Susie Moloney

AUTHOR, THINGS WITHERED, BASTION FALLS, AND MORE

What attracts you to the genre? Once you get to a certain age, you start to recognize the real fears are all personal. You’re afraid of the taxman, afraid of infirmity, or that something will happen to your children. Those fears can be blown up and made universal. You can create a horror scenario out of anything. I like the psychological aspect of horror, getting scared, and the adrenaline rush of fear.

What sets Canadian horror apart? We write smarter horror here. I don’t know if it’s because this is a country with a very good literary reputation or if nothing gets past the gatekeepers. Even when the story is about gore, there’s a generally believable motivation behind it.

How would you describe the horror community? It’s not like the theatre community where they see each other all the time and are in each other’s shows. Our writing community is we all read each other. You read the people you know, but also the people your publisher publishes, and the people you’ve heard of online. – Andrew Livingstone