NEWS
Melanie’s FRY DAY: Plays & Poems, is now available in paperback, containing a selection of her best poetry and drama. I think arguably some of the best writing of her final ten years appears in her plays. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637897413/
My latest collection, THANATRAUMA, is now available from online retailers in paperback, ebook, and audio formats.
Links
A young man slowly surrenders his senses in “Bees from the Hive.” Read for free at: https://stevetem.com/free-fiction/
Wondering which of Steve’s many short story collections to buy or just curious about the differences? You can find that info here.
You can now subscribe to the Steve Rasnic Tem YouTube Channel here.
For information about the Steve & Melanie Tem Collection at Texas A&M click here.
Featured
THANATRAUMA: Stories
“Steve Rasnic Tem is unmatched. This collection of horror stories is about life disintegrating, true loss, existentialism, death, and the after-life. Horror binds it all together and makes it monumentally remarkable.” – Horrorbound
Publishers Weekly starred review: “World Fantasy Award winner Tem is at his sharpest and most crushing in this collection … Essential for fans of dark speculative fiction.”
Steve’s new collection, THANATRAUMA, is now available in paperback, ebook, and audio formats from the usual online retailers. The limited hardcover is also available for pre-order directly from the publisher. This is a collection of 21 strange and deeply unsettling tales — four of them previously unpublished — that deal with our deepest fears: death, loss, grieving, aging. The hardcover will be limited to 300 signed copies, beautifully printed and bound, and is available at a terrific preorder price of just $30. The wraparound dust jacket is by Vince Haig, who has done so many great covers for Undertow Publications. Starred review from Publishers Weekly: “World Fantasy Award winner Tem (The Night Doctor) is at his sharpest and most crushing in this collection of 21 horror shorts…essential for fans of dark speculative fiction, surrealist travelogues, and meditations on loss.” Order from Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Thanatrauma-Steve-Rasnic-Tem/dp/1954321058/. Full details on the hardcover edition here: https://www.valancourtbooks.com/thanatrauma-2021.html
Biography
“His work…will haunt your imagination and your heart in equal measure, and it both expands and defines the genre. ” Adam Mills, Weird Fiction Review
Steve Rasnic Tem’s writing career spans over 40 years, including poetry, plays, short stories, and novels in the genres of fantasy, science fiction, horror, crime, regional fiction set in the Appalachian South, as well as a less-classifiable imaginative prose more than one critic has called “Temism.” His collaborative novella with his late wife Melanie Tem, The Man On The Ceiling, won the World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, and International Horror Guild awards in 2001. He has also won the Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, and British Fantasy Awards for his solo work. His recent novel UBO (Solaris, January 2017) is a dark science fictional tale about violence and its origins, featuring such historical viewpoint characters as Jack the Ripper, Stalin, and Heinrich Himmler. Steve’s southern gothic novel Blood Kin (Solaris, March 2014), won the 2014 Bram Stoker Award. His other novels are his YA The Mask Shop of Doctor Blaack (Hex, 2018), Deadfall Hotel (Solaris, 2012), The Man On The Ceiling (Wizards of the Coast Discoveries, 2008, written with Melanie Tem as an expansion of their novella), The Book of Days (Subterranean, 2002), Daughters (Grand Central, 2001, also written with Melanie Tem), and Excavation (Avon, 1987). A handbook on writing, Yours to Tell: Dialogues on the Art & Practice of Fiction, also written with Melanie, appeared in 2017 from Apex Books.
Steve has published over 450 short stories. His first collection of stories, Ombres sur la Route, was published by the French publisher Denoël in 1994. His first English language collection, City Fishing (Silver Salamander, 2000) won the International Horror Guild Award. His other story collections are The Far Side of the Lake (Ash Tree, 2001), In Concert (Centipede, 2010-collaborations with Melanie Tem), Ugly Behavior (New Pulp, 2012-noir fiction), Onion Songs (Chomu, 2013), Celestial Inventories (ChiZine, 2013), Twember (NewCon, 2013-science fiction), Here With The Shadows (Swan River Press, 2014), the giant 72-story treasury, Out of the Dark: A Storybook of Horrors, (Centipede Press), Figures Unseen: Selected Stories (Valancourt, 2018), The Harvest Child And Other Fantasies (Crossroads, 2018), the YA-oriented Everything Is Fine Now (Omnium Gatherum, 2019), The Night Doctor and Other Tales (Centipede, 2019), and Thanatrauma (Valancourt, 2021).
A transplanted Southerner from Lee County Virginia, Steve is a long-time resident of Colorado. He has a BA in English Education from VPI and a MA in Creative Writing from Colorado State, where he studied fiction under Warren Fine and poetry under Bill Tremblay.
Interviews
Interview at Asimov’s SF Magazine From Earth to the Stars blog: https://fromearthtothestars.com/2022/02/18/qa-with-steve-rasnic-tem/?fbclid=IwAR1OFjm1LhrGMlGoqwpjngTebNNLUhcVy5iyTsuT94cMi4ziZoysXMXeRmc
Interview in Westword, Denver’s alternative weekly: https://www.westword.com/arts/steve-rasnic-tem-colorado-author-consumed-horror-11897235
YouTube interview at Visited By Voices Live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBdaGPwwPxI&fbclid=IwAR3jps8mwqpsJ1xunb7u3gdrAv8AItxQSmLlXT0W4BLqq3p5PL0M7I3uBQA
Reading & interview for Nebraska Wesleyan’s Nights of Horror: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3vyiPvOoG4
The second half of my interview with the This Is Horror podcast: https://www.thisishorror.co.uk/tih-261-steve-rasnic-tem-on-figures-unseen-the-art-and-practice-of-writing-and-the-man-on-the-ceiling/?fbclid=IwAR3hCcIB5xDnHyRh4pkmweQN6dAnRqgUB8L5SXhW8GBVU6WRR5niN4gexek
The first half of my interview with the This Is Horror podcast: https://www.thisishorror.co.uk/tih-260-steve-rasnic-tem-on-secret-realities-city-fishing-and-early-life-lessons/
Interview at the Darkness Dwells podcast concerning my new collection Everything Is Fine Now, existential dread, love and loss, and a few writing tips.
Interviewed by Scott Edelman on the Eating the Fantastic podcast.
New interview concerning Doctor
New interview up on Kendall Reviews concerning my writing in general as well as The Mask Shop of Doctor
New interview at Cat After Dark concerning my new middle-grade novel The Mask Shop of Doctor
Read the long interview with Steve in the upcoming second issue of Thinking Horror: A Journal of Horror Philosophy.
June 2018 Interview with Steve on
See a complete list of interviews on
Free Fiction
A young man slowly surrenders his senses in “Bees from the Hive,” a tale of the strangely dependent and manipulative relationship of three friends. Read for free at: https://stevetem.com/free-fiction/
“The Winter Closet,” Three-lobed Burning Eye #36
“Black Wings,” The Dark, April 2022
“Eye of the Storm,” Daily Science Fiction
“Whenever It Comes,” Weird Horror Magazine #4
“The Last Sound You Hear,” The Dark, Dec 2021
“Mummies,” Reckoning #5
“Late Sleepers,” PseudoPod #733
“Forwarded,” The Dark Magazine, January 2020
“The Family Man,” Paper Butterfly Flash Fiction, October 2019
“For All His Eyes Can See,” The Dark, August 2018
“Miguel Prays While His Mother Cries,” Daily Science Fiction, 8/8/2019
“Night Vision,” Daily Science Fiction, 4/16/2019
“Red Rabbit,” Borderlands # 6 (reprinted in Figures Unseen)
“The Men and Women of Rivendale,” Nightmare #35.
“A Space of One’s Own,” Clarkesworld #141, June 2018.
“Cats, Dogs, & Other Creatures,” Talebones.
See a complete list of free fiction on the Free Fiction page.
Latest Tweets
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RT @CrossroadPress: Coming to pre-order in the next few days... THE CANTERBURY NIGHTMARES @Ai_Jiang @blacklionking73 @MichaelBoatman_… https://t.co/cTJ39JycR7
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As announced on Twitter this morning, I'll have a new short story, "Memoria," in issue 25 of The Deadlands, coming later this week.
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RT @TheKaufmann: Alert! The e-book of THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF FOLK HORROR is on sale for just $1.99! https://t.co/9Kbc4QXGPW
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This month the HWA is interviewing some of its older authors (including myself) about our careers, ageism, and our… https://t.co/uQZPBCbdZr
Events
● Fri 10/21, 4p, Conifer 2: Rolling the Dice and other Unique Ways of Plotting
● Sat 10/22, 3p, Evergreen B: When is the Lily too Gilded? (Aka when have you revised enough)
See a complete list of events on the Events page.
Latest Books
The Night Doctor New Paperback
The Night Doctor And Other Tales, out of print in hardcover, is now available in new paperback and ebook editions through Amazon.
Publishers Weekly starred review: “’Sometimes it takes all our effort to keep the anxiety of simply being human at bay’ … Tem treads a fine line between the weird and the horrific in these stories, and they are memorable for their subtle power and insidious eeriness. This haunting collection is the perfect Halloween accompaniment.”
FRY DAY: Plays & Poems
Melanie Tem’s FRY DAY, Plays & Poems. Over a career of 30+ years, Melanie Tem received the Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy Awards for her writing, which included almost a hundred short stories, twelve solo novels, as well as scripts, poems, and storytelling performances. At the time of her death in 2015, she left behind numerous plays, several of which have been produced, but none have appeared in print. These plays arguably contain some of the finest writing of her final ten years. Those who love her fiction will find familiar subjects here: the anxieties and fears which beset families, or anyone involved in an intimate relationship. FRY DAY collects the best of her plays, along with a selection of her poetry. It’s available in both eBook and paperback formats.
YOURS TO TELL:
Dialogues on the Art & Practice of Writing
The writing guide I wrote with my late wife Melanie, Yours to Tell, recently went out of print. I’m pleased to announce this new digital edition from Crossroads Press. In this book we discuss plot, point of view, setting, characterization, and more, all in an informal tone that invites you to become part of our conversation. Learn how to find your stories because they are Yours to Tell.
“As I sat in the Odyssey Writing Workshop classroom where Melanie and Steve Tem were serving as writers-in-residence, I thought how fortunate the students were to participate in that magical experience. Through their unique ‘dialogues on writing,’ Melanie and Steve explored topics in a way that was both liberating and illuminating. Writers could disagree on how to write! And they could prompt each other to dig deeper into their thoughts and processes, eliciting unique insights. Students were delighted and fascinated. Now this book allows more writers to benefit from their invaluable explorations.”
—Jeanne Cavelos, bestselling author and director of the Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust
Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09SXQF7Y5
Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1133666
Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=1ypgEAAAQBAJ
Kobo:
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/yours-to-tell
ABSENCE
Melanie’s posthumous YA science fiction novel is now available in paperback and ebook formats.
Nothing is simple in fifteen-year-old Casey’s life. She has two families and two houses and two rooms of her own. Sometimes this makes her feel lucky, but other times she feels practically homeless. She also has a brother with Asperger’s. He’s interesting to have around, and she loves him very much, but he’s also complicated.
And speaking of complicated, Casey discovers she’s a time traveler.
She’ll be doing her Algebra homework, or on her way to work at the restaurant, when suddenly she’s in some other time and place, in some other body, and she’s supposed to do something. Help somebody. Fix some problem. But how?
Order from Amazon here.
THE NIGHT DOCTOR And Other Tales
THE NIGHT DOCTOR AND OTHER TALES recently went out of print in hardcover from Centipede Press. But you can now get an ebook edition with a paperback to follow later. 25 stories including 2 originals. Purchase here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09VK895WB
Also available from Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1137613
And Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-night-doctor-and-other-tales
You can view a YouTube video of Steve reading the title story here.
Publishers Weekly starred review: “’Sometimes it takes all our effort to keep the anxiety of simply being human at bay’ … Tem treads a fine line between the weird and the horrific in these stories, and they are memorable for their subtle power and insidious eeriness. This haunting collection is the perfect Halloween accompaniment.”
John Boden at Ginger Nuts of Horror: “Every story in this collection is marvelous. All of them emotionally heavy and steeped in themes of loss, regret, grief (triple helpings on that one) and despair. All painted in lush realistically thick strokes and colors. All of them masterpieces.”
Char’s Horror Corner: “UNSETTLING! My highest recommendation-especially to fans of the weird tales!”
FIGURES UNSEEN
“An incredible collection.” – Toronto Star
Winner of the World Fantasy, British Fantasy
“It’s a masterful collection. Story after story grabs you from the first sentence or image, shoehorns you effortlessly into familiar places you’ve never been, allows you into another life as it’s coming apart or, perhaps, just coming to rest. These are sensuous tales, with gorgeously worked language and cadences. They breathe. Their hearts beat soundly beneath your own…The stories of Figures Unseen shimmer with beauty, with felt reality, and with the mysteries forever at the heart of all our lives.” – James Sallis, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
THE HARVEST CHILD AND OTHER FANTASIES
THE HARVEST CHILD And Other Fantasies is a massive collection of the wide range of Steve Rasnic Tem’s fantasy tales. These 39 stories include sword & sorcery sagas, chronicles of fairies, elves, witches, wizards, magical creatures, Robin Hood, funny fantasy, and a smattering of science fantasy, as well as some uncollected dark fantasy tales which emphasize the fantasy over the horror. None have appeared in his previous collections. Just a sampling of sources: After Hours, Paradox, Asimov’s, Dragon Magazine, Elsewhere, Infinite Loop, New Frontiers, Jabberwocky, Chrysalis, Grue, Mythellany, Fantasy Book,
Order the paperback from Amazon.
Order the ebook from Amazon.
Order from Smashwords.
Order from Barnes and Noble.
EVERYTHING IS FINE NOW
In this all ages collection award-winning horror author Steve Rasnic Tem showcases a variety of ghosts and other creatures aiming to keep you up all night with the lights on. Read about the two best friends chased by a strangely familiar figure. Or the teenager who wakes up with fur sprouting from every nook and cranny on his body. Or the fellow with a crazy mom whose magical powers only make things worse. Or the mechanic who keeps his cars running on oil, gasoline, and blood. These stories range from subtle supernatural tales to the legends heard sitting by a campfire.
“Some sheer literary classics in this book.” – Des Lewis Reviews
Order from Amazon.
For more new book information go to the Books page.
My 2019 Publications Roundup
My 2019 Publications Roundup: 2 Books:Everything Is Fine Now, fiction collection, Omnium GatherumThe Night Doctor And Other Tales, fiction collection, Centipede Press 14 New Stories:“Bigger Than Life,” Straight Outta Deadwood, ed. David Boop“Captain Zack and the Data...
“The Family Man” Paper Butterfly Flash Fiction
I have a new piece of noir flash fiction, "The Family Man," up on Paper Butterfly Flash Fiction: https://paperbutterflyflash.wordpress.com/
Mile Hi Con 51 Schedule
My (tentative) schedule for Mile Hi Con 51, Oct 18-20, Hyatt Regency Tech Center, 7800 E Tufts Ave, Denver, CO:Friday Oct 18: 5PM Mesa Verde B, Project In a Drawer (revising early works) along with Stace Johnson, Elizabeth Leggett, James Van Pelt, Carrie...
Des Lewis Reviews Out of the Dark
Des Lewis has completed his marathon review of my collection Out of the Dark, A Storybook of Horrors: 72 stories first published between 1981 and 2016. He calls it “possibly to have been the most important book yet in my life.”...