Leigh Blackmore

Leigh (David) Blackmore (born 1959) is an Australian horror writer, critic, editor, occultist, musician and proponent of post-left anarchy.

He was later educated at North Sydney Boys High School (1971–1972) and Newcastle Boys' High School (1972–1976).

In high school, after reading the science fiction anthology series "Out of This World" (edited by Mably Owen and Amabel Williams-Ellis), he graduated to devouring the works of Ray Bradbury, Peter Saxon, H. Rider Haggard, Isaac Asimov, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Leslie Charteris, and became a keen enthusiast of sword and sorcery fiction as represented by Lin Carter's Flashing Swords anthologies and Thongor series novels, Edgar Rice Burroughs's Martian tales, Michael Moorcock's Elric sequence and others, and horror fiction (especially the Weird Tales school, including Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, Frank Belknap Long, Donald Wandrei and H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos), discovering their work via anthologies edited by August Derleth, Peter Haining, Karl Edward Wagner (the Year's Best Horror Stories series), and via publications of Arkham House which he special-ordered via Space Age Books (Melbourne), then Australia's only specialist supplier of science fiction and fantasy books.

He was also greatly influenced by the Skywald 'horror mood' comics (Nightmare, Psycho and Scream) and Warren Publishing's stable of horror comics such as Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella, and the film magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland.

While at high school, Blackmore co-founded the Arcane Sciences Society and the Horror-Fantasy Society; the journal of the societies, Cathuria (named after a place in Lovecraft's story "The White Ship"), was banned after three issues by Blackmore's high school principal for quoting in a review four-letter words used by the unleashed monster in Flesh Gordon.

With high school friends Lindsay Walker and Michael Blaxland, Blackmore formed a small independent movie house called Azathoth Productions.

The only film made was an uncompleted version of Clark Ashton Smith's story The Double Shadow, though Blackmore also penned a screenplay for Lovecraft's story The Music of Erich Zann (never shot).

Having corresponded with writers and enthusiasts in the field such as Brian Lumley, Ramsey Campbell, Glenn Lord, W.H. Pugmire and Gregory Nicoll, he began (aged 13) to write fiction and speculative poetry in the vein of Lovecraft and C.A. Smith.

Fictional juvenilia included "The Last Town" (a Lord Dunsany pastiche), "The Sacrifice" (based on an image of death from Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal), and an uncompleted sword-and-sorcery novel, Starbreaker (with Ashley Morris).

Early interest in the world of science fiction fandom was evidenced by Blackmore's attendance of Aussiecon 1 (the 33rd World Science Fiction Convention and the first such held in Australia) in 1975 at the age of 15.

He there met such figures as Forrest J. Ackerman (who showed him the ring which had been worn by Bela Lugosi when playing Dracula) and Jack L. Chalker (publisher of Mirage Press); he was enthralled by Ursula K. le Guin's guest of honour speech in which she spoke of science fiction breaking out of the 'literary ghetto' and declaring that 'Philip K. Dick deserves to be placed on the shelf alongside Dickens'.

He also played judo, Kendo and jiu-jitsu during high school in Sydney (at North Sydney Boys' High) and judo at Newcastle (at Newcastle Police Citizens Boys' Club, Broadmeadow); however he was only formally graded in judo.

Blackmore also became interested in Aleister Crowley through reading Moonchild (novel), Crowley's Confessions: An Autohagiography and the John Symonds biography The Great Beast.

His other occult studies began with books in the Dennis Wheatley 'Library of the Occult' series and with volumes by such authors as Paul Huson (on Tarot and witchcraft) and Idries Shah's The Secret Lore of Magic (on Goetia) as well as June John's biography King of the Witches, on Alex Sanders.

Blackmore began to read Tarot at this time, using primarily the Thoth tarot deck.

Blackmore attended Macquarie University for one year, joining the university's science fiction club and contributing to their zine Telmar. He showed early interest in unconventional art practice and anti-art after reading volumes on op art, pop art, and Sol LeWitt, whose work he homaged via a Mail Art network restricted to Australia.

Beginning a 25-year career as a bookseller in 1978, he then worked in his spare time as an editorial assistant on The Australian Horror and Fantasy Magazine in the early 1980s; Blackmore went on to publish and co-edit its successor, Terror Australis magazine from 1987–1992.

In the 1980s, Blackmore published bibliographies on Brian Lumley and H.P. Lovecraft (the latter in collaboration with S.T. Joshi).

Several of these juvenile tales were first printed in Charles Danny Lovecraft's fanzine Avatar in the 1990s.

His earliest in-print appearances included Lovecraftian sonnets in R. Alain Everts' magazines The Arkham Sampler (new series) and Etchings and Odysseys.

Blackmore wrote poetry extensively while in high school, with some of the earliest examples being verses such as "Which Will Not Be Favourably Received" and "Keep Your Cabins, You Do Assist the Storm"; most of this mainstream verse remains unpublished.

Blackmore was also a devotee of horror movies principally from the Hammer horror and Amicus Productions era.

Samuel Beckett and William S. Burroughs became lasting literary influences at this time, the latter after his high-school English teacher lent him a copy of The Wild Boys (novel).

He was the Australian representative for the Horror Writers of America (1994–95) and served as the second President of the Australian Horror Writers Association (2010–2011).

His work has been nominated four times for the Ditmar Award, once for fiction and three times for the William Atheling Jr. Award for criticism.

He has been a Finalist in both the Poetry and Criticism categories of the Australian Shadows Awards.

He has contributed entries to such encyclopedias as S. T. Joshi and Stefan J. Dziemianowicz (eds) Supernatural Literature of the World (Greenwood Press, 2005, 3 vols) and June Pulliam and Tony Fonseca (eds), Ghosts in Popular Culture and Legend (ABC-Clio, 2016).

According to The Melbourne University Press Encyclopedia of Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, "His name is now synonymous with Australian horror," and a Hodder & Stoughton press release stated that, "Leigh Blackmore is to horror what Glenn A. Baker is to rock and roll."

He has also been recognised as "one of the leading weird poets of our era," and has been nominated for the Science Fiction Poetry Association's Rhysling Award.

His fiction has appeared in Australia, the USA, the UK, France, Denmark and Sweden.

Translations of his poetry have appeared in French and Italian.

Leigh Blackmore was born in Sydney, New South Wales, the son of Rod and Beth (James) Blackmore.

One of his maternal grand-uncles was the eccentric Australian journalist Francis James.

Blackmore's early hobbies included philately and phillumeny.

He read extensively from an early age, particularly Look and Learn with its Trigan Empire science fiction comicstrip, and later the works of Geoffrey Willans, J.P. Martin, Norman Hunter and W.E. Johns.

Blackmore's family moved to Armidale where Leigh attended kindergarten and part of First Class at the Armidale Demonstration School (now Armidale City Public School).

He was raised by his parents in Methodism but refused automatic confirmation into the church at age 13, preferring to discuss ontology with his minister, who lent him works by Paul Tillich.

On the family's return to Sydney, Blackmore completed Primary School at Lane Cove West Primary School.

Around age nine, he was deeply affected by a reading of Rudyard Kipling's horror story "The Strange Ride of Morowbie Jukes", by Lucy Boston's fantasy novel The Castle of Yew and terrified by the TV broadcast of Richard Matheson's "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" episode of The Twilight Zone.

He also encountered horror fiction via Stephen P. Sutton's anthologies Tales to Tremble By and More Tales to Tremble By.