As promised, some news, direct from books.torontoist.com:
The editors of Books@Torontoist are proud to announce the publication of an original story by Robert J Wiersema, bestselling author of the novel Before I Wake (now published in ten countries) and the novella The World More Full of Weeping. The story, “Just Like the Ones He Used to Know,” will be serialized on the site in eight daily posts, beginning on Thursday, December 16 and ending on Christmas Eve. The story of a man who makes a mysterious journey to his home town on a stormy Christmas Eve, “Just Like the Ones He Used to Know” revives the Victorian tradition of ringing in the holiday season with a story of the ghostly and the miraculous.
The serialized story will be accompanied by photos and original illustrations provided by Torontoist’s stable of talented artists and photographers.
Rob was kind enough to provide us with an introduction to his holiday tale. Please read on and return tomorrow for the first installment of “Just Like the Ones He Used to Know.”
At first glance, there’s something a little counter-intuitive about a Christmas ghost story. After all, isn’t the season all about births and rebirths (depending on which point on the Christian/Pagan trapeze you occupy)? Well, yes.
And yet…
There’s a long history of ghosts and Christmas. One need look no further than what is perhaps the best known Christmas tale, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which has not one but four ghosts (don’t forget poor Marley.) And on the other end of the spectrum one of the best known ghost stories – Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw – which is deliberately framed as “gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be”.
Some of my favourite examples of the form, though, come from Robertson Davies, who collected, in High Spirits, 18 years worth of the Christmas ghost stories which he had delivered at the Christmas celebrations at Massey College. His ghost stories were a little on the lighter side (though in all fairness, compared to The Turn of the Screw, practically everything is at least a little on the lighter side).
When I was asked by Torontoist to write a Christmas ghost story to be serialized in the run-up to the festive season, I took it on as a challenge. I had a limited time to write the story, which meant an even more limited time to gestate the story. I thought, for a time, that I might write something humourous. Or something Toronto-based. Then I thought I might write something personal, a bit revealing. But then, as these things do, the story bubbled to the surface of my mind, almost fully formed, and completely different from anything I could have consciously devised. So it goes.
Although it’s a ghost story, “Just Like the Ones I Used to Know” goes back to those things which are, to me, the fundamentals of the season: warm houses, snow-storms, travel, food, and family. It’s set in the fictional B.C. town of Henderson, and it’s about coming home, and what that means.
You should definitely click over to books.torontoist.com (right now) to see this announcement in its proper setting, with an example of the art James mentions in the release.
For the record, this is the story that I was writing in the early part of this month. I'm actually very pleased with it — it came in on-time, at-length, and it does exactly what I want it to. Which, really, is all a writer can ask.
Speaking of asking: when James asked me to write this story, I had mixed feelings. Traditionally, I'm not good with deadlines (which might well be the understatement of the decade), and I was decidedly overbooked. There was a novel to finish, and reviews to catch up on, and all the ancillary stuff of work and life to contend with. But we spent some time talking it through when I was in Toronto last month, during a boozy late afternoon at the See Hai Lounge in lovely North York, and by the end I was committed.
Thankfully, the writing came easily, and the story came out well.
Considering, though, that last November I signed on with CZP to publish The World More Full of Weeping over drinks in a Toronto bar, and now this, I'm starting to think I need to spend more time in bars when I'm in Toronto.
So, that's the news. I hope you read the story, and enjoy it.
