Author Miles Joyner: Laughing Out The Matrix

In this month’s instalment of “Author(ized) Accounts of the Paranormal and Unexplained,” Miles Joyner, author of Bazaar, will tell us the story of the mysterious side effects of his sleep deprivation during the pandemic…

Many desktop computers can be left on for days, even months without harm to their hardware. Laptop machines can be a little different. They can overheat, even blow up into flames if left on for hours without at least a shutdown or going into sleep mode.

Turns out as humans we’re more like laptops. I found that out the hard way in the first year of the pandemic. I was two years into my dream job as a video editor for a popular network when the lockdown made it into a nightmare. First came the remote work requirements which many excitedly welcomed, one co-worker even suggesting we throw a party for the office with bottles of Corona once this whole fiasco was ‘over.’ Professional athletes had to isolate themselves like everyone else due to COVID protocol making our network so desperate for content for our audience that we even resorted to broadcasting virtual basketball simulations in place of actual games. We were making it work, but it became even more difficult to maintain optimism when the layoffs came. I realized this wasn’t another Swine Flu or SARS scare as I watched legendary talent respected by thousands of our audience given a 2-week notice. I figured at any moment, it would be my name called for a final Teams meeting.

So thinking that the world was ending, I figured I’d go out with a final film. Three months of spending every last dollar I made (including cleaning out my 401k) on my passion project along with an average of six hours of sleep a WEEK, I started to obviously suffer some health issues. One was paradoxical laughter. Think of the funniest thing you’ve ever witnessed. Whether it was a friend’s drunken antics or a Chappelle’s Show skit. Multiply that laugh by ten decibels, add in convulsions on the floor, and boom, you’ve got an unmedicated Joaquim Phoenix Joker.

I was finally rushed to the ER around New Years by a family member when I started to hallucinate. I thought a former associate of mine was in danger by an organization of assassins. In the state of psychosis, I figured it was best to use my voluntary admission as a way to ‘buy time’ while I formed a plan to save him. There were multiple scenarios running through my mind that would get described as mental illness symptoms called racing thoughts. Was my former friend really in danger? Or was this a conspiracy to sabotage my movie? Was I getting blackmailed for my screenplay? Nothing was too ridiculous for me to picture.

When I got to a room on the floor of the ward, I finally fell asleep after at least three straight days of manic confusion. But things would only get weirder.

In the middle of the night, I was awaken by knocks on my patient room’s door. I refused to answer it but then I heard a loud audio track being played on the other side. It was laughter. Loud, psychotic, laughter. Even more terrifying than Heath Ledger’s laugh as he slowly walked up to Gotham’s crime bosses. I got up from my bed and answered it. I thought I was being blackmailed and I came face-to-face with a large solidly built man in a face mask, but he looked like he wasn’t just following COVID protocol. Everything except the top half of his face was mummified and he was holding something wrapped in the form of a hidden weapon.

“Are you ready for your medication?” he asked me.

“No,” I immediately replied and I shut the door. I thought the ward was being infiltrated by the hit squad sent to kill my former associate, so I hid under the patient bed to wait for the police to arrive. About five minutes later, there was another knock on my door.

It was another man in a face mask. He also looked like a staff member who could’ve been working for the hit squad, but when he told me “We can talk about anything you want,” I figured it was a code to let me know he was on the ‘right side.’

We walked down the hallway of the ward. The massive man who had visited me earlier was sitting on one of the couches like a seated statue, but his face mask was removed. The new staff member asked me some questions that I answered truthfully. I knew the rescue team was going to break into the ward at any moment. I knew this guy in the face mask was an undercover pretending to work for the hit squad, but was really there to save me. 

But he wasn’t there to save me outside of giving me some medication and no rescue team would show up. Because none of it was real. It was just crushing paranoia caused by consistent insomnia. A side effect of a health condition. Nothing more, nothing less. At least that’s what the doctors told me.

I ended up making a full recovery and I haven’t seen the inside of such a place in years. It was important to move on, but I needed something to take with me from the experience instead of just a doctor-prescribed cocktail.

Soon enough, I realized even though I was never been in danger from a hit squad, the thought of being on the run from them made for a pretty exciting story. Even more exciting when you involve people whose careers were to stop them.

Bazaar comes out March 24th, 2025 via World Castle Publishing.

Author Interview

The Night Librarian: It sounds like you put a lot into your job! How has your profession influenced your writing? 

Miles:  It allows me to be a professional storyteller pretty much 24/7. When I’m not working on a novel, I’m either editing a project or writing a screenplay. In Bazaar, my filmmaking aspirations seemed to influence the multiple POVs throughout the book. I’m reading more fiction than watching it on a screen these days, but it’s pretty awesome that I get to cut visual stories together on a daily basis for a living. Especially in the world of documentary filmmaking. 

The Night Librarian: How do you do research for your writing?

Miles: A combination of firsthand experience, research, field research, and advice from experts in fields for certain characters. For the subject matter in Bazaar and its future installments, the key books or essays I read were Brave New War by John Robb, (As well as his blog) The Dark Net by Jamie Bartlett, Illlicit by Moises Naim, Click Here to Kill Everybody by Bruce Schneier, The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond, and Assassination Politics by Jim Bell. For research on executive protection and tactics, I used YouTube, articles on the Internet, interviewed a bodyguard, and consulted with a friend who served on protection detail in the military. As far as characterization and the DC/MD/VA locations + culture, that’s all really just imagination based on real life experiences or influence from different fiction that I love.

The Night Librarian: Are you working on a new project right now? What can you tell us about it? 

Miles: I am in post-production on the film for my other technothriller passion project, Compound, and I’m also putting together the first novel in its universe. I juggle that while doing some additional research for the planned third book in the Bazaar series and making additional edits to the sequel, Shifta.

Follow Miles: Instagram | Twitter/X