Shortly after McDowell’s return to Boston, he was diagnosed with AIDS. McDowell continued to write commissioned screenplay treatments. He went on to write screenplays for Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993 and Stephen King’s Thinner in 1996.īy 1994 McDowell had returned to Boston full-time to stay with his partner, Laurence Senelick, and taught screenwriting at Boston University and Tufts University. In 1988 he co-wrote the screenplay for Beetlejuice with Warren Skaaren, which was based on an original story by McDowell and Larry Wilson about a dead couple returning home. McDowell found success in film and TV writing, penning scripts for Tales from the Darkside and Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories. By 1986 he had rented a flat in West Hollywood, and co-founded Pecos Productions. After becoming engaged with the film industry in Hollywood, McDowell began shuttling back and forth between Boston and Los Angeles in 1985. McDowell moved to Medford, Massachusetts in November 1973.
McDowell preferred to work in such fiction genres as horror and detective stories, and also wrote under the pseudonyms Axel Young, Mike McCray, and Preston Macadam, the latter two related to men's novels about rogue mercenaries written in collaboration with John Preston. McDowell was adept at writing within many genres, and collaborated with Dennis Schuetz under the joint pseudonym “Nathan Aldyne” to write four gay detective novels between 19 ( Vermillion, Cobalt, Slate, and Canary). His first novel, The Amulet, won McDowell particular praise for his ability to balance mundane normality with supernatural activity. McDowell began writing in college, and after graduating worked to support himself as a teacher, a theater critic, and a secretary at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before royalties began paying his way. He earned highest honors at Harvard University, graduating in 1972, and in 1978 was awarded his doctorate degree in English and American Literature from Brandeis University.
McDowell was born Jin Enterprise, Alabama, to an accountant and a social worker, and attended public schools in southern Alabama until 1968. He also has screenwriting credits for Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas, and wrote for the TV series Tales from the Darkside.
Michael McEachern McDowell was the author of a number of horror novels, including The Amulet (1979), Cold Moon Over Babylon (1980), and The Elementals (1981), as well as six serialized novels known as the Blackwater series (1983).
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