Bad girls

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Susie Moloney

Early this month Susie Moloney found herself one of four writers taking part in a books-and-brunch reception at a swanky Toronto hotel.

When it was her turn to speak about her new supernatural thriller, The Thirteen, she first noted her presence amid an august company of fellow authors: 2007 Giller Prize winner Elizabeth Hay; 2006 Giller Prize winner Vincent Lam; and bestselling American novelist Erik Larson.

"I think I'm the Coca-Cola at this champagne party," she said.

In a recent interview Moloney, the one-time Elmwood resident, picked up on the conversation about on the lack of recognition afforded genre writers compared to her more garlanded literary colleagues.

"As a genre writer, you are the soda pop because people think you are for kids," she says defensively. "Adults are secretly addicted to you and everyone believes they'll get brain cancer."

Last year Moloney, who first gained noticed for her 1997 sophomore novel A Dry Spell and the 2003 haunted-house tale The Dwelling, sat on the jury for the inaugural Sunburst Award, presented annually to Canadian writers of speculative fiction. It's time the Atwoods, Ondaatjes and Toewses in the country shared podium time and media attention, she says.

"Genre writers are using otherworldly themes, whether it is science fiction, fantasy or the supernatural, to say the same things that literary writers are saying," Moloney says over the telephone from Toronto. "We say them faster and we say them with a plot."

These days, the blond 40-something mother of two boys splits her time between New York City and the East Kildonan bungalow she shares with boyfriend Vern Thiessen, the Governor General's Award-winning playwright whose historical comedy Lenin's Embalmers was produced here last fall by the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre. They both studied theatre at the University of Winnipeg and met again in 2006 at Phantompalooza -- the event dedicated to only-in-Winnipeg movie phenomenon Phantom of the Paradise. But the romance flared via email when he was at the Stratford Festival two years ago, working on Lenin's Embalmers, and she was here doing edits of The Thirteen, which is published by Random House Canada in Toronto.

"The emailing went from, 'We should have a drink' to 'I'll pick you up at the airport,'" she recalls. "He was reading The Dwelling. Who wouldn't fall in love with me after reading how effectively I can kill people?"

What makes this literary couple work, she says, is that both have achieved some success (Tom Cruise purchased the film rights to A Dry Spell for a lot of money, although no movie was made) and understand the lifestyle, the economic boom and bust -- the big cheques followed by no cheques.

The best thing about having two writers in the house, according to Thiessen? "Never having to explain that staring at the ceiling really IS work."

For Moloney, debating the big life questions at any time of the day can be an aphrodisiac.

"There's nothing hotter than wordy pillow talk," she says.

Her fourth work, The Thirteen is set in suburbia, where good girl Paula Wittmore returns to her hometown of Haven Woods because her mother is sick in the hospital. Once there, she discovers she has been lured home to fill a vacant spot in the circle of 13, a coven of witches.

The former Susie Schledwitz happily remembers the rows of neatly tended homes when she and her family moved to a new subdivision in north Winnipeg. The cruelly early death of her mother from stomach cancer darkened the 'burbs for the 11-year-old.

Later, as a single mother in East Kildonan, home-schooling her youngest son Michael, she threw herself into suburban-mom mode and discovered that behind the carefully manicured lawns and sturdy front doors lurked horrors of dysfunction and ennui.

"What I discovered is how complicated women are," says Moloney. "They are all witches in a way. We fix everything. When we can't, we fake it."

She also found they concealed a core of brutality in service of their families.

"The cruelty was directed outside and they were evil because, ultimately, I think all housewives are evil," she says. "I do think that in order to get the ultimate stay-at-home mom's life -- be slim and attractive, have beautiful kids, a successful husband and a beautiful home -- you need witchcraft, especially the thin part.

"The Thirteen is an examination of women's relationships."

The women in her book do some very terrible things for some very good reasons. One of them, Izzy, she calls the best villain she has ever drawn. When the reader discovers why she is so nasty, Moloney believes they won't be able to help but respect and feel for her.

Moloney confesses she's a part of the coven.

"I'm bad because I have a lot of bad thoughts," says Moloney. "I allow myself to indulge these bad thoughts because it is research."

Thiessen has been intrigued by his partner's writing and the questions it raises about humanity.

He says, "She has the unique ability to make you wonder if normal people are evil or whether evil people are normal."

kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca

Book launch

Susie Moloney

The Thirteen

8 p.m. today

McNally Robinson Booksellers

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 9, 2011 D1