What do you think?
Rate this book
Motel: An Anthology
On lost, lonely highways, deep in the American heartlands and skirting the shady edges of cities, once ubiquitous motels have faded, some into ruin, others transformed from way station to permanent residence. MOTEL captures the heartbreak, desperation and indeed magic of motels.
Think Paris, Texas. Fool for Love. Wild at Heart. Even Bonnie and Clyde. This anthology is full of stories that pay homage to the essence of motels in all their beauty and pathos. Characters and stories of grit and glory, the brutal and banal.
As motels fade from popularity and even existence, this volume attempts to capture them before they’re gone altogether...and all their stories with them. Of the twenty-eight stories in MOTEL, there’s no two stories that are similar. Like a motel, these stories are neighboring rooms. None in them are the same, but here they are, together.
Cowboy Jamboree Press
good grit lit.
Think Paris, Texas. Fool for Love. Wild at Heart. Even Bonnie and Clyde. This anthology is full of stories that pay homage to the essence of motels in all their beauty and pathos. Characters and stories of grit and glory, the brutal and banal.
As motels fade from popularity and even existence, this volume attempts to capture them before they’re gone altogether...and all their stories with them. Of the twenty-eight stories in MOTEL, there’s no two stories that are similar. Like a motel, these stories are neighboring rooms. None in them are the same, but here they are, together.
Cowboy Jamboree Press
good grit lit.
319 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 1, 2024
3 people are currently reading
30 people want to read
About the author
Barbara Byar
4 books31 followersBarbara Byar is a working-class American writer living in Ireland for over 25 years. Her critically acclaimed, collection of stories: Some Days Are Better Than Ours (Reflex Press) was short-listed for the Saboteur Awards.
Her short fiction has been published and prize-listed widely. She was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Irish Short Story of the Year in 2023 and longlisted in 2021. A recipient of an Irish Arts Council Literature Bursary and an Agility Award, she is editor of MOTEL (Cowboy Jamboree Press). In the Desert is her debut novel.
Find her at barbarabyar.wordpress.com or substack.com/@barbarabyar
Her short fiction has been published and prize-listed widely. She was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Irish Short Story of the Year in 2023 and longlisted in 2021. A recipient of an Irish Arts Council Literature Bursary and an Agility Award, she is editor of MOTEL (Cowboy Jamboree Press). In the Desert is her debut novel.
Find her at barbarabyar.wordpress.com or substack.com/@barbarabyar
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 30, 2024
4.5 cuz 5 is sus ;) Always loved the comfy to eerie potential of a motel! Though the second story is mine, about an on-the-run odd couple staying in a colony of tiny houses, I’ve not read these before. Morningstar opens the antho very noir-voicey w/ arson implications and the stinky bones of a town’s infrastructure. “Fast food bags like barges” in the swimming pool, a month-long lingering for the divorcee, the grass-spilled drinks, drunk melodrama tinged with religion and numb-skull tweaker deals. I can feel the grease on his nape, the quiet rage and disgust w/ mucous-bodied patrons.
The next is my Inn Trouble, based on a real but much friendlier place I (and you can) stayed around Ocala, FL. Cam girl Cherry and dorky drug dealer Olive Eyes are characters I always write until one day I’ll finish their novels. The story was gonna be way less sexy (but just as slangy) but the EIC suggested otherwise, lol.
Justin Lee is next, who I’ve often seen in mags and journals with me. I believe he was in Mirrors Reflecting Shadows. This is a real cute story of an ex con getting out and making his motel room inviting for his first visit with Sally (his daughter I presume with the childish presumptions she makes). The blue star projector was a great touch.
Twin Palms is about an Indian family moving to America. It’s so feminine, I love the fashion details of purple silk and anklets and delicate earrings. They’re going to work and live in the motel their other family lives. It’s unexpectedly dirty and the relatives rude, not that the little ones mind, enamored with the pool toys. It sure is a lot to ask of the pregnant mom and during winter, no less. The creaky swing and lightning zags of scars are also nice descriptors amid the implied cheating of the dad w/ the whacky haired driver and postpartum depression. Though I suppose it ends happy, I was expecting much more tension and a more climatic ape thematic end.
Rodeo Queen is next and even though I don’t like western or plain girl aesthetics, the air is crackling and popcorn-scented like a circus. The sisterly fighting and Wonderland room and secret perhaps statutory motel romp make me wanna read more from Cole.
For Effie’s Oasis, I normally don’t like the humdrum of elderly characters but this proprietress is spritely at least in quick wit about bad people. The unreliableness of her age and medicated status were good to play upon but could’ve been ramped up to dementia instead of just dumbly giving away where she sleeps. Of intrigue is the short couple that pays in cash and houses a secret “daughter” who could potentially be a trafficking victim or at least regularly abused w/ curt words. The orange and cuff bits are clever, things certainly get actiony in her hands rather than what I’d do in her orthopedic shoes while knowing cops, haha. Cute end, I just woulda played up how over she is her own business.
Drab Color by Karter Mycroft is a designer drug romp, very titillating and funnily confusing when unraveling the characters random bio fascination w/ lobsters and such. Love a nautical twist. The dude is raising a mama octopus to study suicide. “The grin oozed off his face” is a good line, in line with the stickiness of tentacles. Unfortunately, these two don’t end as mad scientist love birds making super drugs. The girl has a good flight response, doing what I’d do: play nice, then use the environment as an advantage. The only thing is I thought you called multiple octopuses octopi?
Parkland Motor Hotel Blues by Sheldon Birnie is fun with “illicit lines” and li’l old rock gigs, tales of “UFO orgies told in the pisser.” A Flamingo Heart is about a woman catching her husband cheat at the supermarket and the monotony of everything deteriorating after, so after a long time, she goes to take over at a cute pink-accented motel. Then there’s a yarn about a cowboy discovering a row of meth labs disguised as motel rooms threatening the old owner.
M. E. Proctor, who pops up many places like Punk Noir, Guilty, and Love You Till Tuesday, has A Redhead and a Green Car. “A spit away”, “melted wax of a death mask” amid the detective wisecracking and sleazy tobacco heirs are good for a sort of old-fashioned story.
Rainbow Motel has a nice fun twist even if it’s a well-executed cover story.
Felt like I was only one who heard the phrase hot sheets motel, from the NYC Crime Report. Goes nice with the crowded pants euphemism, or lead in their step. Reading this also because the red and green colors make me think of Xmas.
Drew Gummerson (Flamingo Hotel author). A Botoxed bodybuilder confronting the MC. She wants to hide her felon son, suggesting maybe their one night stand resulted in. Hook handed hoodlum. A cross dresser saving someone from suicide. Quite colorful. Abrupt hookup that jarred me but I guess it suits the screwy cast. Haha. FL and puddles and child rearing getting a li'l more credit for its beauty.
Good tension in Mom's Motel by Mike Wilson about a certified psycho courting an as secretly crazy girl in a bar. After all, she's turned on by the day laborer's and suggests they go fishing and drinking alone by the woods.
Like Thelma and Louise. A fast-talking 2nd person thing full of urgency and muffled rage. Poetry. Unrequited longing, playing gunslinger not hot enough to keep their love.
A Part of This Place: A disgruntled son trying to make sense of his father getting run over by a train. Was he off the wagon? Depressed? Vivid nostalgia of both their high school times--before Mom left. Cute fishing memory especially, a trashy Xmas dinner.
Heritage is about a father obsessed w/ "corrections." The son grows w/ this drifter, this serial killer/rapist/cultist. Quite the dark one! Splatterpunkers w/ more prosey minds would enjoy.
Stopping by Town on a Rainey Evening by Jo Withers: pageant kids. Barfly mom who leaves them in the crappy motels, hungry. 7 yrs and 2 fathers between siblings is a good line. As is the concept of dropping a bible for advice. What an awkward innocent misunderstanding! Clever. So cute and sad on many levels, especially the last line or when the "nurse" is surprised anyone is asking her opinion on anything.
Summer Job is about witches, metaphorical or not w/ council politics, which is never for me. I'm confused by its shardy timeline and what's real vs satirical or magical. The way people speak sounds like older English sometimes yet isn't Lloyd's a modern store and there are references to the 90s. It's a strange mix of boring cashiering and the bureaucracy of something in Harry Potter or more sinister. I guess there's supposed to be a kind of 1984 vibe focused more on the dystopia of business but I just don't get it in this context, partly because the rest of these stories were so much more real world.
Wrinkles and Creases is about a slummy living with lots of tears and setbacks in job-finding. The Penelope story compares motel living to the silence of a library,
I'd Help If I Could: How it is to live next to tweakers. Vivid w/ subtle creeps, Nerf games, and corn beside highways. Dirty realism. Corner store and deli type jobs the BS of cashiers dealing w/ ID stings.
The cam girl adjacent story is up my alley. Actual pictures being sold, typical creepy cam dude sketchy about money and pipes. Lots of realistic frustrations about money and stealing and pointless rules/rackets.
A story told in urgent shards. Lots of drinking and mystery that feels like it'll get supernatural.
French truffles. Ice buckets clattering by the train. Priests. Summer songs equalling super powers. Let It Be is more ghostly stuff not for me.
Jennifer McMahon's prob fav piece: short and sweet even if sweaty and claustrophobic. You really feel like you're the man observing a killer. Urgent, almost a sing-songy prose. Good refrains.
Roach Motel (gotta have one, right?) starts a bit overdone with an old lady clerk but once he's in the room, the scene is thoughtful then faster pace in the rewind. Scoot is a cute name and so is the idea of a bug talking through its antennae at you, like that dude in the Powerpuff Girls. "He closed his eyes and found the dead man" and napalm nerves good phrasing. The bugs are actually less gross than the violence so that's good. Cute end.
Then there's Crickets for the penultimate, ft. a "scrawny night" "crying long notes of doom" w/ shards of the heartbroken women in each room, poetic even though I don't always know the words or references. Choppy like the emotions felt.
Last piece Reno, Mirage: Another shorty. Picking up hitchhikers who maybe were just in a domestic. Love the buzzing of neon. Magic finger mattresses. Eggrolls and warm noodles split by the couples in a motel room for the hell of it. Relig schizos or druggies: you decide. Lisa Thornton is another writer who gives you much to mull over.
The next is my Inn Trouble, based on a real but much friendlier place I (and you can) stayed around Ocala, FL. Cam girl Cherry and dorky drug dealer Olive Eyes are characters I always write until one day I’ll finish their novels. The story was gonna be way less sexy (but just as slangy) but the EIC suggested otherwise, lol.
Justin Lee is next, who I’ve often seen in mags and journals with me. I believe he was in Mirrors Reflecting Shadows. This is a real cute story of an ex con getting out and making his motel room inviting for his first visit with Sally (his daughter I presume with the childish presumptions she makes). The blue star projector was a great touch.
Twin Palms is about an Indian family moving to America. It’s so feminine, I love the fashion details of purple silk and anklets and delicate earrings. They’re going to work and live in the motel their other family lives. It’s unexpectedly dirty and the relatives rude, not that the little ones mind, enamored with the pool toys. It sure is a lot to ask of the pregnant mom and during winter, no less. The creaky swing and lightning zags of scars are also nice descriptors amid the implied cheating of the dad w/ the whacky haired driver and postpartum depression. Though I suppose it ends happy, I was expecting much more tension and a more climatic ape thematic end.
Rodeo Queen is next and even though I don’t like western or plain girl aesthetics, the air is crackling and popcorn-scented like a circus. The sisterly fighting and Wonderland room and secret perhaps statutory motel romp make me wanna read more from Cole.
For Effie’s Oasis, I normally don’t like the humdrum of elderly characters but this proprietress is spritely at least in quick wit about bad people. The unreliableness of her age and medicated status were good to play upon but could’ve been ramped up to dementia instead of just dumbly giving away where she sleeps. Of intrigue is the short couple that pays in cash and houses a secret “daughter” who could potentially be a trafficking victim or at least regularly abused w/ curt words. The orange and cuff bits are clever, things certainly get actiony in her hands rather than what I’d do in her orthopedic shoes while knowing cops, haha. Cute end, I just woulda played up how over she is her own business.
Drab Color by Karter Mycroft is a designer drug romp, very titillating and funnily confusing when unraveling the characters random bio fascination w/ lobsters and such. Love a nautical twist. The dude is raising a mama octopus to study suicide. “The grin oozed off his face” is a good line, in line with the stickiness of tentacles. Unfortunately, these two don’t end as mad scientist love birds making super drugs. The girl has a good flight response, doing what I’d do: play nice, then use the environment as an advantage. The only thing is I thought you called multiple octopuses octopi?
Parkland Motor Hotel Blues by Sheldon Birnie is fun with “illicit lines” and li’l old rock gigs, tales of “UFO orgies told in the pisser.” A Flamingo Heart is about a woman catching her husband cheat at the supermarket and the monotony of everything deteriorating after, so after a long time, she goes to take over at a cute pink-accented motel. Then there’s a yarn about a cowboy discovering a row of meth labs disguised as motel rooms threatening the old owner.
M. E. Proctor, who pops up many places like Punk Noir, Guilty, and Love You Till Tuesday, has A Redhead and a Green Car. “A spit away”, “melted wax of a death mask” amid the detective wisecracking and sleazy tobacco heirs are good for a sort of old-fashioned story.
Rainbow Motel has a nice fun twist even if it’s a well-executed cover story.
Felt like I was only one who heard the phrase hot sheets motel, from the NYC Crime Report. Goes nice with the crowded pants euphemism, or lead in their step. Reading this also because the red and green colors make me think of Xmas.
Drew Gummerson (Flamingo Hotel author). A Botoxed bodybuilder confronting the MC. She wants to hide her felon son, suggesting maybe their one night stand resulted in. Hook handed hoodlum. A cross dresser saving someone from suicide. Quite colorful. Abrupt hookup that jarred me but I guess it suits the screwy cast. Haha. FL and puddles and child rearing getting a li'l more credit for its beauty.
Good tension in Mom's Motel by Mike Wilson about a certified psycho courting an as secretly crazy girl in a bar. After all, she's turned on by the day laborer's and suggests they go fishing and drinking alone by the woods.
Like Thelma and Louise. A fast-talking 2nd person thing full of urgency and muffled rage. Poetry. Unrequited longing, playing gunslinger not hot enough to keep their love.
A Part of This Place: A disgruntled son trying to make sense of his father getting run over by a train. Was he off the wagon? Depressed? Vivid nostalgia of both their high school times--before Mom left. Cute fishing memory especially, a trashy Xmas dinner.
Heritage is about a father obsessed w/ "corrections." The son grows w/ this drifter, this serial killer/rapist/cultist. Quite the dark one! Splatterpunkers w/ more prosey minds would enjoy.
Stopping by Town on a Rainey Evening by Jo Withers: pageant kids. Barfly mom who leaves them in the crappy motels, hungry. 7 yrs and 2 fathers between siblings is a good line. As is the concept of dropping a bible for advice. What an awkward innocent misunderstanding! Clever. So cute and sad on many levels, especially the last line or when the "nurse" is surprised anyone is asking her opinion on anything.
Summer Job is about witches, metaphorical or not w/ council politics, which is never for me. I'm confused by its shardy timeline and what's real vs satirical or magical. The way people speak sounds like older English sometimes yet isn't Lloyd's a modern store and there are references to the 90s. It's a strange mix of boring cashiering and the bureaucracy of something in Harry Potter or more sinister. I guess there's supposed to be a kind of 1984 vibe focused more on the dystopia of business but I just don't get it in this context, partly because the rest of these stories were so much more real world.
Wrinkles and Creases is about a slummy living with lots of tears and setbacks in job-finding. The Penelope story compares motel living to the silence of a library,
I'd Help If I Could: How it is to live next to tweakers. Vivid w/ subtle creeps, Nerf games, and corn beside highways. Dirty realism. Corner store and deli type jobs the BS of cashiers dealing w/ ID stings.
The cam girl adjacent story is up my alley. Actual pictures being sold, typical creepy cam dude sketchy about money and pipes. Lots of realistic frustrations about money and stealing and pointless rules/rackets.
A story told in urgent shards. Lots of drinking and mystery that feels like it'll get supernatural.
French truffles. Ice buckets clattering by the train. Priests. Summer songs equalling super powers. Let It Be is more ghostly stuff not for me.
Jennifer McMahon's prob fav piece: short and sweet even if sweaty and claustrophobic. You really feel like you're the man observing a killer. Urgent, almost a sing-songy prose. Good refrains.
Roach Motel (gotta have one, right?) starts a bit overdone with an old lady clerk but once he's in the room, the scene is thoughtful then faster pace in the rewind. Scoot is a cute name and so is the idea of a bug talking through its antennae at you, like that dude in the Powerpuff Girls. "He closed his eyes and found the dead man" and napalm nerves good phrasing. The bugs are actually less gross than the violence so that's good. Cute end.
Then there's Crickets for the penultimate, ft. a "scrawny night" "crying long notes of doom" w/ shards of the heartbroken women in each room, poetic even though I don't always know the words or references. Choppy like the emotions felt.
Last piece Reno, Mirage: Another shorty. Picking up hitchhikers who maybe were just in a domestic. Love the buzzing of neon. Magic finger mattresses. Eggrolls and warm noodles split by the couples in a motel room for the hell of it. Relig schizos or druggies: you decide. Lisa Thornton is another writer who gives you much to mull over.
June 9, 2024
Spectacular round of from a fantastic group of writers. Each chapter is a new room in this motel filled with pain, love, and longing. I recommend this anthology by Barbara Byar as it has something for everyone. I particularly enjoyed "Twin Palms" by Sudha Balagopal, "The Rodeo Queen and Silver Lake Motel" by Cole Beauchamp, "Like Thelma and Louise" by Mairead Robinson, "Wrinkles and Creases" by Daniel Mowery, "I'd help if I Could" by Keith Pilapil Lesmeister and "Let it Beat the Wee-Bay" by Melissa Flores Anderson. You would be correct if it feels like I am naming the whole anthology. Filled with fun and adventure, sadness and despair in equal measure, this anthology has it all!
April 15, 2024
Themed anthologies are often a mixed buffet. Great stories, OK stories, and a few that leave the reader indifferent. “Motel”, published by Cowboy Jamboree and edited by Barbara Byar, hits a fantastic bull’s eye.
28 stories and each of them is remarkable in its very special way. The motel theme is explored by the authors in radically different ways. Situations, characters, atmosphere. There are no repetitions and the writing is uniformly superb.
I’ll pin a few, because it’s expected in a review, but I wish I could tick down the table of contents and give each story its due.
Nils Gilbertson’s “The Morningstar” opens the book and it’s the perfect overture with snapshots of different rooms, different dramas that intersect in a place where nobody really wants to be. The author weaves it all together smoothly and yet we always know where we are and who the people are. It’s masterful. “Underneath the Same Skies” by Justin Lee is heartbreak and hope in a tight package. The blue stars at the end? We all want them to be as bright as they can be. “The Rodeo Queen and Silver Lake Motel” by Cole Beauchamp is short and packed with emotion. It’s only one night but sometimes it’s worth a life. Casey Stegman’s “Effie’s Oasis” is funny, righteous, and oh so satisfying. Just read it. And then there’s Tessa Rossi’s “Heritage”, a haunting, unsettling piece of storytelling that veers into the horror next door, the kind that has nothing imaginary or fantastic in it, that is only too real and will make you want to go hide in a corner. I want to believe in the happy ending, but there’s no guarantee.
I have only given you bites of this remarkable volume, not a slim read at 300 pages. One of the best anthologies I’ve read in quite a while.
28 stories and each of them is remarkable in its very special way. The motel theme is explored by the authors in radically different ways. Situations, characters, atmosphere. There are no repetitions and the writing is uniformly superb.
I’ll pin a few, because it’s expected in a review, but I wish I could tick down the table of contents and give each story its due.
Nils Gilbertson’s “The Morningstar” opens the book and it’s the perfect overture with snapshots of different rooms, different dramas that intersect in a place where nobody really wants to be. The author weaves it all together smoothly and yet we always know where we are and who the people are. It’s masterful. “Underneath the Same Skies” by Justin Lee is heartbreak and hope in a tight package. The blue stars at the end? We all want them to be as bright as they can be. “The Rodeo Queen and Silver Lake Motel” by Cole Beauchamp is short and packed with emotion. It’s only one night but sometimes it’s worth a life. Casey Stegman’s “Effie’s Oasis” is funny, righteous, and oh so satisfying. Just read it. And then there’s Tessa Rossi’s “Heritage”, a haunting, unsettling piece of storytelling that veers into the horror next door, the kind that has nothing imaginary or fantastic in it, that is only too real and will make you want to go hide in a corner. I want to believe in the happy ending, but there’s no guarantee.
I have only given you bites of this remarkable volume, not a slim read at 300 pages. One of the best anthologies I’ve read in quite a while.
April 2, 2024
Killers and conmen, drugs and dealers, traveling salesmen carting dubious goods, bedraggled musicians on tour, children dragged along like so much luggage, bugs--so many and so many kinds--and ancient neon signs that also buzz like momma insects beckoning you home: motels evoke nostalgia for a kind of life nobody ever wanted to live but one we all miss just a little because we know there's no freedom like the open road, even the road to nowhere, maybe especially that one. These tales cover genres from noir (of course) to horror to love stories and fantasy, and they include some of the best short stories I've read this year. A remarkable collection that'll have you idly jangling your car keys and wistfully eyeing the door.
June 21, 2024
What an original idea! An anthology dedicated to the iconic American roadside motel. And there’s nothing like a collection of short stories for variety and to keep you entertained.
I loved the breadth of life and lifestyles depicted in these pages. The tales are full of grit, wit, seedy reality. We’re taken into vivid rooms full of reeking sticky carpets, stained bedding, cracked sinks. You’ll meet unexpected drugs and drug addicts, criminals, weapons, and sex.
I guarantee you’ll keep flipping pages! The intrigue never ends!!
I loved the breadth of life and lifestyles depicted in these pages. The tales are full of grit, wit, seedy reality. We’re taken into vivid rooms full of reeking sticky carpets, stained bedding, cracked sinks. You’ll meet unexpected drugs and drug addicts, criminals, weapons, and sex.
I guarantee you’ll keep flipping pages! The intrigue never ends!!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews