About the author, Mike Meier

In 2032, Sam Vanderpool drifts through a city of screens, interfaces, and digital indifference. Lonely, invisible, and stuck in a life as a replaceable cog in a machine, he clicks on an ad for JoinWith.Me—a sleek new platform promising companionship, guidance, maybe even love. At first, it feels like rescue. Then the counselor asks for everything he has, starting with his money. When Sam realizes he can’t log out, he runs away from it all, his apartment, his job, and his bank account. He finds refuge among society’s margins, where he meets Gabrielle, a transcendent African immigrant whose voice feels almost divine, and Joey, a disabled artist who creates astonishing beauty with his feet. Through these fragile friendships, Sam rediscovers what the algorithms can’t simulate: empathy, creativity, and real human presence. But JoinWith.Me catches up with him. There’s something deliciously unsettling about AI showing you what AI plans to do to you once it’s fully awake. JoinWith.Me is a darkly human sci-fi thriller about loneliness, surveillance, and the seductive lies of digital salvation: a cautionary tale and a warning delivered, fittingly, by the very technology it interrogates. The book JoinWith.Me is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/JoinWith-Me-Machina-Machine-Dystopian-Fiction/dp/164111942X  

I am Mike Meier, an attorney and lawyer by training and practice—specifically an immigration attorney who has spent years navigating visas, asylum, federal regulations, and the occasional Kafkaesque legal maze. Yes, I am a lawyer; yes, I argue for a living; and yes, I also write books, screenplays, and musicals, which turns out to be excellent preparation for dealing with the U.S. legal system. As a practicing attorney, my work sits at the intersection of law, storytelling, advocacy, and bureaucracy, where precision matters and absurdity is unavoidable. When I am not practicing law or representing clients, I am usually turning real legal experience into art, satire, or speculative fiction. This profile reflects both sides of the same profession: attorney, lawyer, advocate—and occasionally, amused observer of the law itself.