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Billy McFarland Is Reportedly Working On Memoir Titled, "Promythus: The God of Fyre'

Ben Yakas

Published May 3, 2019

Modified May 3, 2019

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Ben Yakas

Published May 3, 2019

Modified May 3, 2019

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Billy McFarland, the whatever-the-opposite-of-mastermind-is of the infamous concert catastrophe Fyre Festival, is currently serving a six year prison sentence for fraud in connection with the fest. But he isn't just sitting around trying to hatch new schemes to clear his name and keep himself in the limelight—oh wait, that is exactly what he's doing. And his current plan reportedly involves publishing his own memoir, which is hilariously-titled and annoyingly-spelled, Promythus: The God of Fyre.

NY Magazine reports that McFarland has been handwriting his memoir while doing time at Federal Correctional Institution at Otisville in upstate NY (next week he'll have a new neighbor: Michael Cohen), while his girlfriend Anastasia Eremenko tries to connect him with editors who might be able to help him with it. McFarland has apparently written over 800 pages in longhand; he then mails them to Eremenko to type up.

Freelance editor Josh Raab, who has previously worked on books with Al Gore and Garth Brooks, is one of the people who Eremenko connected to McFarland. He is the main source of the NY Mag's reporting, and he talked to McFarland directly several times about his plans for the book, which he had planned to self-publish on Amazon at the end of April (it has not been released yet).

According to Rabb, it sounds like the main thrust of the book is to allow McFarland to tell "what he calls the 'raw' story, the story he feels that the Hulu and Netflix documentaries — both released in January 2019 — failed to fully depict." (Note: McFarland claims to have not seen either documentary.) He apparently took inspiration from Jordan Belfour, the Wall Street fraudster whose memoir The Wolf of Wall Street was turned into an incredible Martin Scorsese movie, and Molly Bloom, whose memoir Molly's Game was turned into an okay Aaron Sorkin film.

Other details about the project: McFarland still owes over $26 million in restitution to victims of his fraud schemes (which also includes selling fake tickets to events like the Met Gala while he was on bail), and said he wants to use profits from the book to help cover those costs. He is at least somewhat aware of the impact of his actions on the local communities where Fyre Fest didn't take place: "McFarland claimed in his emails he’s been struggling to 'fully come to terms with' how the collapse of the festival affected the Bahamian people but hoped to give away additional proceeds from the book to Bahamians, vendors, and ticket-holders."

Then there's this detail about why he wanted to get the book out so quickly, and why Raab pulled out:

Over email, he dropped vague hints to explain the rush job. “Putting in terms of Wolf of Wall Street, the Festival will not be a one and done event — it’s happening again, so the original story will lose the potential to be told and set the stage if it’s not done before the next events take place.” He didn’t offer any more information on future festivals.

“I told myself I’d work on this book if Billy was actually having this weird, monkish experience,” Raab says. Ultimately, he told McFarland he didn’t think the book he’d described would be a “worthwhile addition to the general discussion” and declined to work on the project.

NY Mag adds that Brandon Rubinshtein, a publicist who also represents Dennis Rodman, is also one of McFarland's point people in the outside world for this project, and he claimed to Rabb that "Ryan Seacrest had visited McFarland in prison to discuss plans to purchase the name and remount Fyre Festival himself." Sources close to Seacrest told NY Mag this was untrue.

Tagged

billy McFarland

fyre fest

fyre festival

memoirs

Promythus: The God of Fyre

Ben Yakas

Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.

Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

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