Chris A. Masters

The first story I ever wrote was about taking a ride in a passenger jet. I remember writing about opening the window while in flight and throwing stuff out at the people below. I was eight at the time and the story was a school assignment where we were asked to write about going on a holiday. After the teacher read it she accused me of telling lies: "You can't open windows on an aeroplane!" she scolded me. I told her that since I had never been on a holiday I had made the story up. So much for nurturing creativity! What a stupid bitch she was.

This episode put an end to any more story writing for a number of years. In fact it was about fifteen or sixteen years later before I attempted writing another story. I was in my early twenties and had just finished reading my first book of H.P. Lovecraft stories. It was a paperback collection of his Cthulhu Mythos tales. After reading this I craved more so I went to this local bookstore called Space Age Books, which specialized in science fiction and horror. The owner of the shop was very helpful and recommended several books to me. I ended up buying a nice new copy of the Arkham House edition of H.P. Lovecraft's The Dunwhich Horror and Other Stories as well as several paperbacks of similar stories by other authors. Over the next month or so I eagerly devoured all of these stories. I was in a state of awe by the sheer majestic malevolence and darkness of this writing. I had never encountered anything like it. Here was a whole new world of sinister books, inter-dimensional monsters, blasphemous rites and lots of adjectives. I absolutely loved it and wanted more.

Not long after reading these stories I began to make my own attempts at the Lovecraftian pastiche. The first few stories I wrote were absolutely awful, mostly consisting of huge sentences made up of mostly adjectives.

Around this time I also discovered the small press and the world of fanzines. Only problem was that most of these were from outside Australia and the few that were local didn't publish horror. Then one day while perusing the shelves of Space Age Books I came across a Sydney publication titled the The Australian Horror and Fantasy Magazine (AH&FM). I immediately bought copies of the two different issues on sale and headed home. After reading the fiction in ASFHM I realized that my writing still had a long way to go. I still continued to write ... and I improved.

A couple of years later and after AH&FM had folded another local magazine titled Terror Australis emerged. After the first two issues of Terror Australis I felt that my writing was getting good enough to submit. Unfortunately Terror Australis went into limbo after its second issue and, at the time, there were no other publications in Australia publishing horror. The only other mag was called The Esoteric Order of Dagon Newsletter that came out of Canberra, but that was also about to fold.

The year was 1990 and at the time I was working in a Government office job where I was in charge of the photocopy room. I wrote to EOD Newsletter editor David Tansey asking if I could take over as editor of the publication. David wrote back almost immediately and not only agreed to let me take over his magazine, he even sent me his mailing list. I changed the name to just EOD and started working on the first issue which came out at the end of that year. Three more issues of EOD were published in 1991 another two in 1992 and two more in 1993.

During this period I also published two issues of another magazine titled Shoggoth that specialized in the Cthulhu Mythos.

By mid 1993 I had left my office job and was running a used bookstore for a friend of mine. I had also struck up a friendship with Steve Proposch and together we decided to publish a much more professional horror magazine, one that would actually pay contributors, be professionally laid out and printed and be distributed in bookstores and newsstands.

[Above photo taken by Salli Shepherd, 1994. From left to right: myself, Bryce Stevens and Steve Proposch.]

The name we chose for the magazine was Bloodsongs and the first issue hit the newsstands in February 1994. Bloodsongs #1 sold just over 1,700 copies and was greeted with much enthusiasm both in Australia and in the U.S.A. Although its sales were quite reasonable we made the mistake of printing too many copies -- 6,000 in total -- and Gordon and Gotch who was distributing the magazine for us decided it wasn't selling well enough for them to keep distributing. Another problem we had was with the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification, which decided Bloodsongs #1, was too nasty to be sold to minors and they gave it a Category 1 classification, which basically meant that it could not be sold to minors and had to be sold in a plastic wrapper with a warning sticker attached. At the time the only other literary publication to be given this treatment was Bret Easton Ellis's novel American Psycho.

With Bloodsongs #2, which came out in June 1994, we had learned from our mistake and this time the print run was a more realistic 2,500 copies. A new distributor was hired and the magazine hit the newsstands and bookstores. Unfortunately Bloodsongs #2's sales were disappointing not even selling 1000 copies. The money earned from it was not even enough to cover its print cost. I wanted to fold the magazine after we got the sales figures for the second issue but Steve wanted to try one more issue, so we did.

Bloodsongs #3 came out around September 1994 and sold even less copies than the previous issue. So far publishing the magazine had cost me nearly $5000 and I wasn't going to spend any more money on it. I told Steve that I no longer wanted to publish it and that we should fold it. Steve thought it over and decided to continue the magazine on his own.

Around this time I also published the ninth and final issue of EOD. I had a tenth planned plus a third issue of Shoggoth, but these never came about due to lack of finances.

Steve went on to publish another three issues of Bloodsongs, for which he kindly credited me as Assistant Editor. I was around to him out but did very little editing on those three issues. After its sixth issue Bloodsongs' rights were sold to US based Implosion Publishing, who went on to publish another four issues before folding Bloodsongs for good.

In 1992 I got together with friend of mine Tony Brook and we started a group called the Melbourne Horror Society. At first there were only about seven or eight members and we met regularly at a local Pancake Parlour restaurant. As membership grew we started publishing a newsletter called Severed Head, which I wrote most of and printed up on a cheap photocopier I had bought.

[Above photo taken by Salli Shepherd in her kitchen, 1997.
From left to right: myself, Steve Proposch, Bryce Stevens
and Aaron Sterns.]

Membership grew and also expanded to Sydney and other areas of Australia so the Melbourne Horror Society became the Australian Horror Society. Bryce Stevens took over as editor of Severed Head from the fifth issue onward and the membership continued to expand to nearly one hundred by the end of 1995. In 1996 I quit as president and Bryce took over as president and Aaron Sterns as editor of Severed Head. In late 1996 Aaron also took over as president and changed the name to Australian Horror Writers. By this time interest began to wane and the group folded in 1997.

At this time I was putting together the first issue of another magazine titled Misanthrope. At the time I was pretty angry at the world and the magazine reflected this. What I wanted to do was to put together a magazine that reflected the societal decay and end of the millennium madness that was very much a part of that time. I came up with the blurb "The Next Step Beyond Horror!" to describe what Misanthrope was about. I not only wanted Misanthrope to be nasty but to also be well put together and have lots of attitude and literary merit. I was very selective about its content and took my time in putting it together. Misanthrope #1 did not come out until more than a year later in 1998. There was also a big tongue in cheek element about Misanthrope. After the reaction Bloodsongs #1 got from the Australian censors and after quite a few publications like Jim Goad's Answer ME magazine and a couple of others had been refused classification, thus effectively banned in Australia, I wanted to show them what extreme was really about. It was a strange time here indeed. Stores and peoples homes were even raided by Police and people were arrested for selling or owning these publications! Sydney comics artist team Steven Carter and Antoinette Rydyr were not even allowed to import copies of there own comic!

While publishing Bloodsongs, Steve and myself were treated as pariahs by some of the more "literary" elements of the local "Arts" community whom snobbed us off dismissing us mere "horror people". With Misanthrope I was basically giving them all the proverbial middle finger and saying "okay then, you think Bloodsongs #1 was too nasty then get a load of this!"

I had 1000 copies of Misanthrope #1 printed up on glossy paper with thick card covers so the print quality was quite good. I also decided to handle the distribution myself. Sales were slow but steady and within two years I had sold over 700 copies, more than enough to cover its costs.

Misanthrope #1 also caused quite a stir. Many shops refused to sell it and one shop owner said it was the most disgusting thing he had ever seen. I told him he should get out more. At the time I was also listed in the phone book and I began getting some rather nasty calls and a lot of hang-up calls. One irate caller threatened he was going to come over and beat me up because he thought I was promoting violence! When I pointed out the hypocrisy in his threat and even offered to meet him to give him the opportunity, he just hung up. Another woman left a death threat on my answering machine: unfortunately I didn't keep the recording.

[Above photo taken by Steven Proposch at the
St Kilda Cemetery around the middle of 1994.]

In 1999 I began planning a second issue of Misanthrope, but unfortunately (although many would think otherwise), it never got completed.

Also, by this time I was quite burnt out and had just lost interest in publishing. I then pretty much dropped out of the local horror and publishing scene. Problem was that although I was doing quite a lot as far as editing and publishing went, my own writing had taken a back seat. In fact, from around 1992 to 2001, I hardly wrote any fiction which sort of defeated the purpose of what I was trying to do in the first place.

In mid 2001 I got very sick and almost died. I was taken by ambulance to hospital where I spent the next four months. When I got home from the hospital I did a lot of soul searching (I eve found a few which I keep in a bottle on my bookcase!) and decided that from then on I was going to concentrate solely on my own writing and began working on a novel called Bloodline.

Since then I have been writing steadily and have now completed two novels titled Dark Music and Endless Diary. I have just finished the second draft of another novel titled Meatworks, am still working on Bloodline, and have begun another novel titled Sleeping City as well as several other projects.

At the moment I am looking for a literary agent to represent me and have put together this website.

[Above photo taken by someone or other in 2000. Left is myself
when I did a brief stint as the evilo pro-wrestling manager Baron Legion.
The blonde in the middle went by the name of Madame Syn,
and the masked dude is Big Bad Ralph.]

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