About the Book

After the release of Young & Reckless, I began work on a second anthology titled Fame & Misfortune. For this book I wanted to turn a critical eye toward the cult of celebrity and the nation’s absorption in media culture, exploring subject matter such as 24-hour news cycles, the subjective lens of the media, celebrity worship, and the intoxicating allure of fame. In a note at the time, I wrote that the book “would deconstruct the Technicolor dreams of Hollywood and the methods of the media system that emulates it.” It was ambitious given my time and money constraints and I had grand plans for who would be involved, how the book would be designed and printed, and how this would set the tone for future releases by Poison Control, the small press that I ran from 2004 to 2007.

My original idea was to publish a trilogy of books—Young & Reckless, Fame & Misfortune, and War & Pieces — each with a distinct theme that set them apart from one another. And at the time, the plan was to elevate the production values with each subsequent book.