51 Facts About Leigh Blackmore

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

Leigh Blackmore was the Australian representative for the Horror Writers of America and served as the second President of the Australian Horror Writers Association.

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

Leigh Blackmore's fiction has appeared in Australia, the USA, the UK, France, Denmark and Sweden.

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

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

Leigh Blackmore 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.

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

Leigh Blackmore was later educated at North Sydney Boys High School and Newcastle Boys' High School.

Leigh Blackmore was greatly influenced by the Skywald 'horror mood' comics and Warren Publishing's stable of horror comics such as Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella, and the film magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland.

The only film made was an uncompleted version of Clark Ashton Smith's story The Double Shadow, though Leigh Blackmore penned a screenplay for Lovecraft's story The Music of Erich Zann.

Leigh 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Will Not Be Favourably Received" and "Keep Your Cabins, You Do Assist the Storm"; most of this mainstream verse remains unpublished.

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

Leigh Blackmore played judo, Kendo and jiu-jitsu during high school in Sydney and judo at Newcastle ; however he was only formally graded in judo.

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

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

Leigh Blackmore attended Macquarie University for one year, joining the university's science fiction club and contributing to their zine Telmar.

Leigh Blackmore 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.

In 1983 Leigh Blackmore met writer and poet Charles Lovecraft through the letter column of Crypt of Cthulhu; Lovecraft would later found P'rea Press which published Leigh Blackmore's first poetry collection.

Leigh Blackmore attended Syncon '83, a science fiction convention at which the Guests of Honour were Harlan Ellison and Van Ikin, and where he first met writer Terry Dowling.

Leigh Blackmore learned the art of first edition book collecting through his association with fan, DUFF-winner and collector Keith Curtis.

Leigh Blackmore came to be a well-regarded Lovecraft scholar, carrying on correspondence with other Lovecraft fans in countries including USA, the UK, New Zealand, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Russia.

Leigh Blackmore was a member of the early Esoteric Order of Dagon under Mollie Werba and the Necronomicon Lovecraftian amateur press associations, with his zines Red Viscous Madness, and Forbidden Dimensions, Nameless Dreams.

Leigh Blackmore's first published story was "The Infestation", adapted for graphic form by Gavin O'Keefe and published in the fourth issue of Phantastique, a comic which attracted notoriety for being government-funded via an Arts Council grant while containing visceral images and story content.

Leigh Blackmore had classical piano training, but his formative musical influences were The Beatles, Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, David Bowie, Roxy Music, The Stooges, Genesis, Queen, Rick Wakeman, King Crimson, Television, XTC and such experimental bands as Henry Cow, Can and The Residents, along with Australian bands such as The Church, The Reels, The Models, Midnight Oil, MEO 245, Allniters, Outline and Voight 465.

Leigh Blackmore had jammed with garage bands in his high school years in Newcastle, New South Wales including sessions at Newcastle Cathedral underground studio with Lindsay Walker, Paul Beal and Ashley Morris.

On moving back to Sydney in 1977, Leigh Blackmore played synthesisers and drums with Sydney New Wave band Worm Technology and other bands.

Simultaneously, with Smith, Leigh Blackmore initially concentrated on composing electronic music using sequencers, including the Robert Fripp and Brian Eno-influenced "Music for Bookshops", and a concept-cycle, recorded on reel-to-reel tape, called "The Guardian", based on a collaborative fantasy story written by the duo.

Leigh Blackmore wrote many of the band's song lyrics, some in collaboration with vocalist Ian Walker, and guitarist Greg Smith wrote much of the music, though Leigh Blackmore wrote both lyrics and music for some songs including the Buzzcocks-inspired "Apathy".

Leigh Blackmore largely abandoned music when Worm Technology broke up, to concentrate on his writing, although Astropop, a short-lived synthpop duo featuring Leigh Blackmore and Smith had some success playing electronica including Kraftwerk covers but never recorded.

Leigh Blackmore resumed playing music semi-professionally in 2009 with the formation of the Illawarra-based 'popstalgia' trio The Third Road in which he plays five- and six-string bass and shares vocal duties with guitarist Margi Curtis and keyboards player Graham Wykes.

Joshi, Jon Cooke and Will Murray, Leigh Blackmore contributed financially to erecting the memorial plaque in honour of Lovecraft which was erected outside the John Hay Library.

Leigh Blackmore was an invited judge on the Aurealis Award in 1995 and on the George Turner Award in 1999.

Leigh Blackmore often hosted gatherings of the Futurian Society of Sydney at his Leichardt home.

Leigh Blackmore acquired the majority of his holdings of Weird Tales magazine via Stone over a period of around a decade.

Leigh Blackmore has an ongoing participatory involvement with psychogeography and the derive.

Also in the early 1990s, following a renewed interest in ceremonial magic along with influence from the performance art, music and Mail Art of Genesis P Orridge, Blackmore joined Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth via their Australian station, TOPY Chaos.

Leigh Blackmore was ordained as a Deacon in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica and performed in several contemporary series of the Rites of Eleusis and in Crowley's mystery play The Ship.

Leigh Blackmore has taken the role of Priest in Liber XV, The Gnostic Mass in the Illawarra and presented numerous workshops based on Crowley's magick.

Leigh Blackmore married fellow bookseller and Neopagan Glayne Louise Vowles, with whom he had been in a relationship since 1994, in 1999 in a Hermetic ceremony which included readings from the Emerald Tablet of Hermes, Liber AL and The Black Book of Carmarthen.

In 2004, Leigh Blackmore left the book trade and relocated to Wollongong.

Leigh Blackmore took a mature-age degree at the University of Wollongong.

Leigh Blackmore is a member of the Society of Editors.

Leigh Blackmore has been a guest lecturer on science fiction, fantasy and horror for the University of Wollongong's Faculty of Creative Arts.

Leigh Blackmore has guested as an expert on horror literature and film on TV programs in Australia including Ray Martin's Midday, cable TV program The Graveyard Shift and Jennifer Byrne Presents and has been interviewed on Sydney's 2SER radio in the same capacity.

Leigh Blackmore became the second President of the Australian Horror Writers Association, serving from September 2010 until September 2011.

Leigh Blackmore is a frequent panellist at science fiction conventions such as the Magic Casements Festival.

In 2020 Leigh Blackmore served as convenor and judge on the Poetry category of the Australian Shadows Awards.

Leigh Blackmore has read his poetry live at various venues in NSW including Live Poets at Don Bank, Yours and Owls Cafe, Jane's and Philanthropy Tribe Book Cafe.

Leigh Blackmore's poem "The Last Dream" was a nominee for Best Long Poem in the annual Rhysling Award.

An interview with Leigh Blackmore conducted by Writing Show host Paula Berenstein was broadcast concurrently.