Every turn-of-the-season (this one is publishing at the exact minute of the autumnal equinox), I'm offering readers of this website an update on my three major unfinished projects: the Journey Through Twin Peaks video series (begun in 2014), the written TWIN PEAKS Character Series (begun in 2016), and the Lost in Twin Peaks podcast (begun in 2018). Work on a fourth project, the Mirrors of Kane video series (begun in 2016 but based on an essay written in 2011), concluded this past winter and was released over the summer.
At the conclusion of the season that starts tonight, we will be one year out from my pause on exclusive Patreon podcasts in order to focus all of my attention on long-brewing, long-term projects. That said, I've ended up diverting some attention to submitting articles to a local (New Hampshire) publication, The Laker, including columns on film whose digitally scanned editions I've been cross-posting here every month or so. Nonetheless, the bulk of my online work time has been centered on Lost in Twin Peaks - the Patreon podcast I am re-editing and smoothing out for public presentation - which is proving to be about as much of a beast as it always has been since I began this part of the process in 2021. More details on my ever-evolving and closely-tracked progress on that front follow below, along with the status of other projects (although these have not changed since the previous update on the first day of summer). More specific daily progress can be tracked on this constantly updated page).
Mirrors of Kane COMPLETED on February 2
Finished & fully published in 2026:
chapter 3 - "Bernstein", chapter 4 - "Leland", chapter 5 - "Susan", chapter 6 - "Raymond" & chapter 7 - "Ring Around the Rosebud"
I wrote about the completion of this project in the first update. I'm very proud of the final chapter "Ring Around the Rosebud", one of my most ambitious video essays, which can serve as a standalone viewing experience as well as the conclusion to the rest of the series. I've added it to my "Top Posts" page and hope it can get more attention in the future.
Already published: trailer & chapter 1 in 2016; chapter 2 in 2021 + now, chapter 3 in May; chapter 4 in June; chapter 5 in July; chapter 6 in August; chapter 7 in September
Lost in Twin Peaks
Completed this year: Season 2 Premiere (#9), Current Events sections for Season 2 (#10E - 30E), Storyline sections for Season 2 through the end of the Laura Palmer investigation (#10C/D - #17 C/D)
Currently working on: Storyline sections for the rest of Pre-Finale Season 2 (#18B/C/D - 29B/C/D)
What remains: In the Weeds sections for Season 2 (#10F - 30F), Mystery sections for Season 2 through the end of the Laura Palmer investigation (#10B - 17B), Welcome & Archive sections for Season 2 (#10A/G - 30A/G), Storyline sections of Season 2 Finale (#30B/C/D)
When we last checked in on this, I was just beginning my work on one of the shorter but more complicated categories of daily episode in this weekly podcasts: the "Current Events" coverage which will publish on Wednesdays and explores what was going on in TV, film, world news, and the contemporaneous cover story of Time Magazine at the time each episode aired in 1990 and 1991. This is now totally finished, the first time I can declare an entire section of the entire podcast to be complete across all forty-six episodes. The stories discussed sometimes felt quite historically distant, at others all too immediate - see, for example, the image chosen to illustrate Lost in Twin Peaks #22E as well as the top of this update post! In addition to re-editing the material recorded and published back in 2019 through 2021 when I presented this podcast to Patreon, I also added some new inserts including sobering updates on the author of the "Evil" Time cover that (miraculously) coincided with the Black Lodge finale. And I added clips from relevant early nineties media to the end of each episode - the only part of this I'd begun before the last update.
The current events episodes were finalized on August 3, and that day I began working on storyline episodes (split between stories centered on Laura Palmer one day and non-Laura subplots the next, at least for the episodes where the investigation into her murder is ongoing). I spent a month re-editing all of the audio for the investigation episodes and then several weeks organizing the show notes to go with each of those episodes. This group was finalized a few days ago and on Sunday night I began working on the next group, in which storylines are divided over three episodes instead of two (split up as Cooper-centered stories to be published on Sundays, non-Cooper stories introduced in season 1 on Mondays, and non-Cooper stories introduced in season 2 on Tuesdays). I'm currently cutting up and smoothing out the audio for the first post-investigation episode, with fifteen minutes of material fully re-edited and cleaned up (with corresponding show notes) at the time of this update.
Because the whole timetable of re-packaging season 2 was so frustratingly hard to gauge, halfway through the summer I composed a word document that I still attempt to update daily. At that time fifty-three hours of audio remained to re-edit; if I completed a half hour every day I could reach my goal of finishing the entire podcast by October 30 (at least the re-editing portion, if not show notes and recording new intros, inserts and so forth). This was a useful date for many reasons, including that it allowed such a neat division (one hundred six days, hence the half hour daily), but particularly because I would like to start presenting the podcast again on Halloween and it would be nice to have everything done before then. Nice but, of course...not very realistic. It won't surprise anyone, least of all me, that in the months since starting up this tracker I've far more often completed zero seconds of re-edited audio than a half hour. It's not impossible that the pace could pick up, especially if the later season 2 episodes end up being cleaner and need less work than the earlier ones - which is what I remember being the case with the current events sections. Nonetheless, the numbers don't look good.
As of yesterday, my current average pace is producing less than ten minutes of finished audio which means it would take me until June 3 to finish re-editing. Although concerning, I think this pace is slower than what the average will end up being. However, in order to finish by the original goal of October 30, I'd need to average over an hour every day between now and then which is very unlikely. That said, I've already had a good day today which will bump these numbers when I update the tracker. Since July 17, I've re-edited eleven hours and eighteen minutes of audio (out of fifty-three hours remaining on the 17th) and finished thirty-eight show notes (out of one hundred forty-seven remaining on the 17th). As of yesterday, that put me nearly twenty-three hours and twenty-nine show notes behind the pacing target to finish on October 30. Optimistically, I can pick up the pace a bit, get enough going to at least publish some season 2 coverage this fall, and then finish the behind-the-scenes work this winter after some sort of pause, although the nature of that pause - how long, and for what - hasn't quite been figured out yet.
Initially, I planned to pause this cross-category approach and return to an episode-by-episode approach on October 1 but I think I'd like to stick with it a little longer than that, to see the storylines through to the penultimate episode (I'll focus on the finale only when everything else is done). If I do that, I'll decide afterwards if I want to stick to an October 31 kickoff for publication or if that will make me fall behind too quickly and thus should postpone publication until I've gotten more episodes done. As discussed below, this will also be impacted by a switch in project focus come November, partly so that I can have some more material to advance on Patreon (Lost in Twin Peaks won't work for that, since it's all already on Patreon at least in its original form).
Already published: episodes & illustrated companions for season 1, Fire Walk With Me/The Missing Pieces, bonus episodes & The Return
Finished prior to 2026, but awaiting publication (until all Lost in Twin Peaks is complete): parts of #9A (Welcome to the Season 2 Premiere) & #9B (Who Killed Laura Palmer in the Season 2 Premiere)
+ previewed on Patreon: illustrated companions for all of season 2 + early versions of season 2 episodes that need revision before public release (the latter listed w/ public episodes in the linked directory above)
The TWIN PEAKS Character Series
What remains: #9 - 1
This is the only project I haven't worked on at all this year. In November, I will at least temporarily resume the series and interrupt work on Lost in Twin Peaks if necessary (as it almost certainly will be). I will write full entries for the ninth and eighth characters before returning to whatever podcast work is unfinished and then shifting back to the character series for, I hope, a cross-category approach similar to what I've been using for Lost in Twin Peaks: in this case, writing about all the offscreen and deleted scenes simultaneously, then all the actor bios at once, then the characters' appearances in the books, and so forth, building my way up to the most important categories.
Already published: #30 - 86, bonus entries, round-up prefaces & intro
Finished prior to 2026, but awaiting publication (until all of the TWIN PEAKS Character Series is complete): images, formatting & several sections for the top 9
+ previewed on Patreon: #30 - 10
Journey Through Twin Peaks
Completed this year: chapter 38 - "American Shadows"
What remains: chapters 39 - 46 of Part 6 - ALL ROADS LEAD TO HOME
(+ technical revisions to chapter 38 & any concluding round-ups or written reflections)
Having tackled one of the more ambitious chapters of Journey Through Twin Peaks this spring, I put everything else aside probably until Lost in Twin Peaks and the TWIN PEAKS Character Series are both complete. That means no work on this until next year (hopefully early), at which point it can receive my full attention.
Already published: Parts 1 - 4 (chapters 1 - 28) in 2014 - 15 & Part 5 (chapters 29 - 36) in 2020 - 21
Finished prior to 2026, but awaiting publication (until all Journey Through Twin Peaks is complete): all of chapter 37 - "Fading Signals" aside from some technical revisions
+ previewed on Patreon: scripts & a still image for chapters 37 & 38
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