The paucity of critical attention Weltner's fiction has received points out the difficulty writers have attracting attention when they publish with small presses. The difficulty is inevitably compounded when the writer deals with the gay experience. To date, reviews of Weltner's works have appeared mostly in local gay newspapers, affording little chance of recognition on a wider scale, even within the gay community. Weltner's first book, Beachside Entries/Specific Ghosts received only one review. Identity & Difference fared much better as far as the number of reviews went (a total of 5), but only one of them appeared in a non-gay-oriented periodical, Publisher's Weekly. This review was brief and lukewarm. It praised the book's "perceptive and graceful" writing, but found the plot "conventional and lacking in humor."

The four reviews in gay periodicals were mostly excellent and evenly split between national publications and local ones. George Stambolian, in The Advocate, cited Weltner's novel as one example of the different gay male sensibilities to be found in recent works of fiction. Calling Weltner an "exceptional talent," Stambolian quotes a passage in which Preston vents his frustration about the ubiquity of heterosexual "stories" and concludes that "one purpose of gay fiction is to end these frustrations and to give us, at last, the stories of our yearnings." Steve Abbott, writing in The San Francisco Bay Times, gives a thorough and sensitive analysis of the work, emphasizing what he sees as the "mythic scripts" in Preston and Darryl's stories and offering an interesting reader/text correspondence. Abbott says the book is "on one level...simply a damn good read" and that "by seeing how others act out their mythic scripts, we get clues on how to act out our own."

Since this bio-bibliographic essay was published, Weltner's recent collection of short fiction, The Risk of His Music, and novel, How the Body Prays, (both published by respected literary publisher Graywolf Press) have received numerous reviews in national and regional magazines.