Writing a description of oneself in the fewest possible words is fraught with peril. I still don't think I've got it right. The official bio note from the jacket of Before I Wake, the Random House of Canada website and other such places is something like this:

Robert J. Wiersema is a bookseller and reviewer, who contributes regularly to the Vancouver Sun, the Globe and Mail, the Ottawa Citizen and numerous other newspapers. Wiersema is also the event coordinator for Bolen Books. He lives in Victoria, B.C., with his wife, Cori Dusmann, and their son, Xander.

Which says it all, I guess, while saying very little.

Back when I was writing for The Green Man Review, an on-line journal to which everyone should subscribe, I took another approach:

His mother likes to claim that she found him under a rock, but Robert J. Wiersema, former reviewer, was actually born in a small town 20 minutes outside the middle of nowhere. He spent his childhood in the circus, at times on the highwire, at others inside the machine that has the answers to all of your questions. After a long voyage by sea and a lengthy apprenticeship at the merciful hands of his wife and, later, son, he now lives in a castle by the sea, the yard of which needs mowing.

Robert has no hobbies, just passions: books, music, film and family. He plays no musical instruments save the stereo, at which he is quite accomplished, and is proud to have a much-loved music collection which includes more John Coltrane albums than a person has a right to (which is still not nearly enough) -- he's currently listening to an Emm Gryner CD, with the new Badly Drawn Boy on deck. He works in the book trade, bringing together authors and readers, and in his spare time reviews regularly for Quill & Quire magazine, the Vancouver Sun and a number of other publications and media outlets. He wonders whether the cigars he smokes while he reads for review purposes are tax-deductible, and wishes he had the courage to find out. He is currently at work on his third or fourth first novel (these things are so hard to keep track of), and when he has a spare moment, he'll mow the lawn. Honest.

Which says more, though it takes a few... liberties... with the literal truth.

Then, after signing the book contract with Random House Canada, I was required to fill out an author questionnaire, which ended with a request for a "brief bio blurb". I agonized over that piece, threw out more false starts than I'm comfortable admitting and pulled out hair by the handfuls. In the end, I went another way (if I had a family crest, that would be the motto: I went another way. In latin, of course.) I drew on my dubious skills as a journalist to create a third-person author profile, Robert J. Wiersema interviewing Robert J. Wiersema. It was the interview authors dream of: a sympathetic interviewer, good chemistry, good questions (if a bit on the soft-ball side). I like it.

To Chart the Darker Heart

So that's me. My life in a stolen moment, as Bob Dylan once said. Any questions? Click on the email button and I just might answer.