Bob Madison is a former communications executive turned writer with a diverse range of writing credits. His work includes magazine articles, blog posts, television documentaries, nonfiction books, cookbooks, an upcoming novel, and even trading cards.
Born and raised in Middle Village, New York, Bob grew up with a passion for 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.
In the 1990s, Bob decided to devote his energies to writing and has been active in both fiction and nonfiction ever since. He started writing for magazines, with his work appearing in publications such 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.
Bob has interviewed a wide range of notable figures, including writers 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.
During this period, Bob was featured in several documentaries and on national television and radio. He 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 also appeared twice on Good Morning, America, and on The Joe Franklin Show, The Joey Reynolds Show, and Front Row, among others.
In addition to his writing and television appearances, Bob has also done several successful lectures, 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, Boris Karloff, and Lee Falk: Storyteller. In 1997, Bob was the editor and principal writer of the book Dracula: The First Hundred Years.
Bob broke into hardcover publishing with American Horror Writers, 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.
Bob's short story "Red Sunset" appeared in Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes in 2008. Locus magazine called "Red Sunset" "a gem," praising Bob's Chandlerian voice and the effectiveness of the story.
Bob wrote the narration for the 2021 documentary Dark Shadows and Beyond: The Jonathan Frid Story, which was nominated for a Daytime Emmy. He also sold his first novel, a comedy Cash and Carrey, to Vulpine Press in 2022.
Bob has been married to Russell Frost since 1990 and the two live in Huntington Beach, California.
