Malcomb Q Riddle is a pseudonym for the author, Marvin Furman, who is retired and living in North Carolina.

When he was twelve years old, young Marvin had three primary interests: baseball, writing, and the charismatic gangsters of the time. Eventually, his inability to hit a curveball ended Marvin's ambition to become a professional baseball player.

Fascinated by the notorious, incarcerated bank robber Willie Sutton, Marvin wrote him requesting a place in his gang after graduation. However, his subsequent failure of Sutton's Bank Robber's IQ Test dashed his hopes of ever making the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List.

The one area left to pursue was a writing career. Consequently, Marvin spent his adolescent years compulsively writing whatever came into his mind. He eschewed sports, academics, girl chasing, and becoming a juvenile delinquent to practice his writing skills. Since Marv spent all his waking hours with pen and paper, his mother feared his writing was becoming an addiction. She thought he'd be better off if he became a juvenile delinquent.

Marvin's obsession with writing continued through his impressionistic teen years when, instead of becoming a teenage werewolf, a choice inspired by the popular movie, he wrote poems and stories for his classmates. In those days, Marvin would hole up in his room, writing and smoking.

Before his writing addiction, Marvin never smoked. But as everyone knows, all great writers smoke. Shakespeare once said, "How can I be expected to write great plays when cigarettes have yet to be invented? I need a good smoke."

While growing up in a Bronx neighborhood frequented by "wise guys," Marvin was able to compile observations of their unique mannerisms, talking style, and dress. Some bizarre people in the neighborhood suffered from misunderstood mental problems that society, at that time, didn't understand and were intolerantly referred to as "crazies." Marvin crafted the distinctions of these diverse characters into his adult novel, "Genius Against the Odds."

Marvin has been able to pen another novel, a screenplay, and a TV pilot. He continues to write every day. And it is not because his writing compulsion controls him. No, it is because he fears becoming a werewolf if he ever stops.