Michael Christopher Malone (November 22, 1942 – August 19, 2022) was an American author and television writer. He was noted for his work on the ABC Daytime drama One Life to Live, as well as for his novels Handling Sin (1983), Foolscap (1991), and the murder mystery First Lady (2002).
Malone's first novel, Painting the Roses Red, was inspired in part by his new wife and released in 1975. He recounted that he had authored the book in order to put off writing his doctoral thesis.[4] He ultimately published 14 novels during his career.[2][6] One of these, Handling Sin (1983), retold Don Quixote with the Southern United States as its setting. Another book, Foolscap (1991), was about a university professor tasked with authoring an old playwright's biography, while First Lady, published in 2001, recounted a serial killer preying on women in a fictitious North Carolina town and became a bestseller.[4] Malone set many of his stories in Piedmont, including First Lady and the other Justin & Cuddy novels, in his region of North Carolina.[2]
Outside of writing books, Malone became best known for his stint writing the soap operaOne Life to Live. He was the serial's head writer after being hired by Linda Gottlieb from 1991 to 1996 and garnered critical acclaim for his storylines, which included a tale involving the tight bond between an ostracized homosexual teenager and a preacher, the creation of villain/rapist Todd Manning and the character's gang rape of Marty Saybrooke, as well as the subsequent rape trial.[7][8]Entertainment Weekly wrote that OLTL was "airing some of the most literate drama ever to hit daytime – too good to be called 'soap opera.'"[9]
One Life to Live was averaging 5 million viewers when Malone left in 1996.[10] His next soap opera writing job was with Another World in 1997. He returned to write One Life to Live from 2003 to 2004. While writing One Life to Live, Malone wrote a novel called The Killing Club, which was tied into the show.[4] For months, viewers watched character Marcie Walsh (Kathy Brier) write the book. The book was published in February 2005 with the authors listed as Marcie Walsh and Michael Malone.[11] To explain this, Marcie said she took the book to "Professor Malone" at Llanview University, who helped her re-write it.[12] After Malone's departure from the show, Dena Higley continued this storyline, as a copycat killer murdered characters on the show exactly as had occurred in the book. In its first week of publication The Killing Club went to No. 16 on The New York Times Best Seller list for Hardback Fiction. It later rose to No. 11.[13][14]
Personal life
Malone was married to Maureen Quilligan, a professor of English at Duke University,[15] for 47 years until his death. They met while he was studying at Harvard. Together, they had one child (Maggie). They resided in Hillsborough, North Carolina, from 2000, while maintaining a second home in Connecticut.[2][4] Malone was a board member and a supporter of the Burwell School Historic Site.[16]
