The preface in part says: We celebrate in many ways those people met in life who refuse to let go. They are the ones who fall in step with us as we move along in our own time, whose breaths hang evermore at our shoulders. They direct or challenge us, nurture ideas, dialogue, and a sense of conjunction.

This collection is a mix of nostalgia, reflections, images and ideas such people have spawned. Through them this man carries with him a host of memories and reveries always accompanied by a spill of the marvelous characters that have shaped him the way he has come. Celebrated here are heroes of mighty deeds, comrades from the combat zones, as well as down-trodden folk. The latter are the lost and the lonely, those who have been beset by life. Yet their lives are textured by the hopes that another life might have been theirs, or one exists elsewhere for them to find.

Enduring, memorable, these people have filled my life, and they are found in this book, as is my hometown of Saugus, always coming at me. Johnny Igoe's voice still sounds like Yeats's voice, a soft oratory that is endless and rich. My mother and father I hear knocking on the tomb. They are relentless. Here is my brother James I came to know best when he went away and stayed away. Dear sisters come along the way by the handful. My hospice nurse wife Beth, sons and daughters crowd my days with love and forbearance of my partialities. Settled in print are my fishing companions, teammates and comrades. Here is found dear friend Eddie LeBlanc, caught up by Parkinson's, the inexorable muscle-robbing disease. Residing here now is Parkie who, like Lazarus, arises from the deadly sands of WW II Sahara. He and his comrades, caught in a chamber they cannot forget, are thrust into an accord they cannot let go of. Our dusty coalman of The Forties, who for bare moments dodges the death of his son, comes back with his hurried denial. Skink, harmless town drunk, eventually celebrated in beer and bombast by an infantry squad in Korea just before a night of terror, lives in these pages, as does the watchful pool room attendant who saw us grow. And Wingsy, clumsy but elegant boyhood friend, comrade who went down in the middle of Korea, is remembered always.

Piecemeal, as entities, in my ear, clapping me on the back, giving a push when needed, they have caused this book. I am indebted to them, those who have given my life all its savage joys. Perhaps for a short time of reading, they might live again for new friends under a soft lamp or the keen morning light.

For ordering information, see http://www.pocolpress.com/friends.htm

About the Book:
A wide receiver for The New England Phantoms of the NFL is killed by a woman in a late night tryst. The Phantoms were in an up-swing and looking ahead to a better year, but this loss throws things out of kilter even though they've drafted an excellent young receiver out of Florida. Things appear amiss and the owner, a rich young food entrepreneur, suspects more than what is seen and calls on the private detective team of Harry Krisman and Kell Thorn who had previously done work for him.

We get an insight to the young Florida receiver on whose shoulders much responsibility might be placed, and his grandmother, an active woman who has been responsible for raising him.

There are subsequent deaths of Phantom players, including one, another wide receiver, who is the subject of a trade with the Tampa Bay team. Harry Krisman goes to Florida to investigate, gets knocked on the head by a mysterious assailant and set adrift tied up in a rowboat. He is missing for a few days and his girlfriend Maxine and Kell's girlfriend Magnolia head south. A fisherman rescues Harry, and Maxine and Magnolia are taken captives by a pair of men and tied up in a building. More than their health is in danger.

A mysterious woman floats in the background of the story, with possible contacts with the assailant and the traded receiver who has been poisoned. She is difficult to track down.

All paths cross in Florida as the mysterious woman and the odd assailants are uncovered by Harry and Kell who are forced to operate individually but find themselves getting closer together as paths narrow and as the murderer and associates are revealed. (order from PublishAmerica, Amazon.com, B&N.com).

For ordering information, see http://www.litpotpress.com/Sheehan/Sheehan.html

Tom Sheehan
Silver Rose Award for Excellence in the Art of the Short Story

American Renaissance for the Twenty-First Century (ART) selected "The Man Who Hid Music," a short story written by Thomas Sheehan, for a Silver Rose Award for Excellence of the Short Story. ART is a New York City-based non-profit educational arts foundation founded in 1992 to promote a rebirth of beauty and life-affirming values in all of the fine arts--the world at its most beautiful and man and woman at their best (more information about ART, is at the website www.art-21.org). "The Silver Rose Anthology" is available from Amazon.com, and Barnes&Noble.com

Pushcart Prize Nominations

Tryst has nominated Tom Sheehan’s "A Toast to Skink," for a Pushcart Prize, a prestigious literary honor. The Paumanok Review previously nominated his memoirs, "The Ghost of Lily Pond" and "The Dumpmaster’s Boy" for this prize, and Three Candles nominated his poem, "Voice from the Gray," for the same honor.

Nonfiction competition first place prize

Tom Sheehan’s memoir, "The Three Fishermen," won first prize in London-based web site Eastoftheweb’s nonfiction competition. Other stories have been nominated for The Zine Yearbook and the "e-2-Ink Project.

Tom Sheehan/John Burns, Co-editors
PUBLISHED -- SOLD OUT -- SECOND PRINT RUN DEPLETED!!
Non-fiction: A Gathering of Memories, Saugus 1900-2000

About the Book:
"A smashing success," "a masterpiece," and "must reading for all its people" are some of the accolades bestowed on Newwriters.com's publication, A Gathering of Memories, Saugus 1900 - 2000. Editors John Burns and Tom Sheehan are ecstatic over the sell-out of nostalgia and history about this small town just north of Boston. The book of 452 pages and 508 pictures, cartoons and illustrations, including the last five copies damaged in transport, disappeared rapidly from storage, counters and bookstore shelves. Members of The Millennium Book Associates did their own warehousing, packaging and mailing, after borrowing $60,000 for printing. The loan was paid off five weeks after receipt of books from the printer. A second print run is depleted. It was the subject of an article in a summer 2001 issue of the Boston College Magazine. It was also treated in an interview with Co-editor Tom Sheehan on 3AMPublishing.com, an international Internet site with editorial offices in Paris. The book is now online in The National Library in Paris.

PUBLISHED
Tom Sheehan’s Crime Novel
• Vigilantes East

PublishAmerica published the kick-off novel in the Harry Krisman private eye series, Vigilantes East, about a dedicated and organized group of fathers who decide to do something about their daughters being abused or killed by the most foul of people. How they enact their own brand of justice fills these pages. See the synopsis herein. This mystery novel is the first of seven completed novels featuring Harry Krisman, former homicide detective of BPD. Ordering information is included on the Publish America site, Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble.com.

Published
Tom Sheehan’s Crime Novel
• An Accountable Death Now on the Internet, at 3amMagazine.com

3amMagazine.com, an international electronic magazine out of Paris, is serializing the second novel of Tom Sheehan's Harry Krisman private eye series, An Accountable Death, about an elderly widowed college professor's fifteen year search for the person who killed his wife with a hit-and-run vehicle (the second novel in a series of seven completed novels featuring Harry Krisman).

Published: Individual poems, short stories and memoirs, from collections on this site by Tom Sheehan, have appeared or will appear in print or on online electronic magazines, as follows:
Tryst (feature writer), StorySouth, Eleven Bulls, Electric Acorn (Dublin), Three Candles Review, Blue Fifth, Ken*Again, The God Particle, Rock Salt Plum, Retort Magazine, Poets Haven, Just Good Company, Cold Glass, No. Dakota Quarterly, M.A.G., The Square Table, Dead Mule, Poor Mojo, Pemmican, A Man Overboard, Rearview Quarterly, Smoke Long Quarterly, Elimae, Nuvein, Life Sherpa, Facets, 3amMagazine.com (Paris), Eastoftheweb (UK), Literary Potpourri, The Paumanok Review, Small Spiral Notebook, Aileron, Intertext, Snowbound, Fiction Warehouse, Kudzu Monthly, Melic Review, Cyber Oasis, The Hudson Review, Pindeldyboz, Dakota House Journal, Comrades (UK), Megaera, Eclectica, (Spotlight poet), Kota Review, Slow Trains, Melange, Clackamas Literary Review, American Journal of Print, Stirring, Samsara, Nefarious, Bias Onus, Split Shot, Carnelian, Duct Tape Press, Word Riot, Burning Word, Physik Garden, Moonwort, SN Review, 278th RCT History of Ft. Devens 1950 Football Team, 31st Infantry Regiment Association, Iguanaland and Critique.