People write for many reasons. Some dream of fame. Some of riches. Others are keen to get their brilliant ideas before the public.

"For me, it's fear," said Robert Wiersema. "I write out of fear."

He's only partly joking. The Victoria writer says his acclaimed first novel, Before I Wake (2006), was spurred by his trepidation over turning 30 and becoming a father.

His just-released novella The World More Full of Weeping -- about a boy who vanishes -- reflects his concern over allowing his son Xander, now 10, to become more independent.

And Wiersema's current novel-in-progress, which he's understandably reluctant to discuss at this point, concerns a father and a child in peril.

"Novella and new novel, all written out of fear," he said with a wry grin.

The World More Full of Weeping was released quietly last month. Published by the small independent press ChiZine Publications (their credo: "weird, surreal, subtle and disturbing dark literary fiction"), the slim book is written simply and well. It's about 11-year-old Brian, who one day ventures too far in a strange forest with disturbing results.

It was Before I Wake, a Random House bestseller, that made Wiersema a shiny new name to watch on the Can-lit scene. The book landed with a splash; reviewers praised the writer's skill and story-telling instincts. The novel is about a three-year-old girl who lapses into a coma after a hit-and-run accident. It then transpires the child possesses miraculous healing powers. To her parents' amazement, the sick and infirm line up to be cured.

Both Before I Wake and The World More Full of Weeping pit everyday domesticity against the fantastic. Wiersema loves exploring the contrast between the two worlds.

"The fantastic is a shot of whisky in your coffee," he said. "It doesn't change your coffee at all. But it certainly livens it up."

We spoke in a closet-sized "conference room" at Bolen Books, where Wiersema works as a bookseller and events co-ordinator. Bolen, one of the main bookstores in Victoria, regularly imports big-name authors for appearances. This is fun for Wiersema, who gets to hobnob with the big-shots.

He recalls gonzo writer Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club. His reading of a particular story was so graphic and disturbing, one Victoria attendee fainted. Yet Wiersema insists Palahniuk is "a really nice, really sweet guy" off stage.

Then there was the time Salman Rushdie read at Alix Goolden Hall. Because Rushdie was targeted by death threats after The Satanic Verses offended some Muslims, local police kept careful watch on the novelist.

"They actually went through the venue twice and they went looking for bombs," Wiersema said. "There were police officers stationed in the lobby of the Goolden."

As well as writing novels, Wiersema reviews books and smokes cigars. At the same time. He has a habit of plucking off cigar bands and sticking them between the pages.

"Some books are a one-cigar-band book," he said. "And you get others, like Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle. Each of these is probably a 25-cigar-band book."

He grew up in the small town of Agassiz. Wiersema remembers having an inkling he might become a writer as early as Grade 2. He drew a comic book about a Martian invasion. There was scads of words but precious few pictures.

His parents weren't in the arts. Wiersema's father was a first-aid attendant who also worked in construction. Mom was an office clerk. Still, both read fiction -- there were always books in the house.

In high school Wiersema was one of those brainy teens who made sure all his classmates knew it.

"I spent a lot of time getting beat up," he said. "I was never one of the popular kids. Which is awful. But it's great for a writer. You spend a lot of time by yourself."

Wiersema took an English degree at the University of Victoria. His focus was on post-structuralist literary theory in contemporary Canadian writing. He says he was "fairly insufferable" -- a literary snob.

His taste in literature become more populist after meeting his wife-to-be, Cori. She introduced him to such fantasy writers as John Crowley -- the kind of thing he once looked down upon. Wiersema found he adored Crowley's Little, Big.

His first bookstore job, at the now-defunct Book Warehouse on Government Street, also changed his ideas on books and writing. Much of what Wiersema read at UVic had been a chore. Yet working in the bookstore, he noticed something. People loved to read. And they loved to read everything. Some of the novels were high-brow, some not so much.

It was, Wiersema decided, all good.

His shift away from an academic point of view when it comes to literature is reflected in his writing style. Wiersema decided, as a writer, to strive for the sort of deceptive simplicity one might hear in a Miles Davis trumpet solo.

"I want to get the job done," he said. "If you're distracted by the sentence, then you're losing sight of the characters. And if you're losing sight of the characters, then you're losing sight of the story."