Author and Screenwriter
Novels, screenplays, and teleplays drawn from the operating room and the hours around it, where the stakes are physical, the ethics are contested, and the people are rarely who the chart says they are.
The Novel
A novel · Durban House, 2003
Find the book on Amazon“An original and superbly crafted novel of greed and corruption. Gripping and suspenseful reading.”
Teleplay · One-hour medical drama
“Sworn to do no harm, compelled to stop those who do.”
A New York burn and trauma surgeon heals the injured, but, unlike her colleagues, she risks her career and sometimes her life to identify those responsible and hold them accountable.
Comparisons: House; ER; Grey's Anatomy; Prime Suspect (U.K.)
Teleplay
“White Coats, Orange Scrubs.”
A cowboy surgeon, blacklisted from practicing in Texas, gets a job on a hospital prison ward in Queens, New York, and flouts the standard of care in order to save the inmates.
Comparisons: Justified meets OZ meets ER.
Television credit, ABC
Member of the writers room and credited writer on the ABC show Black Box.
also titled Illegally Blind
Feature dramedy
A Post-Millennial, burdened with her family's debt-ridden diner and her own visual disturbance, claims the face of Jesus appeared on her avocado toast and miraculously restored her sight, converting the diner into a tourist mecca and her despair into hope.
Low to moderate budget.
Screenplay · Comedy
A plastic surgeon inadvertently kills a mobster's mom during a makeover procedure, and scrambles to appease the underworld kingpin in order to avoid getting whacked.
Screenplay · Drama
A surgical resident uncovers an underground sports ring that manufactures super-size athletes by juicing orphans with a designer drug, and she risks her life to shut the operation down.
Michael Madden writes fiction and screenplays about medicine and the people caught inside it: doctors under pressure, patients without leverage, and institutions that protect themselves first. His work ranges from medical drama and thriller to comedy and dramedy, and it begins with the novel The Seesaw Syndrome, a story of greed and corruption at the seam between academic medicine and the pharmaceutical industry.
That material is drawn from direct experience. A burn and trauma surgeon, Michael served as Clinical Director of The New York Hospital–Cornell Burn Center and was the founder and Director of the Level One Trauma Center at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, caring for patients with catastrophic and life-threatening injuries. He published widely in peer-reviewed journals and surgical textbooks, presented at national and international meetings, and carried out research on wound healing and skin substitutes that changed how injured patients are treated. The detail in his writing, clinical, procedural, and human, comes from that work.
Winner, Creative World Awards teleplay contest
Rule of Nines
Winner, Happy Writers / Stage 32 teleplay contest
Rule of Nines
Winner, Writers Guild of America West, Career Longevity contest
Hell's Infirmary
Recommended, The Red List (Coverfly)
Miracle of the Avocado Toast
For inquiries about the novel, screenplays, teleplays, representation, or collaboration, send a note using the form or write directly.