So it was around 7:45 AM this morning, just over an hour until Joe Biden’s inauguration as president, when I set off on the morning walk with Maura, our 10-year-old Siberian Husky who remains very healthy, happy, energetic, and full of love.

Our nation’s pageantry was happening on the other side of the continent in Washington D.C., and it played on the TV when we departed, a bit earlier than usual but Maura had requested it then and I could think of no reason not to comply.

We set off down the steep hill where we live in a small house built in the 1920s, now surrounded by much newer, bigger, and more modern homes of all manner of shapes and styles. Within five minutes we’d reached the bottom and I discovered an unusual site for this neighborhood: bags of clothes and boxes of discarded items to be picked up with the trash.

Maura and I crept up and my eye began searching for one item in particular, my prime vice, the book. There were a few genre titles, a Zig Ziglar motivational book, a very old advice for actor’s title, and then… two beat up paperbacks that would fit snugly but safely in my hoodie pocket: On the Road and Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino, a collection of “Ingenious, witty science-fiction parables.”

Then I opened up On the Road, as I stood there, on the road, and what did I behold? More than a half dozen makeshift bookmarks including TWO BUCKS! Maura and I then continued on our walk as usual and I puzzled over the serendipity until we got home a half hour or so later and I began the workday.

Then, a few hours later, now with a new president in office, as if to add an exclamation point on the morning, I sat down to get caught up on the email following a very productive phone call with a novelist to hear about his projects, and discovered an advertisement from a book publisher whose ads I usually take the time to check because their books are so amazing and sometimes they have great clearance sales, such as stuff half off. And behold:

OK!!! Message received loud and clear! I read On the Road twenty years ago during my “rebellious teenager” years and while I liked it the other beats – Ginsberg, Burroughs in particular – just seemed weirder and more interesting. I suppose it’s time I give Kerouac a second look now.

So what to make of this sign? I suppose it’s just an opportunity to say it: this year I’m going to focus more on culture and fiction than in years past. We’ve got some new titles coming soon from Liberty Island and announcements will be coming about our plans moving forward.

And in looking to the future we’ll be looking to our roots and to history. As LI’s founder Adam Bellow wrote in National Review when we were first beginning:

How do we fight back against this liberal establishment with its politically correct regime of thought control? There is only one way that I know of and that is by turning their weapons against them and channeling the spirit of the Sixties counterculture.

Want to join us as we map out our route forward in this new era? Click here to contact us. See the books in our catalog here – we publish all sorts from serious literature to fun genre thrills to quirky experimental titles. We’re especially looking for novelists, novel editors, and cover designers/artists as we begin to start publishing more titles. However: writers of other mediums, poets, critics, visual artists, musicians, screenwriters, playwrights, painters, cartoonists, filmmakers, translators, and creatives of all sorts, feel free to reach out too.

I know that a lot of people on the right side of the political/cultural/religious spectrums are justifiably down and disappointed today, and worrying about the future under a new administration led and staffed by those largely hostile to them and their values. I’ve heard plenty of apocalyptic proclamations about the coming repression of those who do not hew closely to every politically correct dictate. Those are legitimate fears.

But this is also a time of opportunity, a time for building something new. What ideas and principles will guide Americans in the coming decade? Which cultural values will be held up and celebrated? Will new countercultures arise to live apart from the dominant ideological narratives? What stories will fuel them? This year we begin writing our own story for the future we want to create.