Chris Masters' interest in writing horror stories began during his early twenties. In 1990, having discovered that the Canberra-based zine,
The Esoteric Order of Dagon, was about to fold, he contacted editor David Tansey with a proposal to keep it running under his editorship. After an agreement was reached Masters changed the name to EOD and published his first issue at the end of the year. Masters notes in his website that 'three more issues of EOD were published in 1991, another two in 1992, and two more in 1993.' He also 'published two issues of another magazine titled
Shoggoth that specialized in the Cthulhu Mythos' ('Bio.'
Chris A. Masters).
In 1992 Masters and Tony Brook started a group called the Melbourne Horror Society. As membership grew they started publishing a newsletter called Severed Head. The following year he resigned from his government job to manage a friend's bookstore and within a year had started the first professional horror magazine, Bloodsongs, with fellow horror fan Steve Proposch.
With the membership of the Melbourne Horror Society growing over the same period its committee decided to acknowledge its expansion into Sydney and other areas of Australia by renaming it the Australian Horror Society. Masters relinquished the editorship of Severed Head to Bryce Stevens from the fifth issue onwards, and in 1996 also resigned as president of the Society in 1996. His involvement in Bloodsongs has also effectively ended after the third issue (Autumn 1995). Although his name appears as co-editor Masters admits he had little to do with its publication.
After distancing himself from Bloodsongs, Masters began putting together the first issue of another magazine titled Misanthrope. '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," he writes. 'I came up with the blurb "The Next Step Beyond Horror!" to describe what Misanthrope was about. I not only wanted [it] to be nasty but to also be well put together and have lots of attitude and literary merit.' He notes, too, that the first issue created a good deal of controversy. Many shops refusing to sell the magazine and he also began receiving hate phonecalls:
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 their own comic! ('Bio.' Chris A. Masters).
Although a second issue of
Misanthrope was planned for 1999 Masters never managed to get it completed, the result he admits of burn out and having lost interest in both publishing and writing.
After an illness nearly killed him 2001 Masters made the decision to return to writing. In 2012 he published the novel
The Sleeping City and
Slaughter Creek and Other Stories. He has since completed an as yet unpublished novel,
Dark Music.
