Meyer "WatchWormwood" Mason

= Early Life = Meyer Mason was born in New York City to an upper-middle class family, with whom he had a highly comfortable youth. He performed well at his school, [REDACTED], but was hindered by his own unwillingness to work hard. This marked the first sign of his crippling laziness which would hold him back later in life. It was early in his youth that he took an interest in horror fiction, particularly the works of H.P. Lovecraft and the contributors to his mythos, and developed interest in one day becoming a writer himself.

At his college, [REDACTED], he was highly reluctant to take a humanities major in support of his ambitions of authordom, and ultimately compromised on a journalism degree. He performed better in college than in his earlier education because he had a degree of passion for journalism, and drew great influence from the gonzo journalist, Hunter S. Thompson. He graduated college in [REDACTED].

= Employment with NY Art Review = After college, Meyer was able to find employment with a small magazine called the NY Art Review, where fledgling critics (almost all of whom held ambitions of eventually moving up to the New York Times) gave their opinions on contemporary humanities. Meyer was given the recently established post of Assistant Short Fiction Editor, where he was sometimes able to finagle his way into writing about genre fiction magazines.

Meyer's employment with the NY Art Review was one of the happiest times of his life. When he was 23 he was promoted to the post of Short Fiction Editor after his immediate superior fell out of a tenth floor window during the robbery of his apartment. Meyer was accepted by the readership, but he never reached the reputation of his predecessor. Readers were frequently perturbed by his fixation with genre fiction. Unfortunately the magazine's meager readership meant that eventually cutbacks were necessary. When the short fiction and novel categories were merged, Meyer was laid off.

= Unemployment and Manic Writing = Following his discharge from the NY Art Review, Meyer found himself at a loss. He had never been very socially active, and had no close friends to lean on in his times of hardship. Instead, he sequestered himself away in his apartment, spending his days alone and living meagerly on his savings. It was during this time that, with only a typewriter, he would spend hours and hours hammering away and trying to get somewhere with his writing.

His laziness began to hamper him again. Rather than push forward through difficult parts of his stories he would often find himself starting new stories, resulting in many disorganized piles of papers strewn throughout his apartment covered in unfinished tales of the macabre and horrific. Not only that, but he would often go upwards of a week without bathing, and would skip meals to avoid having to go out and get food.

It took months, but his savings eventually began to run low and Meyer was forced to take a long, vicious look at his life. It took all his determination, but he was ultimately able to complete a story. He was never able to sell it. He went from magazine to magazine, publications he was familiar with from his days reviewing fiction. No matter how obscure the magazine, however, none of the ones Meyer approached were willing to buy the story.

= Freelance Journalism = His search failed, Meyer shelved his attempts at selling his short story. Still jobless and swiftly approaching bankruptcy, Meyer resolved to find a job as quickly as possible. During his search for a magazine to publish his story, Meyer was at one point complimented on the quality of his prose by the head editor of Miskatonic Magazine, who offered him the opportunity to write a report on the upcoming H.P. Lovecraft convention in Providence, Rhode Island.

Meyer initially balked at the prospect of travelling so far from NYC, but he eventually agreed out of desperation. The resultant report was well-received, a Meyer enjoyed the assignment more than he had expected. Over the ensuing years, Meyer went from magazine to magazine, taking assignments to cover various events in various parts of the country. Several assignments even took him out of the country, England being a common destination. Most of Meyer's assignments were unrelated to horror fiction, but he was sometimes able to indulge.

It was during this period of Meyer's life, around the age of 28, that he moved to Chicago and began experimenting with drugs. Initially he began to abuse pills in order to deal with the headaches he experienced from spending so much time flying. From here, he began to take a variety of other drugs recreationally, being especially partial to LSD. His drug abuse played hell with his mind, and as a result he became slightly unhinged. It never affected his writing, but he began talking to his cat, and was prone to brief psychotic episodes.

= BEES = At the age of 32, while on assignment on Shanghai, Meyer [REDACTED] in his sleep and discovered the following morning that [REDACTED] over a period of days [REDACTED] visited by several [REDACTED]. His current whereabouts are not publicly known.

= PERSONALITY = Meyer Mason is poorly adjusted, socially speaking. He is too lazy to spend much time learning rules of etiquette, believes himself to be much funnier than he is, and can often be standoffish in social situations. He boasts a prodigious vocabulary which has aided him in his writing. He is apathetic, and philosophically nihilistic, though he approaches it with a positive view.

Meyer has extremely low moral fiber, to the point of being almost amoral. He has very few qualms with lying, cheating, or bringing physical harm to others. He suffers from a kind of moral myopia, being more morally considerate when it comes to the people he cares about than when it comes to total strangers, whom he thinks almost nothing of.

He does a lot of drugs, particularly LSD and painkillers, which have had a pronounced negative effect on his mind. Not completely sane, Meyer sometimes slips into episodes of incoherence. He also attempts to converse with his beloved cat, Ramsay, which is also assumed to be a symptom of Meyer's drug abuse, though it may simply be a product of his general strangeness.