Michael Mallory

This article is about the author. For the character on Sliders see Recurring characters of Sliders.

Michael Mallory (born in Port Huron, Michigan in 1955) is a writer on the subjects of animation and post-war pop culture, and the author of the books X-Men: The Characters and Their Universe, Universal Studios Monsters: A Legacy of Horror and The Science Fiction Universe and Beyond. As an animation and film historian he has written over 500 articles, frequently for Variety, The Los Angeles Times and Animation Magazine, and has been featured in documentaries and DVD extras about animation. He co-authored the memoirs of animation legend Iwao Takamoto, which were published in 2009 as Iwao Takamoto: My Life with a Thousand Characters.

Life

Mallory was raised in Pontiac, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. As a teenager he appeared in summer stock plays with the Kenley Players and went onto receive a degree in Speech, with a theatre/broadcasting emphasis, from Drury College (now Drury University) in Springfield, Missouri. After a stint as a radio newscaster in Springfield he relocated to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. He made numerous appearances on the local stage and played bit roles in films such as Frances, Staying Alive and Eleanor: First Lady of the World (all 1982) and on television in Days of Our Lives, Santa Barbara and General Hospital, as well as a handful of commercials and industrial films. More recently he has appeared on Mad Men, Vegas, and Mob City, in which he played Abe "Greenie" Greenberg, whose murder propels the plot of the series. In the late 1980s Mallory made writing his primary pursuit and for a while he served as a writer for Disneyland and other theme park venues. He scripted the large-format, 3-D attraction film Haunts of the Olde Country, which premiered at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1993 and played there for several years. He was among the first recipients of a Derringer Award, winning in 1998 for Best Flash (short-short) Mystery Story, and his story "The Beast of Guangming Peak" was listed as a "Distinguished Mystery Story of 2004" in the book "The Best American Mystery Stories, 2005," edited by Joyce Carol Oates and Otto Penzler. His 2009 book Universal Studios Monsters: A Legacy of Horror, a history of Universal horror film series, earned an honorable mention from the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards, and Marvel: The Expanding Universe Wall Chart took the Silver 2009 Book of the Year Award from ForeWord Reviews. He lives with his wife and son in Glendale, California.

Mystery Writing

Mallory also writes murder mysteries, often featuring "Amelia Watson",[1] the second (and previously unheralded) wife of Dr. Watson of Sherlock Holmes fame. Four volumes of Amelia Watson stories have appeared to date: the 2000 collection The Adventures of the Second Mrs. Watson, the 2004 novel Murder in the Bath, a second collection, The Exploits of the Second Mrs. Watson, published in 2008, and a novel The Stratford Conspiracy, published in 2012. His novel Kill the Mother!, a contemporary, comic mystery set in Hollywood, was published in 2013. Mallory has written more than 120 short stories for adults and children, including a series of mysteries starring an eleven-year-old sleuth named "Scotty," which appeared periodically in the Los Angeles Times. He was the creator and co-editor (with Lisa Seidman and Rochelle Krich) of the mystery anthology Murder on Sunset Boulevard, which was published through the auspices of the Los Angeles chapter of the national organization, Sisters in Crime, and also co-edited (with Harley Jane Kozak and Nathan Walpoe) its follow-up, LAndmarked for Murder. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize three times, for both fiction and nonfiction.

Horror Writing

Mallory has written horror stories for both young readers and adults. His novella Night Shocker was published in 1997 by Baronet Books as part of their "FrightTime" series, a string of books along the lines of the then-popular Goosebumps series. He contributed more short horror tales for kids for the "Chiller" page of the website MysteryNet.com. In 2012, he came out with his first horror novel for adults, The Mural, which is published by Borgo Press.

Selected Bibliography

Novels

Collections

Nonfiction

As Editor

See also

References

  1. ↑ "FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS". michaelmallory.com. Retrieved 20 November 2010.

External links