"Tem has proven his unique imagination over the years. His stories create deep fear from the most mundane circumstances... "

Garrett Peck

An excerpt from In These Final Days of Sales

“It’s not the bang in your buck, it’s the buck in your bang.” At the end of the commercial the words blaze a brilliant white across the black screen, then fade. Emil remembers a time when clarity was of the utmost importance in sales, conventional wisdom being that people would not buy an unknown quantity. Of course, what they thought they were getting might not bear much resemblance to the object eventually delivered wrapped in brown paper C.O.D., but at least the transaction began with that image in mind, clear if erroneous.

Now, a certain degree of clairvoyance is required to discern what goods are actually being advertised. Emil, himself in the sales business, watches commercials in the hotel rooms along his route, trying to map out exactly what the rules are now. What troubles him most is that they seem to be not just about new sales techniques, but about a change in the human psyche itself. We have become the creatures in our dreams, he thinks, poured into pleasing and biodegradable packaging.

People want something—that has been the message behind the message in every ad or commercial. You want something, they remind us. The ads advertise want. They advertise need. No wonder the actual product remains in the background. At some level the advertisers have finally realized their products are merely symbolic, almost irrelevant.

Much of the mysterious advertising, Emil has finally concluded, is for various brands of pants.

"Working on novels is like remodeling your house: it goes on forever, living conditions in the meantime are lousy, and by the time you're finished you've already changed your mind about what you really wanted." Steve Rasnic Tem

An exclusive interview with Steve Rasnic Tem

Steve Rasnic Tem has collected a small portion of his over 250 published short stories in the collections City Fishing (Silver Salamander) and The Far Side of the Lake (Ash-Tree Press). Next year Subterranean Press will be bringing out his experimental fantasy novel The Book of Days. He is a past winner of the British Fantasy, Bram Stoker, and International Horror Guild awards.