Fantastic Metropolis

A number of years back, Bruce Holland Rogers started a Steve Rasnic Tem discussion board on the old Genie online service. I didn’t feel comfortable writing endless little tidbits about my daily doings, or using it to promote the hell out of my work. So with those two out of the way what was I supposed to do with a message board? Then I had this idea that I could use this as a creative vehicle. I’d always admired writers like Harlan Ellison who could get up in a store window and create extemporaneously, but I was too shy for something like that. But to write something daily, hidden away from prying eyes, then post it immediately without editing to maintain that spontaneity—well, I thought that might work. The basic idea came to me immediately: a character writing these entries every evening. But I knew I’d need a daily trigger, or I’d never work myself up to writing these pieces. What could I access as a consistent, daily inspiration? The back of the local newspapers gave me my answer: On This Day In History. I supplemented that with a couple of well-annotated calendars and an Almanac. But I thought just having one event to improvise on would be too simple in many cases, so I decided wherever possible I would take two or more disparate events or anniversaries each day, crash them together like a good surrealist, and create a narrative piece from that. And I’d try a variety of forms, genres, approaches, styles. Like a storyteller’s sampler quilt. Of course! My main character would be some kind of storyteller, compelled to make these stories up, or recount other people’s stories, like some kind of Scheherazade. Why? To heal himself, of course.

So I improvised an entry each evening based on two or more inspirations crashing together, using a variety of forms and styles (abstract art, sculpture, surrealism, there’s a boy’s adventure story, a poem in the style of cummings, an O’Henryesque story, etc.) and after several months it came to a natural conclusion. And now 10 years later it’s being published by Subterranean.

Jeff VanderMeer: What writers excite you these days?

Steve Rasnic Tem: Almost too many to mention, actually. Edward Carey (thanks to you), Carol Emshwiller, Richard Calder. Kelly Link’s a rising star, as is Tim Lebbon. China Miéville. Then there are the old standbys—Cormac McCarthy is someone I read and reread. When writers complain about the difficulty involved in just moving their characters about a room, I point them to McCarthy, who does those little things better than anyone. Don DeLillo, Michael Chabon, Toni Morrison, Bradford Morrow, Rick Moody. There are so many. In the horror genre, Ramsey Campbell. No one packs so much menace and paranoia into a line of prose.

Jeff VanderMeer: If you had to choose another profession other than writer, what would you be?

Steve Rasnic Tem: I would have loved to have been an animator, or an actor, or a painter, a cartoonist, a film director, maybe a musician. We don’t have enough lives, do we?

Jeff VanderMeer: During your career, what is the most important thing you’ve learned about the business or the craft of writing?

Steve Rasnic Tem: That most writers get better at it simply by doing enough of it. That you shouldn’t wait to write the stories that mean the most to you, that stir your heart—none of us knows how much time we have to speak our minds. That it gets really hard to keep at it year after year if you can’t find a way to make it fun. And if you don’t tell your stories, who will?

Jeff VanderMeer: What are you currently working on?

Steve Rasnic Tem: I have several special small press projects in progress: a novella and a couple of short story cycles. I’m putting together another two short fiction collections and a collection of the poetry. There are at least two novels in the works, some comic scripts, possibly a play. Wormhole Books will be publishing a very odd, improvisational story of mine The World Recalled, a spiritual cousin to my earlier Celestial Inventory. And in a terrible career move, as useful to my career as the Charge of the Light Brigade was to the British military, I’ve been playing around with short animated films. One, “The Swimmer,” appears on our Imagination Box CD and made it into a couple of small film festivals. But I’m strictly an amateur at this—I should be working on my prose, solidifying my position in the genre—whatever that means. And not playing amateur hour. But it’s the most fun I’ve had, creatively, in years, so I’m not likely to stop.