For a Few Stories More

by Joe R. Lansdale

Call them steps on the way to greatness. Early stories and experiments, some published, none of them collected previously, many appearing here for the first time, along with Lansdale's frank commentary on growing as a writer. For a Few Stories More is the sequel to The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent, and contains a full-length unpublished Ray Slater private eye novel, The Long Fall.

Genres: Short Stories

326 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2002

About the author

Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over forty novels and numerous short stories. His work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, and collections, as well as numerous foreign publications. He has written for comics, television, film, newspapers, and Internet sites. His work has been collected in more than two dozen short-story collections, and he has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies. He has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others. His novella Bubba Ho-Tep was adapted to film by Don Coscarelli, starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis. His story "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" was adapted to film for Showtime's "Masters of Horror," and he adapted his short story "Christmas with the Dead" to film hisownself. The film adaptation of his novel Cold in July was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and the Sundance Channel has adapted his Hap & Leonard novels for television.

He is currently co-producing several films, among them The Bottoms, based on his Edgar Award-winning novel, with Bill Paxton and Brad Wyman, and The Drive-In, with Greg Nicotero. He is Writer In Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University, and is the founder of the martial arts system Shen Chuan: Martial Science and its affiliate, Shen Chuan Family System. He is a member of both the United States and International Martial Arts Halls of Fame. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, dog, and two cats.

Reviews

[Craig Childs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Subterranean Press published three limited-edition hardbacks featuring early stories by Joe R. Lansdale, most of which had never been published or only in obscure out-of-print magazines. Lansdale wrote introductions to each volume as well as prefaces to each story:

A Fistful of Stories and Articles (1996)
The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent (1997)
For a Few Stories More (2002)

All of these books are difficult to locate today. For a Few Stories More had the added distinction of also being the 4th book in the Lost Lansdale imprint. The imprint also included two novels and a children’s book. My copy is autographed by the author and numbered 257 out of 1000.

While the introduction “Livestock, Roses, and Stories” is witty, the stories are, as expected, a bit of a mixed bag. I seem to think more highly of some than Lansdale does. Here are my individual story reviews:

“The Long Fall”-- This 100-page novella is the centerpiece of the collection, and my personal favorite. The first Lansdale story I read was “The Full Count”, one of the early Ray Slater stories. Ten years (and 101 books and graphic novels later) I was excited to come across this previously unpublished novella featuring the same private detective. Sure, it’s not high literature, but it is fun fast-paced noir with a high body count.

“For Just One Hour”—A time traveler accidentally inhabits the body of Jesus on the cross, while Jesus’ mind is transported to the present-day. An interesting and fun story, although the author is correct in the preface when he observes the impact is diluted by a gimmicky twist ending.

“Mayfly”—Arctic researchers stumble upon an encased larva which births an alien being that looks like a man and engenders love in everyone it meets. An eerie, interesting twist on Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

"White Face"(with Ardath Mayhar)—A nasty racist man kills a young black girl, only to find her ghost haunts him on the next Halloween night. In his introduction, Lansdale says he could never make this story come together, but I liked it more than he did apparently. A visceral, vicious spooky tale.

“My Kind of Luck”—A man meets serial killers on the highway at night and must murder them before they do the same to him. Lansdale used the same premise and ending in the much better stories “Screw Up” and “Incident On and Off a Mountain Road”.

“Partners”—A screwball comedy involving a knight, a dragon, and a talking sword. The kind of story one might write in high school

“A Halloween Story”—A teenager summons a Halloween ghoul just by talking about it. An immature short story with an ill-thought premise.

Untitled Movie Proposal—A treatment for a low-budget horror movie that never got made. A spaceship crashes on a lightly inhabited island, and a menagerie of exotic dangerous creatures run amok. Silly but imaginative.

“The Living Room God”—A screenplay for a student film. A family struggles with depression after their television set expires. A funny slapstick satire of tv culture in the early 80’s.

"Metadorquesis"—A hard-partying man wakes up one morning transformed into a televangelist. A light parody of Kafka’s famous “Metamorphosis.”

"Depression"—Lansdale describes this as a writing experiment in which he tried to transcribe a dream as closely as he could remember it. A depressed man leaves his house to see a psychiatrist, followed by a series of disjointed scenes that do not follow the laws of logic or science. Just like a dream.

"A Little Halloween Talk"—Stevie has anger management issues which surface when he finds his girl making it with his best friend on Halloween night. A fast romp that plays with point of view.

"Loving Care"—A not-so-caring husband tends to his rich old wife during her illness. Predictable twist ending.

"The Panther Stalks" (with Ardath Mayhar)—An isolated demigod works to save the village Rovanda, which is being ravaged by an evil wizard who wants to revitalize his powers by marrying the chieftain’s daughter. While sword and sorcery is not my favorite genre, I was impressed once again by Lansdale’s versatility and imagination. He wrote the first draft of this story in the 70’s, and then Ardath Mayhar rewrote a second draft for publication in the early 90’s.

"The Original Lengueenies"—A desperate couple invent a scam to pass off worthless paintings for a thousand dollars.

"Sweet Revenge"—In the near future, drivers arm their vehicles and duel on the streets. This is a fun story—also a complete rip-off of Harlan Ellison’s classic “Along a Scenic Route”.

"In the Night"—A boy is afraid of monsters in his room on Halloween night, and maybe his mother should not be so quick to dismiss him…

"Something Rides with the Western Star"—A stage coach driver is pursued through the years by the ghost of murdered Apache medicine man. This is an early “weird western”. It has an interesting point-of-view character with a unique voice, but the story does not seem to know what to do with him.

"Jailbait" and "A Right to Be Dead" (with Bill Crider)—Neither of these collaborations are particularly good. The first is about a private eye trying to clear a high school teacher accused of molesting students. The second is about a gangster who uses voodoo magic to bring his trusted hit man back to life.

"Looters"—I have always enjoyed Lansdale’s historical fiction the best, which might be why I liked this story so much. A few years after the end of the Civil War, a U.S. Navy warship gets stranded off the coast of Chile during an undersea earthquake. Based on a real-life incident.

"This Little Piggy" (with Dan Lowry)—Two Dept of Agriculture investigators track down a strange family selling mystery meat with a forged USDA stamp. An early, mildly entertaining horror story. Not nearly as good as the authors’ other collaboration “Pilots”.

Note: The Subterranean Press listing for this book also includes "Red is the Color of Blood and Roses" in its table of contents, but this story is missing from my copy.

[Snakes · Rating 3 out of 5]

So this one is exactly as Lansdale describes it. It's a collection of early work (when Lansdale was honing his craft) that he admittedly states isn't very good. He's correct. Most of the short pieces are pretty stale or just plain bad. His preludes to the stories are sometimes better than the story themselves; however, there's one pretty good and fairly lengthy private eye novella that gains this book an extra star. Maybe this collection of works should be saved for the really intense Lansdale fan. Readable and sometimes fun but at other times just a grind.

[Jimbo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joe R. Lansdale is the kind of down-home writer that is a natural-born storyteller. His writing isn't what I would call sparse, it is filled with a turn of phrase that just speaks volumes. These stories are early stories of his writing career, many never published, other found homes in pulp, horror, and defunct magazines that have peppered America like dandelions in a field. They last for so long, then they are gone. These stories are not his best (and he even knows it) but they are typical Lansdale and they have the Lansdale flair and are just plain fun (and quick to read). The stories range from a few pages to a novella, a treatment for a movie, and a movie script for a short film.

It is always a pleasure to read Lansdale. His stories are clever. The humor is there, the suspense, the horror. His inner dialogue is rapid and twisty and clever, like the stories themselves.

I can read anything by Lansdale and have a good time doing it.

IF you haven't read a Lansdale book - do yourself a favor and read one, or two , or three. There are a whole bunch out there.