Melanie Tem

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

Early life and education Melanie Kubachko grew up in Saegertown, Pennsylvania. She attended Allegheny College as an undergraduate, and earned her master's in social work at the University of Denver in Colorado.

Career

Tem also mentored students through critiquing and private workshops. When Tem wasn't writing, she worked as a social worker and administrator with the elderly, disabled, and children.

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 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 began her storytelling with a small memory then improvised the remainder of the story. In her story, Tem explains how her father would correct her voice, pronunciation, and speaking, and as a child. Tem then moves into the end of her father's life where he begins to lose his memory. Tem and her father would use poetry to bond. Her father would repeat the line, “Come live with me and be my love,” referencing Christopher Marlowe’s poem, the Passionate Shepherd to His Love. In addition to her father’s memory loss, his speech begins to fail. Tem finds herself having to correct her father’s pronunciation, just as he did to her as a child.

Melanie Tem’s oral story Cousins tells the story of the competitive nature that her and her cousin, Claudette, encountered with each other while growing up. Tem and Claudette’s tensions first started when Claudette claims that Tem’s mother “stole her name” from her family and often teased Melanie growing up.

Reception 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”.

Personal life Tem met her husband, Steve Rasnic, at a writer's workshop and they were married for 35 years they had 4 children .