Chances are, if you emailed me this autumn past you received a terse autoresponse claiming that I was too busy to respond, thanks to some hush-hush project that might implode at any moment. Over in Poland, readers of Nowa Fantastyka might have noticed that my column in that magazine went dark about the same time. A number of you have enquired as to just what I was doing all fall.

As it turns out, the answer is: well, nothing. Nothing at all.

As of yesterday, you could be forgiven for thinking that I’d been hard at work on a new book with the intriguing title Person of Interest Novel #1, release date March 29, that’s just gone live on Amazon websites around the world. Certainly a bunch of people in Japan seem to think so: as of five minutes ago Novel #1 is the #1 best-selling Media Tie-in at Amazon.co.jp and their #31 best-selling title overall. Which means that in Japan at least, it’s kicking the ass of the new Star Wars novelization by Alan Dean Foster (and absolutely whipping the ass of 50 Shades of Grey). I have no idea how to interpret this beyond concluding that someone must have hacked their servers.

In fact, though, the book is not coming out on March 29. Nor is it called Person of Interest Novel #1. I was hoping it would be called Person of Interest: The Hephaestus Iteration but I can’t even swear to that; the same pitch that Warner Brothers enthusiastically approved in October got a pin stuck in it by Bad Robot in November, because they want the story to dovetail with a finale that I haven’t seen yet. I can’t even say for sure the damn thing will even happen, because various suits and higher-ups reserve the right to junk the whole project if they don’t like the detailed outline. And I can’t write said outline until someone tells me what characters I can use, or what shape they’re going to be in when I get them. I would be sworn to silence even now, were it not for the fact that someone jumped the gun and released all those Amazon pages into the wild. As of yesterday, though, mute is moot.

What I can tell you is that this is the risk you run when you write an extended blog post both praising Person of Interest for its smarts and its depth, and critiquing it for clunky writing. There’s always the chance someone might show up at your In Box to say “All right, smart guy: you show us how it’s done.”

Which is what happened to me back in July. Titan Books threw down the gauntlet: how could I not pick it up? A chance to play in that sandbox? A chance to dance with that particular Machine?

Of course, the deadline’s very tight, they told me. We’re talking a spring release, so you’ll have to clear your calendar for the next three months. Done. Done done done. Autoresponder engaged. NF Column hiatused. Intelligent Design and other assorted gigs backburnered or refused outright. There were contractual issues, but I figured we could work those through— because sometimes, as my buddy Mike Skeet opined, you just gotta tell the story.

Don’t get too excited. I haven’t told it yet.

Oh, I’ve plotted the thing out. I’ve written a couple of chapters. I’ve wined and dined computer nerds to pick their brains, lined up an ex NY cop to help me get the LE details right. But it’s not just Titan I’m dealing with here. There’s Warner Brothers. There’s Bad Robot. Every level needs to approve every stage (there’s always a chance this Watts guy could go rogue and turn Reese into a pedophile or something for dramatic purposes). And while you might think that J.J. Abrams would naturally give all his attention to an obscure paperback tie-in for one of his TV shows, turns out Bad Robot has a couple of other irons in the fire these days. Go figure.

So those three months have come and gone, and I’m still pretty much in the dark. I’ve retired the autoresponder for the time being, have started taking other gigs to fill the emptiness. I expect the project is still a go— we finally came to contractual terms at the end of November, so everything’s signed and official— but anyone expecting a March release is in for a world of disappointment.

I’m hoping to retain the basic premise, at least. I’m really excited about it, and it should be portable to a variety of contexts— but it all comes down to the glacial firing speeds of corporate synapses at three different levels. So I’m no longer waiting with bated breath. At some point they’ll give me something I can work with, and I’ll work with it. In the meantime, I’ve taken my life off hold.

After all this, though, it better happen.

Apparently Japan demands it.