Dean always had a fascination with time and time related stories. A novelette he did in Crime Scene titled, When the Big Hand is On the Twelve involved a beat cop who has been given cryptic clues and has an hour to stop the assassination of a public figure. Towards the end he uses the last few pages to tell the story in "real time". Judging the average reading speed of a person, Dean had all the dialogue and action pace itself exactly as it would in real life. This drew the reader into the suspense of the story and made them nervous with the impending deadline.

With Tick Tock, Dean expanded the "real time reading" from a few pages to the whole book. From the first word on page one to the last word on page one hundred and sixty-two, everything happened at the same pace as it would if the reader was actually living the tale.

"That was the hardest thing I ever wrote! I was such a moron to try it, hahaha !", Dean once said in an interview.

After the sixth printing the title was changed to just Tick Tock.