From now on, when you see this action photo of me deep in book-signing mode, you might want to beware. When you see this title, you might want to take care. The headline and black-and-white image means we’re going off-road for a while, taking a rugged detour that’s still related to the harsh social issues I address in “Blood Red Syrah,” my first novel and gruesome California wine country thriller.

From now on, bloodredsyrah.com will reflect more than reflections on the book. This site now screams as a flashing red light and siren reflecting our growing state of emergency.

Whether you’re Antifa, Nazi or somewhere else, your words and deeds impact my life and how I live in the world. Stand wherever you choose. But you need to know where I stand because one day we might have to line up against each other.

More than two years after getting fired for alleged low ratings at WILK News Radio, I regularly encounter people who tell me how much they miss listening to me on the radio. I usually tell them not to pine because news talk radio is a mental wasteland of shallow proportion, a landfill into which intellect, reason and logic get buried to forever poison our identity and culture. People are better off reading the backs of cereal boxes than listening to erectile dysfunction ads on the public airways.

Every Saturday when I shop for groceries at Wegman’s in Wilkes-Barre Twp., people approach me to talk about how much they miss my take on national, state and local politics. I truly don’t miss most callers. But I do miss the power of the platform from which I can share my reports on matters that matter in our community. Like most people, I now lack a platform from which to speak publicly.

That’s why this website will now include more than blog notes on my novel. We can still talk writing, California wine and Central Coastal dysfunction, but we’re facing a national political crisis unlike any I’ve ever seen – one that bleeds directly into Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Good, thinking people deserve more than what they get from the bland day-to-day milquetoast media making money from our region. With few exceptions, print and broadcast outlets in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area are not aggressive enough to suit the troubled times in which we struggle to understand what’s happening to our future. Status quo newspapers , television and radio stations in Northeastern Pennsylvania fail to meet the challenge of questioning a system that essentially remains the same – a politically primitive and parochial tribal club run mostly by men (and women who do what men tell them to do) that takes care of its own.

Wilkes-Barre Mayor Tony George is a perfect example of our stunted ignorance. So is Lackawanna County Commissioner Pat O’Malley. Both men are washed-up political parasites running for re-election whose grasp of public service rivals the limp pieces of overcooked chicken on their plates at the next fundraiser.

No, that’s not another erectile dysfunction crack, by the way.

George makes Mr. Potato Head look like a Rhodes Scholar. O’Malley is the poster boy for bacon-flavored ignorance. Both pose contagious infection to unvaccinated and unsophisticated political followers.

Vengeance unites the region’s political parties – mostly white Democrats but enough white Republicans to put Trump in the White House with an over-the-top boost from bigoted, sexist Luzerne County Irish-Americans. As the 2020 re-election campaign is already underway, I’ll have more to say later about “Paddy’s Day in Trump Town.”

You can make book on it.

Most local media executives charged with the awesome responsibility of holding elected officials accountable are small time salesmen more concerned about increasing advertising revenues than telling the truth, spreading the bad news we need to hear, and fighting to right wrongs. Local publishers, editors, producers and program directors are lesser versions of their bosses. Afraid for their own future, they acquiesce, compromise and eventually give up, trading gutsy journalism for indentured service to the man. And it’s almost always a man – just ask the Lackawanna County Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey and U.S. Rep Matt Cartwright.

I’ve known a few good bosses in hard coal country, a few great ones, and an overwhelming majority of timid corporate grovelers willing to sell out their co-workers and themselves. We need a more aggressive press, a more opinionated press, and a more antagonistic press. Local American journalism used to have room for that – not much, but a place for outlaws who refused to crawl in or out of a room loaded with business pimps, politicians and thin-skinned bishops who want people to fear them.

Good journalism requires fearlessness.

So look out for the photo. Watch for the headline. Send your tips, story ideas and leaked government documents to steve@bloodredsyrah.com. I hold all communication in the strictest confidence. I even once dared a county judge to lock me up rather than schedule a taxpayer-funded hearing into trying to get me to give up a source.

Please join me in raising hell. Rock the boat. Sink the sonofabitch if necessary. But don’t give up. Don’t let them win. Nice, polite dissent never got anybody anywhere except nowhere.

Let’s start some shit.