Ryan Conklin Engaged

A public announcement published in The Gettysburg Times stated that Ryan Conklin is engaged to be married. Here is the link to the engagement notice: http://bit.ly/qJPhww. The notice states that Ryan is currently working at NBC Olympics in Stamford, CT, and that a Fall, 2012, wedding is planned.

Ryan Conklin Helps Start Veterans Group

When one of his fellow students at Temple University sought to start the first student veterans group at the school, Ryan Conklin joined in to help make it happen. A group of students including Ryan worked together to form the group that became the Temple Veterans Association.

Conklin with another student drafted the group's constitution, which Conklin and three others signed to become the group's official founders. Subsequently, the group became a chapter of the Student Veterans of America organization.

On the group's website, Ryan is quoted as saying, "When I separated from the Army, I quickly missed the type of personalities that encompass the fabric of the military. I wanted to help form TVA in an effort to collect veterans who can relate to each other in a way that non-military students can do, in and out of the classroom."

Ryan Conklin On Being On The Real World

In a story about the start of the 25th season of The Real World (MTV's 'The Real World' launches its 25th season! Crazy!), the LA Times included quotes from various RW alums on the longevity of the series and about their own experiences from being connected with the show.

In the article, Ryan Conklin acknowledged that he will always be known as someone who was in the cast, saying, "I will always be known as ‘the dude who was on The Real World'. It could be worse. I’m not carrying around the shame of being a child molester or something.”

New Ryan Conklin Faces of War Video

Below is the new video that the group Hope's Voice uses to market Ryan Conklin as a speaker for their Faces of War lecture series. Intermingled with photos from Ryan's first tour in Iraq are clips of video of Ryan speaking about being on patrol with IEDs exploding, hearing about the death by sniper of fellow soldier Andrew Kemple, and his and other soldiers' difficulties in coping with the after-effects of combat after returning to civilan life.

The video's setting and visual attributes appear to have the intention of showing sincerity and seriousness of purpose, although it probably does cross over a little to looking like Jesus as a hostage forced to tape a confession by his captors.

Click on link for better picture and video about Hope's Voice Ryan A. Conklin.

An Angel From Hell In Paperback

Ryan A. Conklin's book An Angel From Hell will be available in a paperback format on April 5, 2011. It has previously been available in hardback and as a e-book and audiobook. The book is the author's story of his year in Iraq, highlighting the unsettling situations he experienced there, his complaints about Army practices and personnel, and his avoidance of injuries by fatefully never being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The book has done well since it was first published in hardback in April, 2010, despite not being deemed worthy enough to be reviewed by major reviewers. Many fans of MTV's reality TV show The Real World, on which Ryan was a cast member and for which he is best known, have purchased copies of the book. Those fans have also helped sales by pumping up the 5 star ratings on Amazon. The publisher wisely made sure that it was marketed to those fans, among others, by putting the blurb on the cover "As seen on MTV's Real World Brooklyn".

Books are published in paperback at a lower sales price to entice the potential buyers whose price point for purchase is lower than the cost of hardbacks. Some of the potential buyers for this particular book are likely the teenage boys and girls who watched Ryan's season of The Real World. It looked like the publisher was accordingly marketing to them with an initial paperback cover image (at left) that had a Bieberesque baby-faced Conklin on it (instead of the harder-to-see image on the original cover that had him wearing sunglasses). However, not wishing to push away any buyers who are interested in a serious military memoir, they had Conklin share the cover with a massive piece of weaponry, apparently to butch him up a little. Likewise, instead of just stating that the author has added some additional material, they phrased it as "Features an all-new dispatch from Ryan's second tour in Iraq".

The second and final version of the paperback cover kept the baby-face, but chose an image that shows someone who clearly has been on active duty in Iraq, and not just a kid playing soldier. The line about the additional material was changed to read "Features an all-new dispatch on Ryan's call back to duty." That's a smart focus on the thing that made Ryan more appreciated, the return to duty, as opposed to the uneventful second tour of duty itself.

Best wishes to Ryan for the continuing success of his book.

Aaron Returns Home

The website for the Gettysburg Fire Department has a post about the return of Ryan Conklin's brother Aaron Conklin from Iraq. (Click on thumbnail at right for link.) It mentions that in August, 2010, members of the fire department welcomed Aaron home (calling him "Hollywood"). It also mentioned that he had recently become engaged to his girlfriend.

Previously, Aaron had revealed in an article in a magazine published by Harrisburg Area Community College, where he had been a 2008 criminal justice grad, that he planned to become a firefighter when he returned from Iraq.

On a side note, in the same HACC article, Aaron stated, "Ryan is the very outgoing person, and I am the quiet one. But people can tell we are brothers by the way we act when together."