Anthology Review: Westward Hoes
So a couple of years back at Motor City Nightmares I chanced the purchase of Westward Hoes: 9 Weird West Tales by Burning Bulb Publishing. I'm an avid fan of anthologies in general, because even if 1 story strikes out, one authro might hit a homer, and a few others will earn solid base hits. Overall, it's a good way to get introduced to multiple artists with comparitively low risks. You can determine who you should follow, and who you should avoid.
I also wanted to try some reading in the nominal Weird Westsubgenre, and this book promised on the tin "Weird West". At least that's what I though there might be- something along the lines of Robert E. Howard's Southwest Cycleof stories. Turns out this was a different subgenre group dabbling in another subgenre.
Don't let covers decieve you. The stories inside are far worse than this
(Cut for length & wretched writing.)
First damned thing I'd noticed was I was once again falling out of my involvement in the book to pick up my Editor's DoomPen. Because Rich Bottles Jr & Gary Lee Vincent apparently didn't. Or at least everyone in this bizarro group was cliqueish enough that they were no longer a writing circle, and instead more commited to patting each other on the back over how 'gnarly' everything was.
There were two of you, and neither bothered to tell Jesse J. Saxon (The Undesirable) to cleave his run-on paragraphs and that he could clip half his iterations of "said"? The text Dragged.
And I have to use the word 'gnarly' because everything honestly reads that immature in a 90s way.
Diversity & Comics frequently uses a term, "grimy", and that describes this entire book, every single story, quite well. Convinced that saying "fuck" and "whore' are edgy (while often showing cards that would put them all in the realm of the distinctly PC) they burden the often threadbare stories with the dialoge of an imitation Deadwood.
Some poor excuse for a friend convinced Gary Lee Vincent that coprophage tentacle bugs were the story hook to go with inbetween bong hits.
D&C also points out that Westerns, like Superheroes, is a genre you have to believe in. You have to commit to the bit. Westerns don't do 'irony', and any attempts won't hold water. And the more 'deconstructed' your attempt to write in the genre, the more you wallow in the mire in an attempt to decry... your dad, whom you clearly have a beef with, the more you'll just fail and look cringeworthy even a few years on.
This isn't Weird, Western, Horror, or Fantasy. This is pigs rutting in filth. From The Man With Too Many Names by Kelly R. Martin
There's something of a Dunning-Kruger affect to the writing in each story. People reinforcing each other's bad taste in a tornado of failure. There's little to hold the interest in any of these "Weird West" stories (or more, 'attempts' at Weird West stories) because nobody, in any single story, dons the White Hat. There's no Paladin figure, so no Moral Peril (one of Misha Burnett's 5 Pillars of the Pulp Revival), and thus, no Impact. Nothing any character does matters, because as each loathsome, poorly crafted tail unfurls, there's nobody to root for, no success to cheer on, and no tragedy worth mourning.
The scatalogical obsessions pervade each 'tale', instantly detracting from the attempted momentum towards Horror or Fantasy. I can only assume someone texted "we should write something spoopy" and forgot that final "s". Excerpt from Succubi Sundown by Scott Emerson
Lead characters ride into towns, saddle up to the brothel, have an anti-erotic sex scene or three, fail to craft any narrative tension, and either shoot up the place or get shot up. And I can't stress how bad, how unenthusiastic and spare of emotion each mechanical, obligatory sex scene is. Woe be unto the sad mortal that should find anything in these tails arousing or fapworthy, rather than sad and repellent.
*sigh* "We're monsters, but we're the judicious good guy type monster cannibals" is so worn out Nelson W Pyles' big reveal doesn't even function well enough to even be interesting, because Pyles can't commit to the bit (town full of cannibalistic monsters who hide in human form) without nerfing his own work ('But we only om nom nom bad people!").
Every single story either fails to commit to the bit, or stalls out their engine because they keep wanting to throw something freaky at the reader, instead of just telling the damned story.
The book ends with Wol-Vriey culturally enriching us all through his tale Big Trouble in Little Ass. This was novella length.
I should have noticed a warning right in the introduction, as Rich Bottles Jr. quoted wikipedia for his definition of "Weird West" and exhorted the writing of the abysmal Joe R. Lansdale as an exemplar of the subgenre. I found each story equal measures repellant and (tragically) boring, and can honestly say each writer, and their Bizarro subgenre community, people to avoid. Both in writing and, likely, in person. They probably smell like cats.
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