Biography
Bob Madison is a former communications executive turned writer. He has written everything from magazine articles, blog posts, television documentaries, nonfiction books, cookbooks, an upcoming novel, and even ... trading cards.
Bob was born and raised in Middle Village, New York. He grew up reading Victorian novels, inter-War thrillers, Golden Age Detective Fiction, pulp magazines from the 1930s and vintage travel/exploration books. When not reading, he was an avid consumer of Classic Hollywood movies and Old Time Radio.
Bob decided to devote his energies to writing in the 1990s and has been active in both fiction and nonfiction. He started writing for magazines, and his work appeared in such diverse publications as: Cartoonist PROfiles, Retro Vision, Wonder, Wavelengths, Cult Movies, Scarlet Street, FilmFax and Video Watchdog. He also wrote several cards for a series of trading cards celebrating actor Boris Karloff in 1998.
For his various writing and volunteer work, Bob has interviewed such writers as Susan Straight, Kaira Rouda, Armistead Maupin, Christopher Bram, Lawrence Block and William Todd; actors Vincent Price, Alan Young and Clayton Moore, film composer James Bernard; radio producers Himan Brown and Carleton E. Morse; and comics industry legends David Gilbert and Lee Falk, among others.
It was during this period that Bob was featured in several documentaries and on national television and radio. Bob appeared in documentaries produced for the Universal Studios DVD releases of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Bob has appeared twice on Good Morning, America (to discuss Dracula and science fiction films, respectively), and on The Joe Franklin Show, The Joey Reynolds Show, and Front Row, among others.
Bob also did several successful lectures during this period, including speaking at the New York Public Library and twice at the New York Gay and Lesbian Community Center, and taught media literacy at Fordham University.
Bob's first book was Catfish: An All-American Restaurant and Recipe Guide, published by The Catfish Institute in 1997. His essays appeared in the anthologies Bela Lugosi (1995), Boris Karloff (1996) and Lee Falk: Storyteller (2011).
In 1997, Bob was the editor and principal writer of the book Dracula: The First Hundred Years (Midnight Marquee, 1997). Bob broke into hardcover publishing with American Horror Writers (Enslow 2001), part of the Collective Biographies series, and he, and co-author Jim Nemeth, were nominated for a Rondo Award for their 2020 book It Came From ... The Stories and Novels Behind Classic Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction Films (Midnight Marquee; electronic book by Bear Manor Media, 2022).
Bob's short story "Red Sunset" appeared in Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes in 2008. Locus magazine called "Red Sunset" "a gem," and added, "The Chandlerian voice is very well done, and the actual story ... is effective enough, and finally the character of the aged Holmes is ... convincingly a real character, very entertaining - even offering the best Holmes deduction in the book."
Bob wrote the narration for Daytime Emmy-nominated 2021 documentary Dark Shadows and Beyond: The Jonathan Frid Story for MPI, produced and directed by Mary O'Leary.
Bob sold his first novel, a comedy Cash and Carrey, to Vulpine Press in 2022.
Bob Madison has been married to Russell Frost since 1990, and the two live in Huntington Beach, CA.
