full swing, my adventurous spirit and thirst for new things at a full gallop, pulp magazines stuffed much of the void. Read the full article HERE>>
Westerly Again
Tom Sheehan
It is brittle now, the remembering, how we drove you east with your backpack like a totem in the rear seat, so that you could walk westerly across the continent’s spine, across the sum of all the provinces, through places you had been before, and we had been, and the Cree and the Owlcreek bear and wolves envisioned when night screams upwind the way stars loose their valid phantoms. Read the full story HERE>>
Epic and Primal Retreat for a Loner
Tom Sheehan
"Some rush back in a hurry," Thorne Ashbury said in soft appraisal of overhead clouds arriving for the 20th day in succession, a lately-found pain in his knee kicking into gear, his telegraphic thigh telling him the pain was going to hang around for a spell, his acceptance of things as they were, would be, might have been. These were lucky additions for some passages in his mind when tossed into normal arguments, or plucked for imagination to lock up for its own privilege.
He had his way with things... Read the full story HERE>>
Still Romancing Us
Tom Sheehan
On a resplendent day in July, 2018, leaving our Saugus, MA of the First Iron Works of America barely out my favorite window, my son Jamie drove me to the ancient resting place, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts, burial site of many authors who right to this day enchant us with their work, who spent their lives in the vicinity and thus their lyrical eternities enjoined. We read that none of them ventured west in those explorative days, busy here at creation, staying put, embracing the charms about them, one and all, to touch us down these centuries, to allow recall of youthful reading on my part bringing back the kind of memories all of us should have, should share. Read the full article HERE>>
Talk from the Back of Tim's Barn
Tom Sheehan
These were more than echoes, the soft sounds I was hearing from the rear of the barn sitting back from Route 182 in Franklin, Maine, half a dozen fat pigs to one side, corn as deep as Iowa on the other side, and the terrain across the road flush with blueberry bushes until a slow rise tipped the landscape in its favor… and in mine. In my son Tim’s favor, too. He lived by this barn. Perhaps I had lived waiting for its sassy voices. Read the full story HERE>>
The Last Shot
Tom Sheehan
Tom Mix
The actor who fired a last shot at another old-time cowboy actor lying wounded in the dusty road in front of the saloon, and the pistol had a real bullet in the chamber and killed the old-time actor and Hollywood covered up the whole thing because the star was an untouchable personality. The real Tom Mix tragedy had not yet been revealed, according to Mixmaster. Read the full article HERE>>
Barney
Tom Sheehan
Barney, her son Gary's dog, was a mutt who accompanied the 11-year-old home one day, probably after being lost or dropped off by some callous owner and most likely hungry and attracted to Gary's demeanor, soft voice, gentle hands, and a whistler, and that for much of his days when permissible. Read the full story HERE>>
