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fandomaniaStephenie Meyer: Inside the 'Twilight' Saga
Five years ago, she was a 29-year-old Mormon housewife. Now, she's about to publish the breathlessly awaited finale to her best-selling series. An intimate chat with the woman who just might be the next J.K. Rowling ...
By Karen Valby
During one mad summer, while her husband and three young boys slept, Stephenie Meyer wrote a mountain of pages about a heady romance between a smart 17-year-old girl and a handsome god of a vampire. Mystified as to how a nice housewife living in Phoenix goes about cracking the New York publishing world, she joined a small writers' group of cozy, supportive women who were working on trivia books, Hallmark cards, and song lyrics. On a lark, she'd gotten up the nerve to contact a handful of literary agents whose names she'd found online, sending them each a tease about Twilight. The right one bit, and landed her new client a three-book deal for $750,000. (''I'd been hoping for $10,000 to pay off my minivan,'' says Meyer.) Unsure what to expect from their new Mormon author, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers later dispatched a publicist to Arizona — to make sure, as Meyer says with a laugh, ''I wasn't wearing a skirt over my jeans or something.''
The birth of Twilight was both five years and a lifetime ago. Now the 34-year-old is a New York Times best-seller, a published author in 37 countries, a millionaire many times over, and, according to fans and booksellers alike, the second coming of J.K. Rowling. When Eclipse, the third installment in the Twilight saga, came out last summer, it shook hands with Harry Potter before sweetly knocking him from his perch at No. 1. This Aug. 2, at 12:01 a.m., cash registers everywhere will start ringing with sales of Breaking Dawn (read the opening pages), Meyer's feverishly anticipated fourth and final volume. The fervor won't die down then, either, as fans can direct their passionate gaze toward the December release of the Twilight movie.
One day late in May, Meyer is in Salt Lake City promoting her first adult novel, The Host, a vigorous blend of romance and science fiction that sold at auction for $600,000 and debuted at No. 1. In the audience, a thousand restless fans scream for the author at a decibel level normally reserved for boy bands. There are young girls and grown women alike wearing homemade T-shirts with slogans like ''I Love Hot Guys With Superpowers (and Fangs)'' and ''I Love Vegan Vampires.'' There are gleeful members from the online community Twilight Moms, who Meyer had breakfast with that morning despite being at a signing until 1 a.m. the previous night, and grandmothers who say if they knew how to use a computer they'd start their own fansite too. There are women who've quit their day jobs and now make a living online selling Twilight-inspired T-shirts and jewelry, and a teenage girl clutching a letter for Meyer that says the books persuaded her not to take her own life.
Backstage, a high school tech crew lounges on a ratty sofa eating pizza while Meyer, her thick, russet Anne of Green Gables hair pulled back in a barrette, sits with her publicist and vets a basket of audience questions. (Out is the most popular question she gets asked: If vampires go nuts for the smell of blood, what does Bella do when she has her period? ''Gross,'' says Meyer.) A techie in a black T-shirt rolls her eyes over the geyser of energy bursting forth in the crowd. ''They're really great books, but I think some people out there need to get a life,'' she smugly tells the room. ''It's the 50-year-old women who are screaming the loudest!'' ''Oh, they're a little excitable is all,'' Meyer says warmly. Meyer's publicist then recounts the time some fans started calling themselves Twihards instead of the long-accepted moniker Twilighters and the blogosphere erupted. When a marketing executive at Little, Brown announced plans for a Twihard button, the publicist begged him to abort, insisting he'd be fanning the flames of war.
When Meyer eventually takes the podium, her pale face and neck flushed from stage fright, she talks about her new novel and gives reach-for-the-stars counsel to all the aspiring writers in the crowd. When she mentions Breaking Dawn, the screeching starts up again. The grand finale that will answer once and for all the future of Bella's humanity has been the No. 1 best-seller on Amazon.com for well over a month. ''I kept saying that there will never be another book in my career like Harry Potter 7,'' says Borders' director of children's merchandising, Diane Mangan. ''Who would have thought a year later we'd be talking like this again?'' With anticipation online hitting DEFCON 2 — should Bella end up with the sexy Edward or the faithful Jacob? — Meyer is feeling the pressure. She went so far as to write her publicist a parody entitled ''Breaking Down,'' in which she cataloged all the various ways she could enrage fans. ''You have to understand,'' Meyer says wearily, as if speaking to her younger, innocent self, ''that no matter what you do, people are going to be mad at you.''
A few weeks later, Meyer opens the door to her friendly five-bedroom house in Cave Creek, Ariz. Her husband, Pancho, whom she married when she was 21 years old, and who recently quit his job as an auditor at an accounting firm to be a stay-at-home dad, is with the boys at a water park. When the tour for The Host wrapped, Meyer came home exhausted to confront the biggest deadline of her short career. She had just three days, working out of her home office from 6 a.m. until midnight, to make the final tweaks to Breaking Dawn. Releasing two books in one summer was madness, and she says she'll never make that mistake again. And yet, says Meyer, there was great satisfaction in proving to both her publisher and herself that she wasn't ''just a vampire girl.'' In Salt Lake City her dear friend Shannon Hale, the Newbery-award-winning young-adult author of Princess Academy, congratulated Meyer on The Host. ''I'm so proud of you! Because we're not sure if J.K. Rowling is a one-hit wonder,'' Hale gushed teasingly before the signing began. ''But you're not!''
Meyer writes facing the kitchen, with music headphones on to tune out the joyful antics of her sons, who range in age from 6 to 11. She used to have family photos on her website, but she and Pancho have decided to remove the boys from the public eye. Occasionally she'll receive a fan letter at her home, which is unlisted, and those always go straight to the trash. And she's started getting random calls on her cell phone from fans, who stutter and giggle when their unsuspecting hero picks up. ''Numbers are easy to change,'' says Meyer with a shrug. ''Moving is harder. They'll have to drag me out of this place on a plank. Before I move, I'm going to put up a fence and get shepherds. And then I'll have a button and get to say 'Release the hounds!''' It's no wonder that Meyer is unwilling to let a few overzealous fans drive her from her Western refuge. Her parents live in the neighborhood, as does one of her brothers. Best of all, her house has a spiral staircase up to the roof, where Meyer can find relief from the blogosphere under a blanket of shimmering stars.
The message boards are bursting with dismay, the fans having gotten their first peek at Breaking Dawn's cover. Of course they don't yet know that Meyer herself helped design the image — featuring a chessboard with a white queen piece and a hovering red pawn — or how it relates to the story. ''They just hate it,'' sighs Meyer, over cheeseburgers and shakes at a nearby In-N-Out. ''After a while they'll like it, I think,'' she says, comparing the furor to the howls of outrage when Robert Pattinson was cast as Edward in the Twilight movie. ''They freaked out and they all said nasty things and now all the taglines on their posts say 'When God made Robert Pattinson, He was just showing off.''' Harder to shake, though, has been the negative response to online postings of Dawn's first chapter. ''There were a lot of people,'' says Meyer, laughing and throwing her hands up in the air, ''who said, 'This isn't the real first chapter, the writing is so bad!'''
Despite wincing over the occasional Amazon.com one-star review (''bookaholic,'' for instance, declares that Twilight ''sucks like a vampire on your neck''), Meyer can't help but pore over the message boards. She loves her fans and wants to know how they're responding to her work. ''Sometimes the feedback is helpful,'' she says. ''I want to be a better writer...I read these other authors and I think, 'Now, that's a good writer. I'm never going to reach that level.' But I'm going to be a good storyteller,'' she says, sitting up a little straighter in her seat. ''And what a thing to be!''
All the money, the fans, the fame — it's nothing compared with the high she's still riding from plucking that first story from her imagination and putting it to paper. She already has a first and second sequel to The Host mapped out in her head. She's written four chapters of a ghost story that she's calling Summer House. Then there's the time-travel novel that she figured out the ending to this very morning while putting on her makeup. And, of course, to her ardent fans' delight, she has half of Midnight Sun, a retelling of Twilight from Edward's point of view, lurking on her computer. There's pressure to polish it off and have it ready for next summer, but Meyer is playing it cool. ''I haven't sold Midnight Sun yet,'' she says. ''It's for me still. I'll probably sell it when I'm done, for one reason: I want to have it bound up on my shelf with the others. Or,'' she laughs, ''maybe I'll just publish it on my website.'' (In a land far, far away, blood seeps from her publisher's ear.) ''Since I discovered how amazing it is to write a story, I can't stop,'' Meyer continues. ''But the publishing and all the politics and the negativity? I don't know if it will be worth putting the stories out there forever.'' So for now she's under contract to no one; there are no more deadlines. She plans to take a solid year just to write. It's the stories that matter most, not the circus surrounding them.
To that end, Meyer hopes the four-city swing for Breaking Dawn, on which Blue October frontman Justin Furstenfeld will serve as her opening act, will be her swan-song tour. (''Though I imagine I'll get talked into it again because I'm a marshmallow.'') Her big sister Emily, who lives in Salt Lake, remembers somewhat wistfully when Meyer used to greet 20 fans instead of 2,000. ''It would be me and my five little friends, because of course I loaned out my books and got my whole neighborhood reading, and we'd go to the ice cream store, and she'd read some of the Midnight Sun manuscript to us,'' Emily says. ''Those were the gatherings that Stephenie really loved.''
It's a far cry from Meyer's recent stop in Salt Lake. She was in her fourth hour of signing books when an 11-year-old girl wearing a rhinestone-studded Twilight T-shirt leaned over the table to get a good look at Meyer. ''You're like my favorite author ever!'' she said, clapping her hands. ''I'm a person who judges authors a lot, and I don't have anything bad to say about you. I mean, I'm really tough, I didn't even like Harry Potter.'' Meyer looked confused for a moment as to what the proper response to such a compliment might be, and the young girl peered eagerly into the author's eyes. ''Are we going to feel complete at the end of Breaking Dawn?'' she whispered pleadingly. Meyer handed the girl back a signed book and smiled. ''I can't really answer that question for you,'' she said, her voice both cheerful and firm. ''But I felt closure.''
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20211938,00.html
'Twilight': Inside the First Stephenie Meyer Movie
Can the author's vampire novels do for moviegoers what they've done for readers? The first book in the series comes to theaters in December. EW was on the set
By Nicole Sperling
On a March day in Oregon, the sun's as bright as a California morning. That's great news for the locals, but it sucks if you're a vampire. For two weeks, Twilight, the $37 million film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's best-selling novel, has been shooting outside Portland — a location chosen, in part, because the skies are often overcast. Vampires, in Meyer's universe, can go out during the day but have to stay out of direct sunlight. Hence, today's problem. Director Catherine Hardwicke (Lords of Dogtown) has had to scrap an exterior shoot, and, because tomorrow's weather looks annoyingly cheery too, she's been forced to rush into an intense romantic scene between her two young stars. ''We were building a bedroom in 24 hours,'' Hardwicke says later. ''We were just sweating it.''
Fans have been sweating it too. Not since Harry Potter has a book-to-film journey inspired so much enthusiasm — or so much anxiety. The movie will follow the novel closely: Pretty but awkward 17-year-old Bella (Kristen Stewart) moves to a small town in the Pacific Northwest and falls in love with Edward (Robert Pattinson), a heartbreakingly beautiful vampire. Edward also falls for Bella, but his desire for her barely controls his instinct to devour her. It's this combination of passion and danger, of course, that surrounds this teen romance with a halo of epic, doomed love. The girls who have gone crazy for the book have been vivisecting the film's development online. Two girls from the Make-A-Wish Foundation even requested roles as extras. ''You can't make this up,'' Hardwicke says. With a fan base like that, all of Hollywood should have been jousting for the film rights. In fact, the movie almost didn't happen.
In April 2004, Paramount's MTV Films optioned Twilight, but then developed a script that bore little resemblance to it. (It featured night-vision goggles and transformed Bella into a hip track star.) ''They could have put that movie out, called it something else, and no one would have known it was Twilight,'' Meyer says. Fortunately for devout fans of the book, Paramount put the project into turnaround. Then, in 2006, Erik Feig, president of production at Summit Entertainment, tried to make a deal with Meyer. The author had been burned before and resisted. Feig drew up a contract, guaranteeing the writer that the film would be true to her vision, including a promise that ''no vampire character will be depicted with canine or incisor teeth longer or more pronounced than may be found in human beings.'' That did the trick.
Twilight, which will hit theaters on Dec. 12, is no garlic-and-fangs monster tale. It's more Buffy than Nosferatu. Hardwicke, who made her directorial debut with the raw indie hit Thirteen, seemed an ideal match for the material. ''When I read the book, I could almost feel Bella breathing,'' Hardwicke says. She hammered out a script with screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg (Step Up) in six weeks, then faced the daunting task of casting. The wrong choice would throw Twilighters into a tizzy. Hardwicke also wanted to cast an actual teenager to play Bella, which meant finding a teen who could convey Bella's emotional depth and carry an entire film.
As a child, Kristen Stewart had starred as Jodie Foster's daughter in Panic Room, but it wasn't until last year, with Sean Penn's Into the Wild, that she blossomed. ''Her mixture of innocence and longing just knocked me out,'' Hardwicke says. Hoping she'd found her Bella, she took a red-eye flight to Pittsburgh — where Stewart, then 17, was shooting Greg Mottola's Adventureland — and did an impromptu screen test with the actress. ''She'd been shooting all night, but she learned her lines on the spot,'' Hardwicke says. ''She danced on the bed and chased pigeons in the park. I was captivated.'' For Stewart, scoring the role was the easy part. She then needed to figure out how to play it. ''The only thing I could bring to Bella was to be myself,'' Stewart says now. ''She's an honest, up-front, seemingly logical girl. She's alone but not lonely.''
As for the character of Edward, Meyer describes him as ''devastatingly inhumanly beautiful.'' Not surprisingly, he has become a heartthrob to millions. ''Everybody has such an idealized vision of Edward,'' Hardwicke says. ''They were rabid [about who I was going to cast]. Like, old ladies saying, 'You better get it right.''' She almost didn't. Hardwicke had seen a picture of Robert Pattinson, a 22-year-old Brit best known as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but had been underwhelmed. So Pattinson flew to meet with Hardwicke at her home in Venice, Calif. His audition consisted of a love scene with Stewart on Hardwicke's bed. ''It was electric,'' Hardwicke says. ''The room shorted out, the sky opened up, and I was like, 'This is going to be good.'''
Fans weren't so sure at first, and some of the blogs were brutal. ''I stopped reading after I saw the signatures saying 'Please, anyone else,''' Pattinson says, laughing. To prepare for the role, the actor did more than just stay out of the sun. He wrote journal entries as Edward and shut himself off from his friends and family. ''I wanted to feel his isolation,'' he says. Still, Pattinson didn't transform into Edward in all ways. ''I was supposed to get a six-pack,'' he says. ''But it didn't really work out.''
No worries. Fans are already gushing about Twilight's teaser trailer — surely a relief to Hardwicke. It was the fans who kept her motivated. On a single day, for instance, the filmmakers endured snow, rain, and hail. ''There were some days I cried,'' she says. ''But then I would see these girls and moms who loved the book standing in the rain [watching], and I'd think, 'I can't have a pity party. I better stand up and make this scene great. I don't care if it is hailing on me.''' Or, heaven forbid, the sun is shining.
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20211840,00.html
Stephenie Meyer's 'Breaking Dawn': Exclusive Preview
Sneak a peek at the opening pages of chapter 1 of her next novel, out this summer, with a special introduction for EW.com from the author. Look for the chapter in its entirety in her ''Eclipse Special Edition,'' out tomorrow
Hi, EW.com readers,
I'm so excited about the August 2 release of Breaking Dawn — I can't wait to finally be able to discuss everything that happens! No more secrets! To help whet your appetite, Entertainment Weekly has an exclusive sneak peak of the first chapter of Breaking Dawn. The entire first chapter is available in the Eclipse Special Edition, out tomorrow, which will also reveal the cover of Breaking Dawn and have Team Edward and Team Jacob iron-on decals. Here it is, I hope you enjoy!
Stephenie Meyer
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. ENGAGED
NO ONE IS STARING AT YOU, I promised myself. No one is staring at you. No one is staring at you.
But, because I couldn't lie convincingly even to myself, I had to check.
As I sat waiting for one of the three traffic lights in town to turn green, I peeked to the right — in her minivan, Mrs. Weber had turned her whole torso in my direction. Her eyes bored into mine, and I flinched back, wondering why she didn't drop her gaze or look ashamed. It was still considered rude to stare at people, wasn't it? Didn't that apply to me anymore?
Then I remembered that these windows were so darkly tinted that she probably had no idea if it was even me in here, let alone that I'd caught her looking. I tried to take some comfort in the fact that she wasn't really staring at me, just the car.
My car. Sigh.
I glanced to the left and groaned. Two pedestrians were frozen on the sidewalk, missing their chance to cross as they stared. Behind them, Mr. Marshall was gawking through the plate glass window of his little souvenir shop. At least he didn't have his nose pressed up against the glass. Yet.
The light turned green and, in my hurry to escape, I stomped on the gas pedal without thinking — the normal way I would have punched it to get my ancient Chevy truck moving.
Engine snarling like a hunting panther, the car jolted forward so fast that my body slammed into the black leather seat and my stomach flattened against my spine.
''Arg!'' I gasped as I fumbled for the brake. Keeping my head, I merely tapped the pedal. The car lurched to an absolute standstill anyway.
I couldn't bear to look around at the reaction. If there had been any doubt as to who was driving this car before, it was gone now. With the toe of my shoe, I gently nudged the gas pedal down one half millimeter, and the car shot forward again.
I managed to reach my goal, the gas station. If I hadn't been running on vapors, I wouldn't have come into town at all. I was going without a lot of things these days, like Pop-Tarts and shoelaces, to avoid spending time in public.
Moving as if I were in a race, I got the hatch open, the cap off, the card scanned, and the nozzle in the tank within seconds. Of course, there was nothing I could do to make the numbers on the gauge pick up the pace. They ticked by sluggishly, almost as if they were doing it just to annoy me.
It wasn't bright out — a typically drizzly day in Forks, Washington — but I still felt like a spotlight was trained on me, drawing attention to the delicate ring on my left hand. At times like this, sensing the eyes on my back, it felt as if the ring were pulsing like a neon sign: Look at me, look at me.
It was stupid to be so self-conscious, and I knew that. Besides my dad and mom, did it really matter what people were saying about my engagement? About my new car? About my mysterious acceptance into an Ivy League college? About the shiny black credit card that felt red-hot in my back pocket right now?
''Yeah, who cares what they think,'' I muttered under my breath.
(c) 2008 by Stephenie Meyer, reprinted with permission from the Eclipse Special Edition published by Little, Brown and Company.
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20203238,00.html
Five years ago, she was a 29-year-old Mormon housewife. Now, she's about to publish the breathlessly awaited finale to her best-selling series. An intimate chat with the woman who just might be the next J.K. Rowling ...
By Karen Valby
During one mad summer, while her husband and three young boys slept, Stephenie Meyer wrote a mountain of pages about a heady romance between a smart 17-year-old girl and a handsome god of a vampire. Mystified as to how a nice housewife living in Phoenix goes about cracking the New York publishing world, she joined a small writers' group of cozy, supportive women who were working on trivia books, Hallmark cards, and song lyrics. On a lark, she'd gotten up the nerve to contact a handful of literary agents whose names she'd found online, sending them each a tease about Twilight. The right one bit, and landed her new client a three-book deal for $750,000. (''I'd been hoping for $10,000 to pay off my minivan,'' says Meyer.) Unsure what to expect from their new Mormon author, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers later dispatched a publicist to Arizona — to make sure, as Meyer says with a laugh, ''I wasn't wearing a skirt over my jeans or something.''
The birth of Twilight was both five years and a lifetime ago. Now the 34-year-old is a New York Times best-seller, a published author in 37 countries, a millionaire many times over, and, according to fans and booksellers alike, the second coming of J.K. Rowling. When Eclipse, the third installment in the Twilight saga, came out last summer, it shook hands with Harry Potter before sweetly knocking him from his perch at No. 1. This Aug. 2, at 12:01 a.m., cash registers everywhere will start ringing with sales of Breaking Dawn (read the opening pages), Meyer's feverishly anticipated fourth and final volume. The fervor won't die down then, either, as fans can direct their passionate gaze toward the December release of the Twilight movie.
One day late in May, Meyer is in Salt Lake City promoting her first adult novel, The Host, a vigorous blend of romance and science fiction that sold at auction for $600,000 and debuted at No. 1. In the audience, a thousand restless fans scream for the author at a decibel level normally reserved for boy bands. There are young girls and grown women alike wearing homemade T-shirts with slogans like ''I Love Hot Guys With Superpowers (and Fangs)'' and ''I Love Vegan Vampires.'' There are gleeful members from the online community Twilight Moms, who Meyer had breakfast with that morning despite being at a signing until 1 a.m. the previous night, and grandmothers who say if they knew how to use a computer they'd start their own fansite too. There are women who've quit their day jobs and now make a living online selling Twilight-inspired T-shirts and jewelry, and a teenage girl clutching a letter for Meyer that says the books persuaded her not to take her own life.
Backstage, a high school tech crew lounges on a ratty sofa eating pizza while Meyer, her thick, russet Anne of Green Gables hair pulled back in a barrette, sits with her publicist and vets a basket of audience questions. (Out is the most popular question she gets asked: If vampires go nuts for the smell of blood, what does Bella do when she has her period? ''Gross,'' says Meyer.) A techie in a black T-shirt rolls her eyes over the geyser of energy bursting forth in the crowd. ''They're really great books, but I think some people out there need to get a life,'' she smugly tells the room. ''It's the 50-year-old women who are screaming the loudest!'' ''Oh, they're a little excitable is all,'' Meyer says warmly. Meyer's publicist then recounts the time some fans started calling themselves Twihards instead of the long-accepted moniker Twilighters and the blogosphere erupted. When a marketing executive at Little, Brown announced plans for a Twihard button, the publicist begged him to abort, insisting he'd be fanning the flames of war.
When Meyer eventually takes the podium, her pale face and neck flushed from stage fright, she talks about her new novel and gives reach-for-the-stars counsel to all the aspiring writers in the crowd. When she mentions Breaking Dawn, the screeching starts up again. The grand finale that will answer once and for all the future of Bella's humanity has been the No. 1 best-seller on Amazon.com for well over a month. ''I kept saying that there will never be another book in my career like Harry Potter 7,'' says Borders' director of children's merchandising, Diane Mangan. ''Who would have thought a year later we'd be talking like this again?'' With anticipation online hitting DEFCON 2 — should Bella end up with the sexy Edward or the faithful Jacob? — Meyer is feeling the pressure. She went so far as to write her publicist a parody entitled ''Breaking Down,'' in which she cataloged all the various ways she could enrage fans. ''You have to understand,'' Meyer says wearily, as if speaking to her younger, innocent self, ''that no matter what you do, people are going to be mad at you.''
A few weeks later, Meyer opens the door to her friendly five-bedroom house in Cave Creek, Ariz. Her husband, Pancho, whom she married when she was 21 years old, and who recently quit his job as an auditor at an accounting firm to be a stay-at-home dad, is with the boys at a water park. When the tour for The Host wrapped, Meyer came home exhausted to confront the biggest deadline of her short career. She had just three days, working out of her home office from 6 a.m. until midnight, to make the final tweaks to Breaking Dawn. Releasing two books in one summer was madness, and she says she'll never make that mistake again. And yet, says Meyer, there was great satisfaction in proving to both her publisher and herself that she wasn't ''just a vampire girl.'' In Salt Lake City her dear friend Shannon Hale, the Newbery-award-winning young-adult author of Princess Academy, congratulated Meyer on The Host. ''I'm so proud of you! Because we're not sure if J.K. Rowling is a one-hit wonder,'' Hale gushed teasingly before the signing began. ''But you're not!''
Meyer writes facing the kitchen, with music headphones on to tune out the joyful antics of her sons, who range in age from 6 to 11. She used to have family photos on her website, but she and Pancho have decided to remove the boys from the public eye. Occasionally she'll receive a fan letter at her home, which is unlisted, and those always go straight to the trash. And she's started getting random calls on her cell phone from fans, who stutter and giggle when their unsuspecting hero picks up. ''Numbers are easy to change,'' says Meyer with a shrug. ''Moving is harder. They'll have to drag me out of this place on a plank. Before I move, I'm going to put up a fence and get shepherds. And then I'll have a button and get to say 'Release the hounds!''' It's no wonder that Meyer is unwilling to let a few overzealous fans drive her from her Western refuge. Her parents live in the neighborhood, as does one of her brothers. Best of all, her house has a spiral staircase up to the roof, where Meyer can find relief from the blogosphere under a blanket of shimmering stars.
The message boards are bursting with dismay, the fans having gotten their first peek at Breaking Dawn's cover. Of course they don't yet know that Meyer herself helped design the image — featuring a chessboard with a white queen piece and a hovering red pawn — or how it relates to the story. ''They just hate it,'' sighs Meyer, over cheeseburgers and shakes at a nearby In-N-Out. ''After a while they'll like it, I think,'' she says, comparing the furor to the howls of outrage when Robert Pattinson was cast as Edward in the Twilight movie. ''They freaked out and they all said nasty things and now all the taglines on their posts say 'When God made Robert Pattinson, He was just showing off.''' Harder to shake, though, has been the negative response to online postings of Dawn's first chapter. ''There were a lot of people,'' says Meyer, laughing and throwing her hands up in the air, ''who said, 'This isn't the real first chapter, the writing is so bad!'''
Despite wincing over the occasional Amazon.com one-star review (''bookaholic,'' for instance, declares that Twilight ''sucks like a vampire on your neck''), Meyer can't help but pore over the message boards. She loves her fans and wants to know how they're responding to her work. ''Sometimes the feedback is helpful,'' she says. ''I want to be a better writer...I read these other authors and I think, 'Now, that's a good writer. I'm never going to reach that level.' But I'm going to be a good storyteller,'' she says, sitting up a little straighter in her seat. ''And what a thing to be!''
All the money, the fans, the fame — it's nothing compared with the high she's still riding from plucking that first story from her imagination and putting it to paper. She already has a first and second sequel to The Host mapped out in her head. She's written four chapters of a ghost story that she's calling Summer House. Then there's the time-travel novel that she figured out the ending to this very morning while putting on her makeup. And, of course, to her ardent fans' delight, she has half of Midnight Sun, a retelling of Twilight from Edward's point of view, lurking on her computer. There's pressure to polish it off and have it ready for next summer, but Meyer is playing it cool. ''I haven't sold Midnight Sun yet,'' she says. ''It's for me still. I'll probably sell it when I'm done, for one reason: I want to have it bound up on my shelf with the others. Or,'' she laughs, ''maybe I'll just publish it on my website.'' (In a land far, far away, blood seeps from her publisher's ear.) ''Since I discovered how amazing it is to write a story, I can't stop,'' Meyer continues. ''But the publishing and all the politics and the negativity? I don't know if it will be worth putting the stories out there forever.'' So for now she's under contract to no one; there are no more deadlines. She plans to take a solid year just to write. It's the stories that matter most, not the circus surrounding them.
To that end, Meyer hopes the four-city swing for Breaking Dawn, on which Blue October frontman Justin Furstenfeld will serve as her opening act, will be her swan-song tour. (''Though I imagine I'll get talked into it again because I'm a marshmallow.'') Her big sister Emily, who lives in Salt Lake, remembers somewhat wistfully when Meyer used to greet 20 fans instead of 2,000. ''It would be me and my five little friends, because of course I loaned out my books and got my whole neighborhood reading, and we'd go to the ice cream store, and she'd read some of the Midnight Sun manuscript to us,'' Emily says. ''Those were the gatherings that Stephenie really loved.''
It's a far cry from Meyer's recent stop in Salt Lake. She was in her fourth hour of signing books when an 11-year-old girl wearing a rhinestone-studded Twilight T-shirt leaned over the table to get a good look at Meyer. ''You're like my favorite author ever!'' she said, clapping her hands. ''I'm a person who judges authors a lot, and I don't have anything bad to say about you. I mean, I'm really tough, I didn't even like Harry Potter.'' Meyer looked confused for a moment as to what the proper response to such a compliment might be, and the young girl peered eagerly into the author's eyes. ''Are we going to feel complete at the end of Breaking Dawn?'' she whispered pleadingly. Meyer handed the girl back a signed book and smiled. ''I can't really answer that question for you,'' she said, her voice both cheerful and firm. ''But I felt closure.''
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20211938,00.html
'Twilight': Inside the First Stephenie Meyer Movie
Can the author's vampire novels do for moviegoers what they've done for readers? The first book in the series comes to theaters in December. EW was on the set
By Nicole Sperling
On a March day in Oregon, the sun's as bright as a California morning. That's great news for the locals, but it sucks if you're a vampire. For two weeks, Twilight, the $37 million film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's best-selling novel, has been shooting outside Portland — a location chosen, in part, because the skies are often overcast. Vampires, in Meyer's universe, can go out during the day but have to stay out of direct sunlight. Hence, today's problem. Director Catherine Hardwicke (Lords of Dogtown) has had to scrap an exterior shoot, and, because tomorrow's weather looks annoyingly cheery too, she's been forced to rush into an intense romantic scene between her two young stars. ''We were building a bedroom in 24 hours,'' Hardwicke says later. ''We were just sweating it.''
Fans have been sweating it too. Not since Harry Potter has a book-to-film journey inspired so much enthusiasm — or so much anxiety. The movie will follow the novel closely: Pretty but awkward 17-year-old Bella (Kristen Stewart) moves to a small town in the Pacific Northwest and falls in love with Edward (Robert Pattinson), a heartbreakingly beautiful vampire. Edward also falls for Bella, but his desire for her barely controls his instinct to devour her. It's this combination of passion and danger, of course, that surrounds this teen romance with a halo of epic, doomed love. The girls who have gone crazy for the book have been vivisecting the film's development online. Two girls from the Make-A-Wish Foundation even requested roles as extras. ''You can't make this up,'' Hardwicke says. With a fan base like that, all of Hollywood should have been jousting for the film rights. In fact, the movie almost didn't happen.
In April 2004, Paramount's MTV Films optioned Twilight, but then developed a script that bore little resemblance to it. (It featured night-vision goggles and transformed Bella into a hip track star.) ''They could have put that movie out, called it something else, and no one would have known it was Twilight,'' Meyer says. Fortunately for devout fans of the book, Paramount put the project into turnaround. Then, in 2006, Erik Feig, president of production at Summit Entertainment, tried to make a deal with Meyer. The author had been burned before and resisted. Feig drew up a contract, guaranteeing the writer that the film would be true to her vision, including a promise that ''no vampire character will be depicted with canine or incisor teeth longer or more pronounced than may be found in human beings.'' That did the trick.
Twilight, which will hit theaters on Dec. 12, is no garlic-and-fangs monster tale. It's more Buffy than Nosferatu. Hardwicke, who made her directorial debut with the raw indie hit Thirteen, seemed an ideal match for the material. ''When I read the book, I could almost feel Bella breathing,'' Hardwicke says. She hammered out a script with screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg (Step Up) in six weeks, then faced the daunting task of casting. The wrong choice would throw Twilighters into a tizzy. Hardwicke also wanted to cast an actual teenager to play Bella, which meant finding a teen who could convey Bella's emotional depth and carry an entire film.
As a child, Kristen Stewart had starred as Jodie Foster's daughter in Panic Room, but it wasn't until last year, with Sean Penn's Into the Wild, that she blossomed. ''Her mixture of innocence and longing just knocked me out,'' Hardwicke says. Hoping she'd found her Bella, she took a red-eye flight to Pittsburgh — where Stewart, then 17, was shooting Greg Mottola's Adventureland — and did an impromptu screen test with the actress. ''She'd been shooting all night, but she learned her lines on the spot,'' Hardwicke says. ''She danced on the bed and chased pigeons in the park. I was captivated.'' For Stewart, scoring the role was the easy part. She then needed to figure out how to play it. ''The only thing I could bring to Bella was to be myself,'' Stewart says now. ''She's an honest, up-front, seemingly logical girl. She's alone but not lonely.''
As for the character of Edward, Meyer describes him as ''devastatingly inhumanly beautiful.'' Not surprisingly, he has become a heartthrob to millions. ''Everybody has such an idealized vision of Edward,'' Hardwicke says. ''They were rabid [about who I was going to cast]. Like, old ladies saying, 'You better get it right.''' She almost didn't. Hardwicke had seen a picture of Robert Pattinson, a 22-year-old Brit best known as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but had been underwhelmed. So Pattinson flew to meet with Hardwicke at her home in Venice, Calif. His audition consisted of a love scene with Stewart on Hardwicke's bed. ''It was electric,'' Hardwicke says. ''The room shorted out, the sky opened up, and I was like, 'This is going to be good.'''
Fans weren't so sure at first, and some of the blogs were brutal. ''I stopped reading after I saw the signatures saying 'Please, anyone else,''' Pattinson says, laughing. To prepare for the role, the actor did more than just stay out of the sun. He wrote journal entries as Edward and shut himself off from his friends and family. ''I wanted to feel his isolation,'' he says. Still, Pattinson didn't transform into Edward in all ways. ''I was supposed to get a six-pack,'' he says. ''But it didn't really work out.''
No worries. Fans are already gushing about Twilight's teaser trailer — surely a relief to Hardwicke. It was the fans who kept her motivated. On a single day, for instance, the filmmakers endured snow, rain, and hail. ''There were some days I cried,'' she says. ''But then I would see these girls and moms who loved the book standing in the rain [watching], and I'd think, 'I can't have a pity party. I better stand up and make this scene great. I don't care if it is hailing on me.''' Or, heaven forbid, the sun is shining.
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Stephenie Meyer's 'Breaking Dawn': Exclusive Preview
Sneak a peek at the opening pages of chapter 1 of her next novel, out this summer, with a special introduction for EW.com from the author. Look for the chapter in its entirety in her ''Eclipse Special Edition,'' out tomorrow
Hi, EW.com readers,
I'm so excited about the August 2 release of Breaking Dawn — I can't wait to finally be able to discuss everything that happens! No more secrets! To help whet your appetite, Entertainment Weekly has an exclusive sneak peak of the first chapter of Breaking Dawn. The entire first chapter is available in the Eclipse Special Edition, out tomorrow, which will also reveal the cover of Breaking Dawn and have Team Edward and Team Jacob iron-on decals. Here it is, I hope you enjoy!
Stephenie Meyer
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1. ENGAGED
NO ONE IS STARING AT YOU, I promised myself. No one is staring at you. No one is staring at you.
But, because I couldn't lie convincingly even to myself, I had to check.
As I sat waiting for one of the three traffic lights in town to turn green, I peeked to the right — in her minivan, Mrs. Weber had turned her whole torso in my direction. Her eyes bored into mine, and I flinched back, wondering why she didn't drop her gaze or look ashamed. It was still considered rude to stare at people, wasn't it? Didn't that apply to me anymore?
Then I remembered that these windows were so darkly tinted that she probably had no idea if it was even me in here, let alone that I'd caught her looking. I tried to take some comfort in the fact that she wasn't really staring at me, just the car.
My car. Sigh.
I glanced to the left and groaned. Two pedestrians were frozen on the sidewalk, missing their chance to cross as they stared. Behind them, Mr. Marshall was gawking through the plate glass window of his little souvenir shop. At least he didn't have his nose pressed up against the glass. Yet.
The light turned green and, in my hurry to escape, I stomped on the gas pedal without thinking — the normal way I would have punched it to get my ancient Chevy truck moving.
Engine snarling like a hunting panther, the car jolted forward so fast that my body slammed into the black leather seat and my stomach flattened against my spine.
''Arg!'' I gasped as I fumbled for the brake. Keeping my head, I merely tapped the pedal. The car lurched to an absolute standstill anyway.
I couldn't bear to look around at the reaction. If there had been any doubt as to who was driving this car before, it was gone now. With the toe of my shoe, I gently nudged the gas pedal down one half millimeter, and the car shot forward again.
I managed to reach my goal, the gas station. If I hadn't been running on vapors, I wouldn't have come into town at all. I was going without a lot of things these days, like Pop-Tarts and shoelaces, to avoid spending time in public.
Moving as if I were in a race, I got the hatch open, the cap off, the card scanned, and the nozzle in the tank within seconds. Of course, there was nothing I could do to make the numbers on the gauge pick up the pace. They ticked by sluggishly, almost as if they were doing it just to annoy me.
It wasn't bright out — a typically drizzly day in Forks, Washington — but I still felt like a spotlight was trained on me, drawing attention to the delicate ring on my left hand. At times like this, sensing the eyes on my back, it felt as if the ring were pulsing like a neon sign: Look at me, look at me.
It was stupid to be so self-conscious, and I knew that. Besides my dad and mom, did it really matter what people were saying about my engagement? About my new car? About my mysterious acceptance into an Ivy League college? About the shiny black credit card that felt red-hot in my back pocket right now?
''Yeah, who cares what they think,'' I muttered under my breath.
(c) 2008 by Stephenie Meyer, reprinted with permission from the Eclipse Special Edition published by Little, Brown and Company.
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