Identity elements
Reference code
Name and location of repository
Level of description
Box
Title
Manuscripts
Date(s)
- 2014 - ? (Creation)
- undated (Creation)
Extent
1 box
Name of creator
Biographical history
Steve Rasnic Tem is an award-winning writer of horror, as well as fantasy, science fiction, crime, and other genres, and also (as his website notes) "a less-classifiable imaginative prose more than one critic has called "Temism"". Born in Jonesville, Virginia on September 14, 1950 as Steve Rasnic, Tem attended both Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) and Virginia Commonwealth University, the former from which he graduated with a B.A. in English Education. Rasnic moved to Colorado in 1974, and he attained a M.A. in Creative Writing from Colorado State University. While attending a writer's workshop, Rasnic met fellow writer Melanie Kubachko; the two married in 1980 and took the joint surname "Tem". They were loving partners and collaborators for over three decades, until Melanie Tem's death in 2015. He still resides in Colorado.
Tem's writing career has spanned over four decades. His first published stories were "Hideout" and "The Painters Are Coming Today", both included in the fantasy anthology Other Worlds 1 in 1979. He has gone on to create a large and well-received, multi-faceted body of work that includes novels, chapbooks, novellas, short stories (over 450), and poetry. Some of Tem's more notable works include the 2000 novella The Man on the Ceiling (written in collaboration with Melanie Tem, inspired by the death of their son Anthony), which won the 2001 World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, and International Horror Guild Awards; the 1983 British Fantasy Award-winning story "Leaks"; the 2001 Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction winner "In These Final Days of Sales"; the 2002 multimedia collection Imagination Box (w/Melanie Tem), which won the Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Alternative Forms; the 2014 Southern Gothic novel Blood Kin, which won the Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel; and the 2000 IHG winner for Best Collection City Fishing.
Tem's short stories have been assembled into 17 collections, starting with 1991's Absences: Charlie Goode's Ghosts. He has written or co-written 8 novels (the first, Excavation, appearing in 1987), 8 chapbooks, and edited two anthologies: The Umbral Anthology of Science Fiction Poetry (1982, nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award) and High Fantastic: Colorado's Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, and Science Fiction (1995, nominated for the World Fantasy Award). He co-wrote with his wife a handbook on writing, Yours to Tell: Dialogues on the Art & Practice of Fiction, published in 2017.
Content and structure elements
Scope and content
1-8/1: Blood Kin (2014), notebook
1-8/2: Blood Kin (2014), typescript of chapter outline with handwritten edits, editorial and reviewer notes, and notes
1-8/3: "The Carl Paradox" (2014), typescript
1-8/4: "Eddie the Great" (2014), typescript (6500 words), and typescript (6300 words)
1-8/5: "Seeing the Woods" (2014), typescript - 2 copies
1-8/6: "Deep Fracture" (2015), typescript
1-8/7: "The Grave House" (2015), typescript - 2 copies
1-8/8: "In the Lovecraft Museum" (2015), notes
1-8/9: "Benjamin" (2016), typescript, and copies of published story
1-8/10: "Blattidae Wine" (2016), typescript
1-8/11: "Cannondale at the Beach" (2016), typescript with handwritten edits
1-8/12: "Pastel" (2016), typescript
1-8/13: "Photograph" (2016), typescript with handwritten edits, and later typescript
1-8/14: "Red Rabbit" (2016), typescript
1-8/15: "Your Daughter Is Here" (2016), earlier typescript with handwritten edits, and later typescript
1-8/16: "Your Daughter Is Here" (2016), typescript
1-8/17: "Alec Goes Forth" (undated), typescript with handwritten edits, and later typescript
1-8/18: "Alec Goes Forth" (undated), typescript
1-8/19: "Consumer Report" (undated), typescript with handwritten edits, and incomplete typescript with handwritten edits
1-8/20: "A Couple: A Play in One Act" (undated), typescript
1-8/21: "A Couple: a Play in One Act" (undated), typescript - 3 copies
1-8/22: "Dark Summer" (undated), manuscript notebook
1-8/23: "Death in Small Rooms: Some Informal Thoughts on Psychological Horror" (undated), typescript with handwritten edits
1-8/24: *Desperate: A Play (undated), typescript with handwritten edits
1-8/25: Dream Machines: A Collection of Poems (undated), typescript
1-8/26: "The Drowned Man" (undated), typescript
1-8/27: "Edward" (undated), early typescript with handwritten edits, and later typescript
1-8/28: "Eleanda's Sword" (undated), early typescript with handwritten edits, and later typescript
1-8/29: "Epiphanic Symphony" (undated), early typescript with handwritten edits, later typescript with handwritten edits, and later typescript
1-8/30: "The Interactive Adventure: The Future of the Videodisc Player" (undated), typescript with handwritten edits
1-8/31: *Last Night in Denver: A Play in One Act" (undated), typescript
1-8/32: "Last Words" (undated), typescript first page [torn]
1-8/33: "The Leap Into Flight" (poem, undated), typescript with handwritten edits, notes, and later typescript
1-8/34: "The Left Hand" (undated), typescript
1-8/35: "Love Letters" (undated), typescript
1-8/36: "March" (undated), typescript (4500 words), and later typescript with handwritten edits
1-8/37: "March" (undated), typescript
1-8/38: "The Mask Child: A Play with Puppets" (undated), typescript with handwritten edits
1-8/39: "Mechanical Apples" (undated), original typescript with handwritten edits, and later typescript
1-8/40: "Nameless" (undated), early typescript with handwritten edits
1-8/41: "Nameless" (undated), typescript
1-8/42: A Nest of Eels (w/Roma Felible, undated), typescript, character sketches, and synopsis
1-8/43: "New Masks of Fear: Trends in Contemporary Tales of the Supernatural" (undated), typescript with handwritten edits, and typescript with handwritten edits
1-8/44: "Objet d'art" (undated), typescript
1-8/45: "On our Picnic to the Past" (undated), earlier typescript with handwritten edits and notes, and later typescript
1-8/46: "Paper Houses, Carnivals of Souls" (undated), typescript with handwritten edits
1-8/47: "Snowmen" (undated), typescript with handwritten edits
1-8/48: "Snowmen" (undated), later typescripts - 2 copies
1-8/49: "Some Tales from Queneau's Alphabet" (undated, includes "L is for Love" (1987)), typescript
1-8/50: "A Special Place for Kids, A Special School for Kids" (undated), earlier typescript with handwritten edits, and later typescript
1-8/51: "A Thin Silver Line" (undated), earlier typescripts (6500 words), 1 with handwritten edits
1-8/52: "A Thin Silver Line" (undated), later typescript (6500 words) with handwritten edits
1-8/53: "A Thin Silver Line" (undated), later typescript (5000 words) with handwritten edits
1-8/54: "A Thin Silver Line" (undated), later typescripts with handwritten edits
1-8/55: "Thirty Two Thousand Sunrises" (undated), typescript
1-8/56: "Thirty Two Thousand Sunrises" (undated), typescript - 2 copies
1-8/57: "The Veil" (undated), long typescript with handwritten edits
1-8/58: "The Veil" (undated), typescripts - 3, 2 with handwritten edits
1-8/59: "The Veil" (undated), notes
1-8/60: "Walking Their Zoos" (undated), earlier typescript with handwritten edits, and later typescript
1-8/61: "We Never Went to the Moon" (undated), early draft (2250 words) with handwritten edits
1-8/62: "We Never Went to the Moon" (undated), earlier drafts (2250 words)
1-8/63: "We Never Went to the Moon" (undated), later draft with handwritten edits, and final draft
1-8/64: "A Week During The Apocalypse" (undated), typescript - 2 copies
1-8/65: "Your Own Skin" (undated), typescript
1-8/66: Assorted nonfiction pieces (various dates), typescripts, notes with handwritten edits, and photocopies of published articles
1-8/67: Miscellaneous short prose poems, many with handwritten edits
1-8/68: Notes, undated
1-8/69: Ramsey Campbell article (unpublished), handwritten notes, and typescript of article "The Horror Image"
1-8/70: Various reviews, typescript with handwritten edits
1-8/71: Review of The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (undated), typescript (photocopy)
1-8/72: Various short stories, typescripts (Folder #1)
1-8/73: Various short stories, typescripts (Folder #2)