The Man on the Ceiling

Two interwoven memoirs of love, loss, and family with a haunted, frightening edge.

"The kind of... story that reminds you what fiction is capable of being, of doing, of making, for the reader and for the author." – Neil Gaiman on the original novella.

In 2000, American Fantasy Press published an unassuming chapbook titled The Man on the Ceiling. Inside was a dark-and-light, surreal, discomfiting and redemptive story of the horrors and joys that can befall a family. It was so powerful that it won the Bram Stoker Award, International Horror Guild Award, and World Fantasy Award – the only work ever to win all three. Now, Melanie Tem and Steve Rasnic Tem have reimagined the story, expanding on the ideas to create a compelling work that examines how people find a family, how they hold a family together despite incomprehensible tragedy, and how they find love.

Loosely autobiographical, The Man on the Ceiling has the feel of a family portrait painted by Salvador Dali, where story and reality blend to find the one thing that neither can offer alone: truth.