Early Career
Following stints at Macquarie University (where he belonged to the university's science fiction club and contributed to their zine Telmar) and Sydney University (where he majored in Semitic Studies), Blackmore came in contact with Don Boyd, editor of Futuristic Tales. 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 and 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). He came to be a highly regarded Lovecraft scholar, and carried on correspondence with other Lovecraft fans in many countries including US, the UK, New Zealand, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Russia.His first published story was "The Infestation", adapted for graphic form by Gavin O'Keefe and published in Phantastique, a comic which attracted notoriety (questions were asked in Australian Federal Parliament) for being government-funded via an Arts Council grant while containing visceral images and story content.
He worked as a bookseller in Sydney for 25 years (1979–2004), primarily managing specialist science fiction & fantasy departments within larger bookstores such as Dymocks.
Read more about this topic: Leigh Blackmore
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or career:
“Three early risings make an extra day.”
—Chinese proverb.
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)