Yeah, okay. Time for full disclosure.

So there is exactly one and only one way to read the new thing I am writing. So, yeah. If you like my books, this one is free, and a new chapter comes out each week. A brief historical overview:

1. Several months ago, This Is Not Tom was created as a riddle site by a young man named Alexander Basalyga (real person, real college student, real genius).

2. For several weeks before Hank and I stumbled across This Is Not Tom, I had been receiving a series of strange emails from someone who claimed that all these unusual things had happened to her, including high-quality virtual-reality encounters with the novelist David Foster Wallace and a bunch of other hyperreal gaming experiences she referred to as "experations." She also claimed that she had no "access" to her identity.

2a. I never replied to these early emails (there were about 20 of them). I get a lot of emails, and honestly as weird as these were, they didn't seem that weird.

2b. When I first heard about This Is Not Tom, I became obsessed with solving the riddles, but I suck at solving riddles, so I did a blogtv show in which nerdfighters helped me figure them out. Later that night, I got a skype friend request from someone, and it turned out to be the young woman who was sending me the emails. She wanted me to tell her story hidden behind riddles on this is not tom. She didn't want the story to be text-searchable (which it isn't), and she felt that hiding it behind riddles would protect the story from search engines (which it has).

2c. I discussed this idea with Alex, who both agreed to participate. Every week since then, Alex has uploaded a new video to the isthistom youtube channel. That video leads you through a series of riddles that ends with a chapter of the story.

3. That evening, I spoke to this person, briefly, on skype, and I heard her voice, because I wanted to confirm that she was A. serious and B. not Hank and C. not anyone else I know. From speaking to her, she struck me as a totally convincing teenager(ish).

4. No, I am not making this up.

4A. Obviously, it is possible that she is making it up. Honestly, I hope that she is, because otherwise she is probably mentally ill. I'm very interested in this young woman's identity, not least because I want to make sure her family knows what's going on. But she has gone to elaborate lengths to conceal it--or, I mean, I suppose it's theoretically possible that she genuinely doesn't know who she is. Regardless, she seems totally convinced that people are really, as they say, out to get her.

5. So, yeah. I found the bones of what she was telling me interesting enough that I started writing about it, first in cryptic little chapters and then in longer ones. To answer the questions I'm getting most often: Yes, she has told me more than I've written about yet. And yes, she still emails me at least once a week. (Portions of her emails, in fact, are inserted into the chapters.) And yes, I think I know approximately where she currently is, but only very approximately.

6. The reason I kind of danced around the fact that I'm writing this is because of the weird issues surrounding authorship. It is my story, and I'm writing it, but it is her life (or at least she seems to think it is), and in some ways she controls the plot.

7. The riddles Alex makes each week are beautiful and fascinating and deserve to be played, but if you want to catch up on old chapters directly, you can do so by scrolling down to the TINT Spoiled section of thisisnotforums.com.