The Torontoist’s visionary books page has taken a bold step against the trend and started publishing something called “fiction”. Remember that stuff? People used to read it all the time. And the good folks in the Big Smoke are betting you and your non-fiction reading friends are just about ripe for reclamation. Even more visionary? Their choice of inaugural “novelist” (def. one who writes lengthy but patently untrue tales for commercial consumption), part-time ‘Ninja Robert J Wiersema.

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 17 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.