it's a novel that you conceived of with a writer named doug doris. >> doug doris wrote the book, didn extraordinary job. the idea was to take a novel and to say what if someone left a novel in a library, a library obamacare an old library book, as it is. >> stephen: let me open that up like that. >> and you get in this sporty black case, and you tone up and you have a 1949 library book and if you look in the book, you see there's writing inside in the margins. and it's two people who have met through the book. the book bakes vessel of communication. it's sort of like an analog texting. ( laughter ) >> they're writing back and forth and investigating this writer, who essentially wrote the book. >> stephen: obviously, i know who b.m. shrock is. the book is shrokasian. is he a real person? >> no. >> stephen: there is a novel that is fake. and then the people who are writing to each other are also made up. so it's almost like it's three stories in one book. >> it's sort of a play on top of a novel. inside the book you get all these -- >> stephen: you have little bitsave newspaper in here