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). Early life Malone was born in Durham, North Carolina, on November 22, 1942. His father worked as a psychiatrist; his mother was a teacher who was deaf. His family relocated to Atlanta when he was six years old. He lived with his mother after his parents divorced. He studied English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduating in 1964. He then obtained a master's degree from that institution two years later. Although he commenced a Doctor of Philosophy in English at Harvard University, he dropped out before finishing his thesis. Career 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. He ultimately published 14 novels during his career. 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. Malone set many of his stories in Piedmont, including First Lady and the other Justin & Cuddy novels, in his region of North Carolina. Outside of writing books, Malone became best known for his stint writing the soap opera One 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. Entertainment Weekly wrote that OLTL was "airing some of the most literate drama ever to hit daytime – too good to be called 'soap opera.'" One Life to Live was averaging 5 million viewers when Malone left in 1996. His next soap opera writing job was with Another World in 1997. He returned