Melanie Tem

She married Steve Rasnic and the couple took the joint surname Tem. She developed breast cancer in 1997. In 2013, it recurred, and metastasized to her bones, bone marrow, and organs. She died at age 65 on February 9, 2015.

Melanie and her husband have collaborated on several novels such as Daughters (2001), and The Man on the Ceiling (2008). On collaborating with her husband, Melanie stated, “Steve and I have been each other’s first editor for more than thirty-four years now. Nothing leaves the house until the other has read and commented on it”.

Tem has been featured in numerous essays and anthologies. Tem said that she prefers the term “dark fantasy” instead of being described as a horror author because she wants to disturb people, not scare them. Tem also has a theme of transformation in her writings. In a 1993 interview with Cemetery Dance Publications, Tem elaborated on this stating “one of the things that interests me is how dark, disturbing experiences in our lives can transform us for the better, how we can come through those things . . . I like the idea of how we confront things”. Tem often used traditional horror and supernatural motifs to express psychological truth (i.e. using a werewolf to symbolize anger). Tem found inspiration working as a social worker and has explained how it has impacted her writing. When connecting her writing and social work, Tem said, “I went into social work probably for one of the same reasons why I write. And that is, again, to try to understand somebody whose life experience I don't have. Another is that social work brings one into contact with all kinds of stories that can be told. I have never written whole cloth about a particular client, but very often I will come into contact with someone, and something in my mind will say, "'There's a story in that'".

Well-known horror author, Stephen King, described her work as “spectacular, far better than anything by new writers in the hardcover field”. On Tem's novel Prodigal(1991), Dan Simmons applauded it saying, “Melanie Tem may be the literary successor to Shirley Jackson”. Edward Bryant described Prodigal as being written “surely and precisely” and compared it to Stephen King's Pet Sematary but she "digs even deeper into the disturbing, layered, complex, collective psyche of a family in deep trouble”. "Dhost"(2007) has been praised because ” small twists of this short story can trace a parallel to distant parent figures, to the loss of self in search and yearn for another. It is penned to be as bittersweet as it is eerie”.

Melanie Tem (née Kubachko; April 11, 1949 – February 9, 2015) was an American horror and dark fantasy author.