Update on Atlanta Nights

FYI, if you want to buy a copy of Atlanta Nights for yourself or for a loved one, the money is going to SFWA's Writer Beware program, which warns authors about scam agents and publishers. Atlanta Nights was cooked up by several science fiction writers as the worst book ever written. They were successful in placing it with the HIGHLY SELECTIVE publisher, Publish America. But once PA found out they'd been stung, they withdrew their offer... bad press and all, y'know. You may order Atlanta Nights at Lulu.com. More lovely excerpts:

“I don’t feel very fortunate,” Bruce complained as his friend helped him from the low-slung red car, “I hurt all over and I don’t remember a thing after I left that bar over on Martin Avenue. I wouldn’t be surprised if the police didn’t want to talk to me about what happened. Not that I could help them because I don’t remember anything” he added as an afterthought.

Isadore pulled the collapsible wheelchair that he’d bought at Saint Irene’s Hospital from the open trunk of his new Maserati and unfolded it on the curb beside where Bruce painfully stood, his recent ordeal only recently over. He helped his chum sit in the new wheelchair, and then pushed it rapidly toward the gleaming doors of the high-rise tower. The soft Southern breeze blew the sweet scent of magnolias over them as he said, “This is certainly something new for me.”

“Never say that,” he replied.

Isadore shook his head, his red ponytail flipping in the soft breeze, as he wheeled his best friend into the lobby, past the uniformed security guard named Amos who saluted them and then into the elevator to the fourteenth floor of the luxury high-rise apartment building, recently built in downtown Atlanta.

The longtime security guard saluted the pair as they passed. What lucky people, he thought, so young and rich, they can afford to live here. Not like me. I have to live across town and wear a uniform and salute the young rich kids who make more money in a minute than I can make in my whole life.

Bruce thought that the dark elevator walls were closing in on him and despite the chill in the air-conditioned air he could still smell the flower smells from outside. The upward elevator started slowly into motion as if it was reluctance to climb the hundreds of feet. “Hurry up,” Bruce cried aloud.

Bruce pounded on the arm of his recently acquired wheelchair as his friend asked “Bruce, what’s the matter? Is y’all so impatient to get home that the elevator is too slow for you? Imagine if y’all had to take the emergency stares in your condition” he chuckled.

Bruce glared at his friend who stood behind him and the wheelchair as the elevator hissed to a halt on the fourteenth floor, the dark paneled doors sliding open with the sound of well-oiled machinery, and then he was pushed by his friend out into the hall and then down to the door labeled 1414, his apartment door.

Bruce searched his pockets for the key that he knew he did not have. “Dammit,” he said, and then, "They kept everything even my wallet at the hospital, how am I going to get it?”