Dearest Readers,
It appears that a few books were printed with the pages out of order. This happens from time to time but I understand how deeply frustrating it can be. If it happens to you, I hope you’ll let me know about it and the publisher and I can make sure that you get a new copy. Email me at the following address: nick@nicholaskulish.com.
I will set things right.
Thanks for your patience,
Nick

So I did another radio show called Fair Game with Faith Salie. The interview was as much fun as it sounds. It’s not that easy to link to this one. Go to the page and in the search box in the upper right hand corner type “Kulish” and it’ll pop up. I’m in Los Angeles this Friday - July 20th - if anyone’s around and interested in coming out.

Here’s a link to an appearance I did recently on NPR’s All Things Considered. It was a great experience. Have a listen.

For those who don’t read the comments carefully (and indeed for those who do), a reader has posted asking whether she is “the only person who has read Chris Ayres’ work of non fiction, War Reporting for Cowards?” She wonders, therefore, “Kulish, are you familiar with the word, ‘plagiarism’?”
Thousands of journalists descended on Kuwait in the build-up to the Iraq invasion. Many memoirs were published in the aftermath. Ayres is a correspondent for the Times of London who wrote a memoir about his embedding experience after working as Los Angeles correspondent for his paper, shades of my protagonist Jimmy.
But when his book was published, Last One In had already been out with publishers, though unsold, for a year and a half. Dozens of people had read the novel in early 2004. In fact, the film option for Last One In had been purchased six months before War Reporting for Cowards hit shelves.
I haven’t read the book in its entirety. I skimmed it at the store when it came out, wondering what effect its publication would have on my own manuscript. It struck me that it was as much about Ayres’s life before the invasion, with lots of flashbacks, as his time there. Last One In dives into the invasion and pretty much stays there.
But it’s a matter of record that Last One In was done long before “Cowards” came out (probably around the same time he was done). A new book by Mr. Ayres, “Death by Leisure,” is coming out soon. According to Amazon it is a first-person romp through the leisure class that ends up taking him to the “Katrina-ravaged South,” where, coincidentally, I was writing for the New York Times. Perhaps this is like Fight Club, Ayres/Kulish, Kulish/Ayres…

The readings for Last One In are off to a great start. So far I’ve read at Politics & Prose in Washington with a young writer named Ben Dolnick, at the Olsson’s in Arlington, Va., and at the Barnes & Noble on Astor Place in New York. If you missed those, I can still be found nervously reciting passages Thursday July 12th at Pete’s Candy Store in Brooklyn, and in Boston and Los Angeles the following week.
Each reading was completely different, but also notable. (more…)