Friday Newsy Links

• I’m working on a cool October Blogfest Video Blog that I meant to post yesterday but since I’ve never made a video blog before, it is going slower than expected. I may have possibly kind of bit off more than I could chew with this one. We’ll see.

• I have the day off work today though so I’m going to spend the long weekend writing. That’s mostly because my car is getting worked on and I’m camped with coffee and orange juice and my laptop and I have nothing else to occupy my time except Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld, but my chair isn’t comfortable enough to kick back in and read so that’ll have to wait until I get home.

• If you have a minute, check out Vic Caswell’s blog here. Yesterday she wrote an awesome post all about me! Who knew something so cool could happen to me? I never did, that’s for sure.

• The contest for this month isn’t going very well. I haven’t had a single person sign up for it in 8 days, which has me a little worried. Either I’m not holding readers attentions, or I’m not marketing the contests very well. I may have to rethink the contests until I have more consistent readership.

• Yesterday, over at The Story Siren, Kristi posted some very awesome books to pine for coming out in the next year. I don’t know how she finds them, but I look forward to her Books to Pine For posts so I can add them to my preorder wishlist on Amazon. And is it just mean, or are covers starting to look a lot better than they ever have before?

• Scott Westerfeld has opened up a spoiler thread for commenting and talking about Behemoth.

• This week at The Contempts the topic has been binge drinking, which led to discussions about the release of Mindi Scott’s new book Freefall. This is a book that has been on my preorder list for a long time. I really love the cover, it creeps me out, and I like the concept. I’m looking forward to picking up this book and also the trailer? I like the trailer.

• This week at the New York Post I found an article about the hand model for the infamous book Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. (Haha as if anyone needed me to tell them who wrote Twilight.) The hand model is totally trying to get in on the Twi-craze, and I kind of don’t blame her a little bit because she only got paid $300 and her hands will go down in the history books as the most famous hands in history. Maybe not that dramatic. What do you think? Weird that she’s trying to cash in or just weird that she’s waited so long?

• Agent Kristen Nelson talks about why an agent passes on a book that will probably sell. This is another reason why you should never take rejections personally. Rejections don’t mean your book sucks, it can also mean you’re not the right fit to the agent. And like dating, you do not want the wrong fit with an agent.

• Stephen King on CNNMoney.com talks about the future of books and e-readers.

• And now for some very exciting YouTube videos! Yay!

The first two are from Charlieissocoollike and Nerimon as they go on a bungee jump adventure. I think my favorite moment is when the 8-bit video game music plays and Charlie announces he’s just unlocked the Bungee Jump Achievement. Yay!

But the most exciting is music  by Ben Folds, about the poety Saskia Hamilton, lyrics written by Nick Hornby, video by Charlieissocoollike. I kind of had an explosion of cool in my ears.