I knew Dana before the time of the celebrities and I watched as the celebrities transformed his life. I met him in 1992 when he came to Seattle to begin work on what would be one of his most famous deals: the selling of Nirvana's first record label, Sub Pop. My husband was Sub Pop's general manager. He owned a 1 percent share of the company, and he made enough money from the deal to buy a house and give Dana $100,000 to put into a "safe bond." Rich ended up losing $80,000 of the investment, but that was later, after the nineties boom had imploded and Dana had become just another felon.

Because of my entanglement with Dana, this is not an objective book about his life; and although he initially cooperated with it, it could hardly be called an authorized biography. He agreed to a rule of "no editorial control" -- that the story I wrote would be the one I remembered and uncovered. Yet as the story unfolded for me, he became furious that he couldn't control it. We parted ways before I finished the manuscript. Throughout the process of writing about him I have grappled with my memory of him in the nineties, when I thought he was some kind of rescuer.