Robert Masello

Robert Masello is an award-winning journalist, television writer, and the bestselling author of many novels and nonfiction books.

His newest novel, The Medusa Amulet (Bantam/​Random House, 2011) is a supernatural thriller based on the life and works of the Renaissance sculptor and goldsmith, Benvenuto Cellini. Like its predecessor, Blood and Ice, The Medusa Amulet mixes historical fact with dark fantasy, and takes its readers on a journey across continents and centuries, from the Medici court in Florence to the Coliseum in Rome, from the ramparts of the French Revolution to the innermost councils of the Third Reich.

His articles, essays and reviews have appeared often in such magazines as New York, Town and Country, Travel and Leisure, People, Redbook, Parade, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, TV Guide, Men’s Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Westways, and The Wilson Quarterly. Newspapers include The Washington Post, Newsday, The Chicago Tribune, and The Los Angeles Times.

He has written for several popular television series, which have aired on CBS, FOX, USA, Showtime and the Sci-Fi Channel. His produced credits include such shows as "Early Edition," "Charmed," "Sliders," and "Poltergeist: the Legacy."

His nonfiction books cover a wide range of topics, from the occult -- Fallen Angels...and Spirits of the Dark and Raising Hell: A Concise History of the Black Arts -- to various aspects of the writing life, including A Friend in the Business: Honest Advice for Anyone Trying to Break into Television Writing, Writer Tells All (a Los Angeles Times paperback bestseller), and Robert’s Rules of Writing (selected by Barnes and Noble as a Back-to-School Essential).

Blood and Ice, his previous novel, was a supernatural adventure ranging from the battlefields of the Crimea to the frozen wastes of the present-day Antarctic, and was also published by Bantam/​Random House, in 2009. Other novels include The Spirit Wood, Black Horizon, Private Demons, Bestiary,and the USA Today bestseller, Vigil. His books have been translated into a dozen languages.

A native of Evanston, Illinois, Masello studied writing under Geoffrey Wolff and Robert Stone at Princeton University, and served as the Visiting Lecturer in Literature at Claremont McKenna College from 2002 to 2008. He now lives in Santa Monica, CA.