Bumper Crop

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BIO:
Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over thirty 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 eighteen 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
Hotep
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." 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.

Other Crossroad Press Books by
Joe R. Lansdale
:

The Magic Wagon

Written With a Razor

Joe Landsale's Website

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Foreword: The Remains of My Days . . .

The God of the Razor

The Dump

Fish Night

Chompers

The Fat Man

On a Dark October

The Shaggy House

The Man Who Dreamed

Walks

Last of the Hopeful

Duck Hunt

Down by the Sea Near the Great Big Rock

I Tell You It's Love

Pilots—with Dan Lowry

In the Cold, Dark Time

Bar Talk

Listen

Personality Problem

A Change of Lifestyle—with Karen Lansdale

The Companion—with Keith Lansdale and Kasey Jo Lansdale

Old Charlie

Billie Sue

Bestsellers Guaranteed

Fire Dog

Cowboy

Master of Misery

To my son, Keith

The Remains of My Days . . .

H
igh Cotton
, previously published by Golden Gryphon Press, contained what I believe to be among the best of the best stories I've written. What follows is
Bumper Crop
. In Southern terminology, High Cotton is when the cotton is growing well and growing high. Bumper Crop refers to when your crops give an added splurge, usually referring to vegetables, not cotton, but it's a kind of surprise crop. An added treat.

Therefore, the title.

Many of these stories are favorites of mine, and if they are not my very best, they are among the best of my shorter works. In fact, most are very short. A few, like "God of the Razor," have added greatly to my career. Primarily in the novel
The Nightrunners
. But I've also written about the razor character in comics and other stories. An anthology of God of the Razor stories written by others, as well as myself, will soon be forthcoming from Subterranean Press under the title
Lords of the Razor
.

Numerous writers have told me how much they like my story "Bestsellers Guaranteed," because they understand the frustration of the main character.

But I won't discuss them all. I'll just say a number of readers have picked one or more of these stories as their favorites, and I've been asked repeatedly, when will they all be collected. Many were collected in Bestsellers Guaranteed, but it is long out of print and hard to find used. Some stories have never been collected, or were collected in a very limited manner.

Therefore, my reasoning for this collection.

Although some stories have not been collected before, most have been reprinted again and again. Here and overseas. A few I gleaned from two collections I did for Subterranean that contained early work. Most of the stories in those collections were not great and this was known up front. That was the fun part of those collections.

The books were limited and designed for fans who wanted to see how I was "birthed" as a writer, so they were a perfect and fun showcase for that kind of thing, and, they contained a lot of introductory material on how I became a writer, for those who care about such things, and that, in many ways, was more the drawing card for the collections than the stories themselves.

But, a few of the tales in those books weren't bad at all, so I borrowed the best of those. I also added a few from lesser-known collections, like
A Fist Full of Stories
, and one, "Fire Dog" is very recent, and is a favorite of mine. It came from a Golden Gryphon anthology.

A large number of the stories in this book are what I call catchy.

Once you read them, you remember them, and may even find yourself telling them to others, the way you find yourself humming a catchy tune. It's what makes them memorable. Their simplicity, and that catchy element.

In spite of the fact that many of them can be told quite well, I prefer you read them. I like to think the prose adds considerably to the flavor of the tales, and that's how I butter my bread, you buying the stories and me spending the money.

High Cotton
and
Bumper Crop
are, to date, the definitive volumes of my short work.

Of course, new work, new collections come out all the time. But, if you like what I do, then these two books are a good way to introduce others to my work, or if you would like to have collected the largest part of my worthwhile short work, these are the books to do it.

Each book represents a different take on the short story. The former,
High Cotton
, is pretty Southern Gothic, though not exclusively, and this one is much more of the twist and surprise and ain't that damn weird school.

So, as I said, these two books are my best short story representatives.

Now, in the next few years that may change.

I hope it does.

I hope I have many short stories left to write. Many more volumes to provide readers.

These tales have certainly added greatly to my life, in pleasure, finance, and, hopefully, since they entertained me while writing, they will entertain you.

Joe R. Lansdale (his
ownself
)

Nacogdoches, Texas

June, 2003

I
n 1980, while holding down a full-time job, I began a novel called
The Night of the Goblins
. I had just written
Act of Love
and
Dead in the West
in the same year! Not to mention numerous other things. (God, how did I do it?) I thought it might be nice to try and write a novel proposal—fifty pages and an outline—and try to sell from that.

I wrote the proposal, sent it to my then incompetent and highly irritable agent, and waited.
Act of Love
sold before the proposal went out, I believe, then
The Night of the Goblins
went to the same publisher. They thought it was too violent, too strange, and basically, they didn't understand it.