What, Rob?  A new book deal?  How is it we haven't heard anything about this?

Well, you will.  Soon.

And yeah, after the weirdness of the other day, just in hearing about it, I was a bit prepared.  Nevertheless, it was quite a moment…  Yeah, it's done.  And here it is, in my hands…

Complete with blush-inducing tag-line from the Montreal Gazette: "One of our most promising and original voices"…  I'm just going to sit here quietly and wait for the other shoe to drop…

A note for posterity:  There aren't very many of these, distributed chiefly to the media and the trade, as is usually the case for ARCs.  Collectors disagree about whether an ARC constitutes a true first edition or not — I'm not going to leap into that fray (I save my opinions for fountain pen and Springsteen boards).  However, I will say this: this ARC DOES constitute a variant printing, if nothing else.  Yes, as is typical of ARCs, there ARE minor textual variations between this and the final version — I spent ten days going through these pages word by word at the beginning of the month — but that's not what sets this version really apart.  THAT would be the title page.

Take a moment — you'll see it.

Yeah, that.

For the record, it makes me smile…  And yeah, I had it fixed.

With Before I Wake, that moment came when I opened up that first book of Advanced Readers Copies (ARCs), and gasped, and wept, and held a lifetime's worth of hopes and dreams in my hands for the first time.  (Okay, that's perhaps a little overstated, but I think you see the point).

With The World More Full of Weeping, that moment came when I saw Erik Mohr's fantastic cover art.  It literally took my breath away, and made it real months before there were actually books.

For Bedtime Story, that moment came today.  No, I haven't seen an ARC, but the fact that I started getting emails from people who had received them brought the reality of the whole thing crushing down on me, fifteen tons of weird.

Part of the weirdness, I think, is that it's done.  DONE. DONE! A couple of years late, and after much work and angst, but DONE.  That's weird enough.

What really got me, though, I believe, was the fact that there were ARCs landing on desks before I had even seen one.  Now, I'll be getting mine in the next day or two — it takes a little longer for a package to travel from Toronto to Victoria than it does for one to travel across town — but that's not actually the weirdness.

No, the weirdness comes with the fact that, for the first time, the book is going out into the world completely outside of my control.  For the past four years, I've controlled who read it, and when. I've spoken to everyone who touched it.  I knew which pages were where at all times.  I was in control, dammit (well, as much control as one can be when one is in the throes, but that's another post for another time).

And now I'm not.  Now it has a life of its own, completely outside of my control and, to a very, very great degree, out of my awareness.  As of this morning, it's not mine anymore.

And that's a good feeling, it's just a strange one to get used to.  It's done.  It's out in the world.  And now all I can do is watch.

So, Rob, what have you been up to since the last time you checked in hereabouts?

Well, the short answer is "working".  The long answer, sadly, is also "working".

Bedtime Story is finished, and off to the copy-editor (if you click on that link, you'll note that the publication date has shifted slightly, and the book will now be available November 2 in Canada, two weeks later than the previously announced October 19).  I'll be getting the pages back shortly for a not-quite  final once-over (I'll look at the first pages as well), and then the machine will kick into high gear: ARCs, pre-publication promo, review mailings, etc, etc.

The book will make its semi-public debut on Tuesday, July 13 at an Author Breakfast at the Western Reps summer trade fair, a chance to talk about the book to a roomful of my left coast bookseller peers.

Let's see, what else has happened?

Well, I've accepted an invitation to teach a week-long fiction workshop in Scotland next spring, at the Moniack Mohr Writers' Center.  I'll be there from April 11-16 — it'll be my first time ever in the UK, so I'm very excited about the whole thing.

I've also accepted an invitation to appear at the Vancouver International Writer's Festival in late October — I'm thrilled to be invited!  It'll mark the book's public debut — the festival takes place just before Bedtime Story comes out, but it WILL be available there.  SO thrilled!

There's also been some business-type stuff that we've been working on, and there should be some announcements made in the next little while, so keep your eyes open for that.

On a more nuts-and-bolts level: one of the things that has been happening over the last couple of months has to do with what, and where, you're reading.  I've been working with the good (read: visionary) folks at redwerks.org on a wholesale re-vamp of robertjwiersema.com, just in time for the new book.  They've been very generous with their time and efforts, and I think the results are going to be fantastic — they've got a great combination of technical knowledge, artistic skill and client-intuitiveness.  I'm very pleased.

Truth be told, though, that process is part of why I've been neglecting this blog of late (no, not an excuse — there is no excuse — but an explanation).  Rest easy, though: I see a LOT of blogging in my future.  And not just the usual mix of personal and self-obsessed: I've got a lot of deeper things that have been percolating in my head for a while, and I want to spend some time exploring them.  And what better place than here!  So stay tuned for pieces about the disappearance of genre, the myth of the unsympathetic main character, and a post in which I call out Margaret Atwood.  You won't want to miss that!

Bedtime Story will be released, in Canada, on October 19, 2010. Other territories will, hopefully, follow — my agent is taking news of the book to the London Book Fair next month. My fingers will certainly be crossed.

As to perhaps the more important issue (ie, what it's about), I'm going to reprint here what the foreign publishers will be seeing at the Book Fair, and pretty close to what booksellers will be seeing in their upcoming catalogs and rep appointments:

Following his bestselling 2006 debut, Before I Wake, Wiersema returns to his exquisitely plotted blend of supernatural thriller and domestic drama.

Novelist Christopher Knox began his writing career with a bang. The echo of that success still rings in his ears as he sets to work every morning on his second novel, ten years later. His wife feels like a single parent, and with Chris living in exile in a studio above their garage, it won't be long before she is.
Chris discovers a fantasy novel by an obscure author he loved as a child and gives it to his son, David. Father reads to son nightly, and To the Four Directions soon enthralls him. Until one night, when young David is reading alone, an inexplicable seizure leaves him in a mysterious state of unconsciousness. As his seizure recurs every night, his father learns that only one thing will calm it, a bedtime story from his strange new book.
Convinced that the secret of David's collapse is within its pages, Chris crosses the continent in search of the truth. Meanwhile, David wakes up within the story he has been reading, and as his father struggles to free him, David struggles to survive, facing perils unimaginable in a world created to capture the hearts and souls of children like him. Both father and son are headed toward a fateful collision of worlds, and a showdown with ancient evils, both fictional and very real.

That's all I'm saying at the moment, but you can bet I'll be talking a LOT more about this in the coming months!

This Saturday afternoon, March 20, 2010, at 2 pm, I'll be reading at the Agassiz branch of the Fraser Valley Regional Library, better known (in my mind at least) as The Library.  I'll spend the afternoon mere meters from my old high school, reading from The World More Full of Weeping, talking about how Henderson is in no way Agassiz (except those ways in which it is), fielding questions, and maybe, just maybe, giving a sneak preview from the new novel.

Hell, I might even have a title for the new novel by then!  Wouldn't that be a treat.

So yes, Saturday afternoon at 2 at the library.  It's Agassiz — I don't have to give you an address, do I?

See you there.

And by "moral quandary", you should understand I actually mean "trying to avoid seeming a hypocrite, especially to myself".  Because I'm skirting a fine line, and I know it.

Here's the thing.  It might comes as a surprise to both of you, my faithful readers, but I am NOT a sports fan.  Not in the slightest.  I would be hard-pressed to care less about the fate of the Canucks or the Lions or the Yankees or <insert team name here>.  I just don't care.

That being said, for a long time I was an ardent Olympics fan, of both the sporting events themselves and the movement as a whole.  There was something about the once-every-four-years cycle anticipation, the stories of amateur athletes, the emotionally-affecting opening ceremonies (yes, even the lengthy inward parade of the athletes).

The bloom came off that rose a long time ago, though.  I don't know if it was the move to an every-second-year games cycle, or the granting of professional athletes the right to participate, or the seemingly sudden and at times obscene triumph of business over sport (which, now that I think about it, actually explains the first two factors), but of late, the Olympics have been… meh.  I'll still watch figure skating (shaddup), and medal round hockey, and events that I had never imagined an interest in…  I'm a sucker for those athlete profiles that most people seem to hate — what can I say, I'm a sucker for story.

And now the games are in Vancouver.

Here's the thing: I have been opposed to Vancouver hosting the Olympics since the bid-planning was announced.  Not out of some idealistic principle, but out of enlightened self-interest: you're going to spend how much of my money on this?  What if I need one of the hospital beds that has been closed?  What if someone I know needs those social programs that have been cut?  What if Xander wants to go to school, only to find that budgets have been stripped?  And hey, what if I could actually use some arts funding?

The announcement that Vancouver had won the games elicited… well, a groan, for starters.  And likely some obscenities.  Actually, strike that "likely".

And now the games are here and I'm mature enough to acknowledge a certain feeling of schaudenfraude about the balmy temperatures that are greeting the international winter sports universe (I'm not mature enough NOT to feel that schaudenfraude, but I am mature enough to admit to it.  That's something.)

So riddle me this, faithful readers: how the hell is it that I'm going to spend this weekend doing something I believe I swore I would NEVER do: hanging out in Vancouver for the Olympics?  Yup, come Saturday morning we're gonna hop the ferry, take the Canada Line in, and spend a couple of days in the belly of the beast.

You see my issue, right?  Why I might be feeling just a little hypocritical?

I've thought it through, though, and here's the thing.  Well, the list of things, actually:

1)    I lost my fight in 2003 when Vancouver won the Games.  They're going to happen whether I support them or not.

2)    Bearing the above in mind, I'm paying for them: I might as well get something out of my investment.

3)    I'm not going to any events (VanOC isn't getting one thin penny out of me), but who am I to let a perfectly good Cultural Olympiad go to waste?

4)     The Vancouver Art Gallery is free for the duration of the Games, and the world's foremost ten-year-old Leonardo da Vinci aficionado is going to go mental for that exhibit.

5)     There's something about the madness of crowds that's intoxicating — that's why it's called the madness of crowds.

6)    And hey, there's a free Wilco show Saturday night that I might partake.  Why not?  When in Rome, eat the bread, watch the circuses: you're powerless to do anything else.

So yeah, I'll be in Vancouver for (part of) the Olympics.  I'm seriously considering having a t-shirt made to read "My tax dollars at work": if nothing else, it'll save me a lot of muttering.

I know it's unlike me, and is completely at odds with my private, almost reclusive nature, but I thought, "What the heck, why not?"

So here it is.

So I'm not going to delay with this one.

Those of you who are friends on Facebook, or following me on Twitter, will recall a somewhat enigmatic note in December about having received an invitation for which I would need to buy a suit.  No, that invitation wasn't a summons, and I wasn't being buried.  I had, in fact, been invited by the BC Achievement Foundation to introduce Globe and Mail journalist Ian Brown at the luncheon to award the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction: he had been shortlisted for his book The Boy in the Moon, along with Karen Connelly (Burmese Lessons), Eric Siblin (The Cello Suites) and Kenneth Whyte (The Uncrowned King).  I was honoured to be asked to participate, most especially because I adored Ian's book — I followed his series about life with his disabled son Walker in the Globe and Mail, and looked forward to the book through a couple of postponements.  And hey, flying over to Vancouver for lunch?  Always a good thing.

But that left the perennial question — what to wear?  I don't own a suit, and, really, have no intention of owning one.  (I DO own a tux, though, so I'm not a complete loss.)  Once I got past that issue — ie, fuck it, I'll wear something… presentable — I was able to look forward to the event.  (For the record, "presentable" ended up being a faded grey shirt, black jeans, leather jacket and Docs.)

I had NO idea, though, just how cool it would end up being.

I got up Friday morning and wrote my speech — yes, WROTE.  Generally (ie, ALL the time), I just wing it when I'm in front of an audience, whether I'm reading or introducing someone.  I much prefer the spontaneous, the unplanned.  But, I figured, this was a special, more formal occasion (and besides, I wouldn't be dressing up, so I wanted to give a bit of a favourable impression).

The lunch was at the Pan Pacific, a short walk from the seaplane terminal.  During the reception I talked to a lot of old friends and folks from the industry, including my editor, Anne Collins, who was at the ceremony becase she had edited three of the four shortlisted books (yup, a gasp would be apropriate here).  I also had a chance to touch base with Ian ahead of time, then it was on to lunch.

Lunch was… well, let's just say that I was seated at the head table, with Premier Campbell and his wife Nancy, Madam Justice Kathryn Neilson, former publisher of the Sun & Province Paddy Sherman, and former CBC icon Jugen Gothe, among others.  Premier Campbell reiterated what a fan he had been of Before I Wake (I just went looking for the original blogpost he wrote about the book, and found that it's listed under his favourite books on his Facebook profile…), and that he had bought a copy of The World More Full of Weeping, though he hasn't read it yet.  Which, disagree with his politics as I might, was pretty heady stuff.

The speech itself went spectacularly.  I've spoken to enough audiences to know when I've got them and when I don't, and I had this crowd from the slightly-off-colour joke that I led off with (which I won't reproduce here).  The response, after Ian was awarded the prize, was off-the-charts.  When the author you're talking about tells you he misted up, that's a good sign. When one of the jury members tells you that the speech nailed EXACTLY what he had felt about the book, that's a good sign.  (A sidenote on that — that jury member was Andreas Schroeder, who seemed touched when I mentioned how much his compliment meant to me, considering his reading in Agassiz was the first literary event I ever attended.)

And then, like a blur, I was back on a floatplane and, without any time seeming to have elapsed, taking Xander to dance class.

It was a wonderful, surreal day — lots of good conversations, VERY positive interest, and with good prosepcts for the future.  One doesn't get days like that very often — it's best to savour them when they come.  It's a long way from a ten-year-old kid watching a man read from a book he wrote (and thinking "I want to do that") to a guy in jeans breaking bread with the Premier…

(An aside — one of the unforeseen benefits of actually WRITING a piece is that it can then be shared.  So now, for those of you interested, here's the speech that I gave:

A few years ago now – five, I guess – I spent a weekend in the summer following Bruce Springsteen around the Pacific Northwest.  I’ve done this, well, more often than I care to admit in such august company, but this trip, those shows, have really stuck with me.

One moment in particular stands out in my memory.  Springsteen was introducing one of his songs by talking about his childhood, his parents and grandparents and extended family, and how his own life had changed when he became a father.  He said – and I’ve checked the bootlegs, so I know the quote is correct – he said, “The first thing you realize when you have your kids is that there’s this feeling that appears in your gut that there’s nothing you wouldn’t do, no train you wouldn’t step in front of, to keep them safe.  And that’s a life sentence.”

That line was one of two that kept repeating themselves in the back of my mind as I was reading Ian Brown’s The Boy in the Moon.  Parental love is an indomitable force. We’ve all heard of situations where this isn’t the case, but we’ve heard of those situations because they’re the exception, not the rule.  Generally, parental love is one of the strongest forces in the universe.  It is fierce, and proud, and deep.  It is also, even at the best of times, tinged with sadness.  We know, as parents, that there will come a time where we will be unable to protect our children, where we will be unable to keep them safe.  We can only hope that we have guided them, and given them the tools and the skills they need to protect themselves.

Ian Brown and his wife Johanna were stripped even of that hope.  When he was seven months old, their son Walker was diagnosed with CFC, a genetic mutation so rare it has been called an “orphan syndrome”: only about 100 people in the world have been diagnosed with it.  Walker is developmentally delayed, and incapable of speech. He is hypersensitive to touch, but he has to be restrained to prevent him from hitting and kicking himself.  He has a heart murmur, and his vision and hearing are compromised.  He can’t chew or swallow easily.

As Brown writes, “Sometimes watching Walker is like looking at the moon: you see the face of the man in the moon, yet you know there’s actually no man there.  … All I really want to know is what goes on in his off-shaped head, in his jumped-up heart.  But everytime I ask, he somehow persuades me to look into my own.”

Brown, who is one of Canada’s best known and most well-respected journalists, and the winner of numerous National Newspaper and National Magazine awards, first looked into his own head and heart in public in a series of articles he wrote for the Globe and Mail.  Those pieces drew an unprecedented response from readers.  I remember well, Saturday after Saturday, sitting down with my Globe, reading about Ian and Walker, looking across the living room at Xander, my son, and thinking “There but for the grace go I.”

Those articles grew into The Boy in the Moon, which is shortlisted for British Columbia’s National Award for Non-Fiction this afternoon. It is a brilliant, staggering, humbling and heartbreaking book.  Brown writes with sharp, occasionally disturbing candour and forthrightness.  He does not attempt to minimize the difficulties and frustrations of life as Walker’s father, nor to apologize or explain away his occasional stumbles and failings.  He is frank about the ongoing toll that Walker takes on his life, and on his family.  He does not, however, attempt to minimize the moments of joy, moments of connection, moments where he catches a glimpse of the boy in the moon.  Any parent, any reader, will relate to the hardships, and to the moments of sorrow-streaked joy.  “There but for the grace go I”.

The Boy in The Moon is a chronicle of Brown’s attempts not only to “deal with” his disabled son, but to find his meaning, and to find, for Walker, a place in the world.  Through this, Brown is also attempting to find himself, to find his own meaning, and his own place.  It is, at its core, an attempt to answer the most ancient of questions: what makes us human?

Brown writes of Walker, “He made me stretch for him; for inexplicable reasons I am grateful to him for that, always will be.  Where would I have gone, without him?  He was such a little boy, featherweight, dependent: whoever was with him was his world, and I loved being his world, if he let me.”

It was William Wordsworth, not Bruce Springsteen, who wrote the other line that haunted me as I was reading The Boy in the Moon: “The child is father to the man.”

He is, indeed.

Ladies and gentlemen, Ian Brown.

Today, though…

Well, I knew it was coming, but even forewarned, there's still something of a heady thrill receiving an edited manuscript back from ones publisher.  Well, a heady thrill, with a healthy dose of anticipatory nausea.

I have a ritual, for times like these.  I open the package, I take a quick look at the notes, I glance through some pages, looking to see how many markings there are on the page, and then — this is the crucial step — I close the box and ignore it, for at least 12 hours.  Let my initial feelings of shock and dismay fade…

This time, though, I added a step.  I took a photo:

Sorry for the grainy cellphone-ness of it, but I wanted to capture the moment.

I've included a copy of Before I Wake for scale.

I heard that!  That *gasp*.

Would it comfort you to learn that on the FedEx waybill, the package was listed as weighing 12 pounds?  No?

Me neither.

I guess I know what I'm doing after Christmas…