Author: Michael A. Ventrella

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Support your local bloggers

Some bloggers ask for donations or want you to become a Patreon or otherwise ask for your help in defraying the costs of running the blog.

Not me.  I just ask you to buy my books.

It’s a win – win. I get a small bit of income from each sale, and you get a great, fun reading experience and I keep the VentrellaQuest blog running, too.  And come on, if you enjoy my writing on this blog, you’ll probably enjoy the writing in my stories as well.

So let me tell you about my latest novel.

In 1897, Beverly Haddad is well aware that her sex and race will keep her from investigating the deadly and mysterious lightning strikes that have plagued New York. She seeks help from Police Commissioner Teddy Roosevelt, and soon the two find themselves hunted by a vast conspiracy known as Gideon’s Trumpet which has access to amazing new scientific devices never before seen. With the help of Mark Twain and others, they launch an attack, aided by Teddy’s new massive lightning gun, which he lovingly calls BIG STICK.

BIG STICK is now available in paperback and various ebook editions from Eric Flint’s Ring of Fire Press. Click here to read the first few chapters, and here to order your copy!

Big Stick cover

“Full steam ahead! With Big Stick, Michael Ventrella gives us a wild and thoroughly entertaining steampunk adventure featuring an improbable cast of historical figures, plenty of action, and lots of fun! Highly recommended!” – Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of Deep Silence and V-Wars

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“Memorable characters, snappy dialogue and plenty of action and adventure. Big Stick has it all. One of the best books I’ve read in a long while!” – Gail Z. Martin, author of Vengeance: A Novel of Darkhurst

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“Full of the best kind of steampunk adventure with one of the biggest personalities in American history. A great fun ride!” – Philippa Ballantine, co-author of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series

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“Big Stick doesn’t have everything. It has more than everything! A dynamic PoC secret agent! Teddy Roosevelt! Steampunk inventions! Real dirty politics in a fantastic might-have-been world! Rayguns! Airships! Assassinations! Teddy Roosevelt with a raygun! And a cover by Phil Foglio! What the heck are you doing looking at this stupid blurb? Buy this book and read it!” – Ryk Spoor, author of Grand Central Arena and Princess Holy Aura

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Dress Code

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Matt Bors

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Norwegian Would (This Trump has Flown)

I once had a job raking the leaves
Out in the woods
A socialist job keeping them safe
The best I could

A Scandinavian task that was needed it seems
I moved the leaves from the forest and into the streams

So day after day I raked away
Down through the snow
“An important task” they’d say when I’d ask
I didn’t know

It was demeaning and tiring and I couldn’t see
How this was a process done in any other country

So one day I stopped and took a break
There’s my mistake
The forest caught fire
I didn’t do good
But a Norwegian would

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Adding a fool to the fire

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Chris Britt

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There’s no conspiracy when we just have lots of ballots to count

Look, conspiracy-minded conservatives:

Liberals knew you guys would try to steal the election, so many of them voted in advance, to make sure there was a paper trail. They mailed in ballots.161108_EX_ballots.jpg.CROP.promo-xlarge2

Honestly, those ballots often aren’t counted unless the election is close. And that’s what has happened. In many races across the country, the counting is still going on. And there are sure to be challenges from the losers.

We could solve this kind of thing from happening, you know, if we just gave everyone automatic voter registration and had paper trails of every election. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about this sort of thing happening.

Oh, right, you’re the ones against that. That might mean the majority of Americans would vote, and then you’d lose almost every time.

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But … bone spurs!

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Andy Winters

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Good news about election 2018

We didn’t get everything we wanted, true, but only the most naive thought we would. Admittedly, I thought we’d do better than we did in the Senate, but there’s plenty of good news about yesterday’s election:make america normal

We took the House by a pretty big margin. This means there is finally a check on the President’s power. You know, how it is supposed to be no matter which party is in charge.

Colorado elected the first openly gay governor.

In Kansas and Wisconsin, conservative Republican governors who had ruined the economies with their stupid “trickle down” policies were rejected as both went Democratic. Kansas also flipped a House seat, with the first Native American woman being elected (who is also a lesbian).

We also elected two Muslim congresswomen, the first black congresswoman in Massachusetts, the first female senators in Arizona and Tennessee, and over 100 women to various offices.

Utah will never elect a Democrat, but new Senator Mitt Romney isn’t a crazy Trump guy, so that’s a half win and probably the best we can expect from Utah.

The bigot Kim Davis — the woman who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples — lost her seat.

Florida voted to restore felons’ voting rights. Everyone should have the right to vote, and with minor crimes now being categorized as felonies, this was a major prohibition. And it’s especially important in states where blacks are arrested with more frequency.

In Michigan, voters passed a referendum to end gerrymandering in their state by requiring an impartial committee to redraw districts.

Here in Pennsylvania, state-wide Democrats held their seats by really big margins. We made major gains in the gerrymandered state House and Senate (gaining 10 House seats and 5 Senate seats). We added four more Democrats to Congress (including flipping a seat in my district so now I have a Democrat representing me in Washington), going from 13 Republicans and 5 Democrats to 9 and 9.

Yes, Beto in Texas didn’t win, but he was never really expected to. He did much better than almost anyone thought, and he, along with other Democrats who did better than expected, show that the way to do well in red states is not to just be a “Republican lite.” After all, as it’s been said, if given a choice between a Republican and a Republican, voters will choose the Republican every time.

Florida and Georgia governor races were extremely close, and progressive black candidates did very well in these southern states. In Georgia, the person running the election was also the person running for Governor (this is like a judge deciding a case where he is the defendant). He’s a crook who cheated as much as he could to win, and the Democrat has yet to concede because the votes are very close.

So overall, a good night and a repudiation of Republicans and Trump. Not as huge as we had hoped, but still good.

 

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Statue of Limitations

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Robert Ariail

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Republicans are anti-democracy

The history of the United States is all about how those in power have done everything they can to keep the rest of us out of power.

While we are indeed a democratic country, we’re way behind other democratic countries when it comes to truly representing everyone.

The Constitution is part of the problem. The Electoral College and the way the Senate works means that property is more powerful than people, since the states are not evenly represented.  And the fact that we haven’t changed the number of members of the House of Representatives in almost 100 years also hurts.

But the people in power — here, the Republicans — have done everything they can to make sure that we, the people, are not represented. Through gerrymandering, voter suppression, ridiculous voter registration requirements, voter purges, limiting voter access and polling places, and otherwise making the most basic right in a democracy into a burden, they using every tool they have to prevent us from using our voices.wasserman2

And it’s tremendously hard for us to fight them. Thanks to the Republican-led Supreme Court, secret money can be channeled to candidates. Thanks to Republican judges in lower courts, voters can be denied their rights for things like having a PO Box instead of a street address in North Dakota even though it’s plain as day where you live and where it doesn’t even matter in a state-wide election.  And whenever there is a movement to make sure there is no voter tampering or Russian interference, the Republicans vote to do nothing and to shut down investigations.

And they’re cheating in other ways too, such as having the Georgia candidate for Governor oversee the election in which he is the candidate, which is like having a judge oversee a trial where he is the defendant.

Because they know their views are in the minority. They know that if everyone had an equal vote, they’d always lose. Our views are the majority views.

The only way we can be represented by doing what they don’t want us to do: vote. They can’t suppress everyone.

Republicans will do everything they can to win an election except get the most votes.

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The Music Man

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Darrin Bell