Graham Masterton was born in Edinburgh in 1946, the grandson of John Masterton, the chief inspector mines for Scotland, and Thomas Thorne Baker, a world-renowned scientist who was the first man to send news pictures by radio.
After joining his local newspaper at the age of 17 as a junior reporter, he was appointed deputy editor of Mayfair the men’s magazine at the age of 21. At 24 he became executive editor of Penthouse.
His career at Penthouse led him to write a series of best-selling sexual advice books, including How To Drive Your Man Wild In Bed, which solid 2 million copies worldwide and 250,000 in Poland alone, where it is has recently been reprinted as Magia Seksu.
After leaving Penthouse he wrote The Manitou, a horror novel about the vengeful reincarnation of a Native American spirit, which was filmed with Tony Curtis in the lead role, and also starred Susan Strasberg, Burgess Meredith and Stella Stevens. Three of Graham’s horror stories were adapted by the late Tony Scott for his TV series The Hunger. Over the years he has published five collections of short stories, several of which have won awards.
Graham has written numerous horror novels, such as The Devils of D-Day, Mirror, The Hell Candidate, The 5th Witch, Family Portrait and The House Of A Hundred Whispers. A new horror novel The Soul Stealer was published in Poland this year by Rebis and in French by Livr’S. He has also written historical sagas like Rich, Maiden Voyage and Solitaire, as well as thrillers and disaster novels such as Plague and Famine and the latest - Drought.
After 35 years in which he established himself as one of the world’s bestselling horror authors, Graham Masterton turned his hand to crime.
Drawing on the five years in which he and his late wife Wiescka lived in Cork, in southern Ireland, he created a series of novels featuring Katie Maguire, the first woman detective superintendent in An Garda Siochána, the Irish police force.
The first of these novels was White Bones, and he is now writing a twelfth, Pay Back The Devil.
In 1989 Graham’s late wife Wiescka was instrumental in helping him to become the first Western horror novelist to be published in Poland since World War Two, and his sex books have not only won popular success in Poland but acclaim from the medical profession. All his crime novels about Katie Maguire are being published in Polish by Albatros.
He was a regular contributor of humorous articles to the satire magazine Punch, as well as scores of articles on sexual happiness to American women’s magazines.
He has encouraged new writers in several countries, including Ireland, France, Germany and the Baltic States. For the past 16 years, he has given his name to the prestigious Prix Masterton, which is awarded annually for best French-language horror novel. He was the only non-French winner of Le Prix Julia Verlanger for best-selling horror novel and he has also been given recognition by Mystery Writers of America, the British Fantasy Society and many others. In 2019 he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association.
He edited an anthology of short stories by leading horror writers, Scare Care, in aid of children’s charities, and has been honoured by the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children for his fund-raising. He supports an orphanage in Strzelin, Poland, and a charity in Wrocław which gives refuge to young people forced into prostitution.
In 2007, after a visit to the maximum security prison in Wołow, he launched the Graham Masterton Written In Prison Award for the inmates of all of Poland’s penal institutions - Nagroda Grahama Mastertona 'W Więzieniu Pisane.' Last year over 130 short stories were entered, and the contest is being run for the seventh year in 2023.
Wrocław City honoured Graham in 2021 by placing a bronze dwarf figure of him on a street in the city centre – the Mastertonek.
He continues to write horror novels, and two of his favourite characters, Detective Sergeant Jamila Patel and Detective Constable Jerry Pardoe, will be appearing again in a new shocker What Hides In The Attic in October, 2023.
He has written short horror stories with Dawn G Harris, and two of their co-authored stories appear in a new collection Days Of Utter Dread.
He has also teamed up with a Polish psychologist and writer Karolina Mogelska. Their first short story 'Mr Nobody' which is based on the Polish demoness Dziewanna is to appear in Phantasmagoria magazine in English, and in a new anthology of Slavic mythology to be published in the spring by the Polish publisher Planeta Czytelnika.
He currently lives in Surrey, England.
About the Author
Graham Masterton is mainly recognized for his horror novels but he has also been a prolific writer of thrillers, disaster novels and historical epics, as well as one of the world’s most influential series of sex instruction books. He became a newspaper reporter at the age of 17 and was appointed editor of Penthouse magazine at only 24. His first horror novel The Manitou was filmed with Tony Curtis playing the lead, and three of his short horror stories were filmed by Tony Scott for The Hunger TV series. Ten years ago Graham turned his hand to crime novels and White Bones, set in Ireland, was a Kindle phenomenon, selling over 100,000 copies in a month. This has been followed by ten more bestselling crime novels featuring Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire, the latest of which is The Last Drop of Blood. In 2019 Graham was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association. The Prix Graham Masterton for the best horror fiction in French has been awarded annually for the past ten years, and four years ago he established an award for short stories written by inmates in Polish prisons, Nagroda Grahama Mastertona 'W Więzieniu Pisane.' He is currently working on new horror and crime novels.
