February 24th is a sacred day of the year to Twin Peaks fans. The day has been rebranded as “Twin Peaks Day” over the past couple of years—the day that Agent Cooper rolled into town. (Unless you are Showtime, then you celebrate on February 26th because why fact check when you cash a check.) Five and a half years ago, I had one of my ideas. I was driving late at night coming back from a highschool football game. The rest of my family slept in the dark van while I talked on the phone with John Thorne. We spent the entire two-hour drive debating the recently released Mark Frost book, The Secret History of Twin Peaks. The two-hour drive never went quicker. When I got home, I was unloading the car as the family walked like zombies from one sleeping place to another. I was pulling a box of leftover pizza out of the car, when an idea hit me like I stuck a fork in an electric socket—a magazine about Twin Peaks.
This was October 2016. I know that seems like forty pandemics ago, but it really wasn’t that long ago. The culture was pretty much as it is today. Everyone lived on their phone, print media was dying, and no one liked to read. Youtube cat videos were just as popular in 2016 as they are today. I had not published anything in print at that point. I didn’t know how to manage a magazine. I didn’t know how to get anything printed. I wasn’t best friends with the Post Office staff, I didn’t know any Twin Peaks actors, and I didn’t know what an “InDesign” was. I knew one thing: I loved Twin Peaks and I wanted a magazine to cover the new series that was just about happening again.
Yesterday, I read a tweet from Jeff Jensen who said that Entertainment Weekly, along with four other major magazines, would no longer be in print. I understood why, even though I wasn’t pleased with the news. I can say that even if I knew then what I know now, I would still have started The Blue Rose magazine. But I probably would have been a lot more scared than I was. I can tell you, and Courtenay Stallings can back me up, I was full of hope when we started this magazine. I was certain we were going to sell thousands of copies. What I didn’t know, and what EW knows, is that no one wants to pay money to read something. No one wants to pay for something to be mailed to them. It should just show up on their Kindle, or computer and it should be free, like porn.
Over the years, The Blue Rose has hit huge heights (the day before Part 17 & 18 aired) and huge lows (the pandemic when many countries just threw Issue 13 in the trash instead of delivering them, and I had to pay to reship all of them out of pocket). But I have loved every moment. As interest in Twin Peaks has gone back to before 2016 excitement, postage has gone up from $1.60 an issue in America to $2.30 and from $6.04 to $8.00 overseas, paper costs have gone sky high, envelopes have become hard to find, and the cardboard backings are just out of stock indefinitely, I am still in the game. In a few days, The Blue Rose hits five years old. February 24th, which will always be “Twin Peaks Day” to most, will be the birthday of The Blue Rose to me. We published Issue 1 on that day in 2017 and started a journey which covered 15 issues, an art issue and books about Laura Palmer, and my upcoming Fire Walk With Me book which Jeff Jensen wrote the foreword to.
I am not ready to call it quits and neither is The Blue Rose staff. So check our social media on the 24th for an exciting announcement. I have been teasing it for a while with clues like “6. Your Freckled Face.”
We hope you will continue to support us and understand that even big magazines like the EW can’t make it during this time of struggle in getting the supplies that are needed to print something. Print matters to me. I like to go back to my old articles and find them. I know the script for FWWM is online, but I like my three-ring-binded copy that also holds my Star Pics cards in them. I am old school. I am not of this time. I want to create things that are quality, colorful, and worth owning. I hope you enjoy those things too. I can tell you that The Blue Rose will never go to digital only. We offer the Kindle versions, but The Blue Rose, just like me, will always belong in the world of Print.
Scott Ryan is the managing editor of The Blue Rose magazine, the author of Moonlighting: an Oral History, Fire Walk With Me: Your Laura Disappeared, the co-president of Fayetteville Mafia Press and the host of The Red Room podcast.
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