
Teagan the Vampire Wheaten welcomes you to this week's edition of FRIDAY FIVE1. Today is the last day to enter my ARC Giveaway on Goodreads! Over 60 people have entered, which makes me ridiculously happy! Thanks to all of my writerly friends who helped me plug the competition. I hope that the winner, whoever he or she turns out to be, will like it enough to share it with their friends!
2. One of my favorite speakers so far has been one of the heads of
Vogue who explained the magazine's goals and why it's continued to be so successful throughout the ages. In an event of perfect timing,
The Times just did a piece
that addresses this exact same topic. I love Anna Wintour in a You-Terrify-Me-But-GET-IT-GURRRRL kind of way. They're going to be doing a Fashion's Night Out on September 10th here in the city to bring consumers back to shops and I believe they're also doing it in Milan (and Paris?). The mayor of New York has agreed to keeping stores open until 11 to help the event, which is also doubling as a fundraiser for the September 11th fund. It's fascinating to me, because it's clear that no other magazine would have the kind of power to do this.

3. Speaking of the all-mighty fashion,
The Cut had a
fascinating video on all of the work that goes into the creation of a couture Chanel gown. Okay, confession time: when I was ten my parents asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I told them that I wanted a Chanel purse. Obviously I didn't know those bad boys run upwards of $2,000, but I've always loved the brand and held up it as the emblem of devastating classiness. That's also why I'm SO EXCITED to see
Coco Avant Chanel, which looks, in a word,
amazing! British
Vogue (of course!) has a preview of the costumes for it
here.
4. Jenny Lewis'
See Fernando video! So, so much love!
Jenny Lewis "See Fernando" from Team G on Vimeo.
5. READING!! I think you can file this under "DUH," but I'm slowly but surely rediscovering my love of reading. Because I had so much school work, I taught myself to skim-read while I was in college, which is no way to read at all. Now I can linger over words, think about the way something is phrased, wonder if the copy editor was on crack, really try to think about the mental image the author is trying to convey. I think it's helping my own writing, too. I've been having a lot of those self-pity fits where I get depressed every time I open my WIP's Word Doc, but I finally got past my writer's block again and I'm well on my way to finishing the book. And thank goodness, too, because it's going to be far closer to 100k words than the 70k I originally planned. Time to prune!