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Stephenie Meyer The Author

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Feb 182010

Who Is This Author Stephenie Meyer

Wow just been reading about Stephenie Meyer's.

What a phenomenon She is

Didn't she sign up with a book publisher Little, Brown to write 3 or 4 books for the price of $750.000

The books have sold by the millions

Stephenie Meyer's life changed dramatically on June 2, 2003.

The author and stay-at-home mother of three young sons woke up from a dream featuring seemingly real characters that she could not get out of her head.

"Though I had a million things to do, I stayed in bed, thinking about the dream. Unwillingly, I eventually got up and did the immediate necessities, and then put everything that I possibly could on the back burner and sat down at the computer to write—something I hadn't done in so long that I wondered why I was bothering."

Meyer the author invented the plot during the day through swim lessons and potty training, and wrote it out late at night when the house was quiet. Three months later she had authored her first novel, Twilight. With encouragement from her older sister also an author (the only other person who knew she had written a book), Meyer submitted her manuscript to various literary agencies. Twilight was picked out of a slush pile at Writer's House and eventually made its way to the publishing company Little, Brown where everyone fell immediately in love with the gripping, star-crossed lovers.

Twilight was one of 2005's most talked about novels and within weeks of its release the book debuted at #5 on The New York Times bestseller list. Among its many accolades, Twilight was named an "ALA Top Ten Books for Young Adults," an Amazon.com "Best Book of the Decade...So Far", and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year.

The highly-anticipated sequel, New Moon, was released in September 2006, and spent more than 25 weeks at the #1 position on The New York Times bestseller list.

In 2007, Eclipse literally landed around the world and fans made the Twilight Saga a worldwide phenomenon! With midnight parties and vampire-themed proms the enthusiasm for the series continued to grow.

On May 6, 2008, Little, Brown and Company released The Host, Meyer's highly-anticipated novel for adults which debuted at #1 on The New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. The Host still remains a staple on the bestseller lists more than a year after its debut.

On August 2, 2008, the final book in the Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn was released at 12:01 midnight. Stephenie made another appearance on "Good Morning America" and was featured in many national media outlets, including Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, People Magazine and Variety. Stephenie headlined the Breaking Dawn Concert Series with Justin Furstenfeld (lead singer of Blue October) to celebrate the release in four major markets across the US. Breaking Dawn sold 1.3 million copies in its first 24 hours.

The Twilight movie, directed by Catherine Hardwicke and starring Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, was released on November 21, 2008. Twilight debuted at #1 at the box office with $70 million, making it the highest grossing opening weekend for a female director.

Twilight Saga The Books

Twilight was the first book released in 2005. The book alone has sold more than 17 MILLION copy's as of 2009

The highly-anticipated sequel, New Moon, was released in September 2006, and spent more than 25 weeks at the #1 position on The New York Times bestseller list.

Eclipse is the third book in the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer.
It continues the story of 18-year-old Bella Swan and her vampire love, Edward Cullen.

Breaking Dawn is the fourth and final novel in the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. Divided into three parts, the first and third sections are written from Bella Swan's perspective and the second is written from the perspective of Jacob Black. Breaking Dawn was released on August 2, 2008 at midnight release parties in over 4,000 bookstores throughout the US. From its initial print run of 3.7 million copies, 1.3 million were sold in the first 24 hours of the book's release.

Stephenie Meyer Talks About Twilight

Stephenie Meyer talks about Breaking Dawn

School Library Journal, 10/1/2005

Stephenie Meyer talks about vampires, teen love, and her first novel, 'Twilight'

Were you surprised when Twilight was purchased for over $500,000, and its film rights were sold?
It felt very strange, like some sort of practical joke for quite a while. And now, I still don't believe it. It's kind of surreal to me every time I hear somebody say, “Wow, I really loved it.”
How would you describe the story?
I have a hard time with that. Because if I say to someone, “You know, it's about vampires,” then immediately they have this mental image of what the book is like. And it's so not like the other vampire books out there—Anne Rice's and the few that I've read. It isn't that kind of dark and dreary and blood-thirsty world. Then when you say, “It's set in high school,” a lot of people immediately put it in another pool. It's easy to pigeonhole with different descriptions.
This is the first vampire book I've ever read, and I couldn't put it down.
I do like to say it's a vampire book for people who don't like vampire books.
How did the story come to you?
It feels kind of funny, but I had this dream. I even remember which day it was, because I had swim lessons starting that day and all kinds of other stuff going on. It was early in the morning. I woke up and it was just so vivid. It was pretty much as it is now, chapter 13 of the book. It's the scene in the meadow. So I really got the whole character of Edward just entirely laid out for me. He was there. Bella took a little bit more development. I just kind of sat down and wrote the book from that scene through to the end, and then I went back and wrote the beginning to make sense of it.
When you were a teen, did you fall hard for somebody, like Bella falls for Edward?
Yes, I did once, and it wasn't one of those happy things.
Was it difficult to portray vampires sympathetically?
They ended up being vampires in the way they are because I have strong opinions on free will. No matter what position you're in, you always have a choice. So I had these characters who were in a position where traditionally they would have been the bad guys, but, instead, they chose to be something different—a theme that has always been important to me.
Twilight's emotional intensity reminds me of Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters.
I love Austen and the Brontës. L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables books were also a big influence on me, and Orson Scott Card is one of my favorite authors. Shakespeare is a big influence. I'm always coming back to things he has done.
How did you juggle writing a novel with raising three young sons?
I did a lot of writing at night, because after they were in bed was the best time to concentrate. But during the day, I really couldn't stay away from the computer; so I was up and down a lot. I'd sit down and write a few lines, and then I'd get up and give somebody juice, then sit down and write a few more lines, and then go change a diaper.
Twilight is a 498-page novel. Did the story pour out of you?
It gushed. On a good day I would write 10 or 12 pages, single-spaced. That's a good chapter and then some. So it was coming very fast. And then there were other parts that were slower, but it pretty much flowed. I began June 2, 2003, and I finished by the end of August.
What are you working on these days?
Right now, I'm actually working on sci-fi. But again, it's sci-fi for people who don't like reading sci-fi.

Stephenie Meyer's Bio

Stephenie Meyer's life changed dramatically on June 2, 2003. The stay-at-home mother of three young sons woke up from a dream featuring seemingly real characters that she could not get out of her head.
"Though I had a million things to do, I stayed in bed, thinking about the dream. Unwillingly, I eventually got up and did the immediate necessities, and then put everything that I possibly could on the back burner and sat down at the computer to write—something I hadn't done in so long that I wondered why I was bothering."
Meyer invented the plot during the day through swim lessons and potty training, and wrote it out late at night when the house was quiet. Three months later she finished her first novel, Twilight. With encouragement from her older sister (the only other person who knew she had written a book), Meyer submitted her manuscript to various literary agencies. Twilight was picked out of a slush pile at Writer's House and eventually made its way to the publishing company Little, Brown where everyone fell immediately in love with the gripping, star-crossed lovers.
Twilight was one of 2005's most talked about novels and within weeks of its release the book debuted at #5 on The New York Times bestseller list. Among its many accolades, Twilight was named an "ALA Top Ten Books for Young Adults," an Amazon.com "Best Book of the Decade...So Far", and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year.
The highly-anticipated sequel, New Moon, was released in September 2006, and spent more than 25 weeks at the #1 position on The New York Times bestseller list.
In 2007, Eclipse literally landed around the world and fans made the Twilight Saga a worldwide phenomenon! With midnight parties and vampire-themed proms the enthusiasm for the series continued to grow.
On May 6, 2008, Little, Brown and Company released The Host, Meyer's highly-anticipated novel for adults which debuted at #1 on The New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. The Host still remains a staple on the bestseller lists more than a year after its debut.
On August 2, 2008, the final book in the Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn was released at 12:01 midnight. Stephenie made another appearance on "Good Morning America" and was featured in many national media outlets, including Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, People Magazine and Variety. Stephenie headlined the Breaking Dawn Concert Series with Justin Furstenfeld (lead singer of Blue October) to celebrate the release in four major markets across the US. Breaking Dawn sold 1.3 million copies in its first 24 hours.
The Twilight movie, directed by Catherine Hardwicke and starring Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, was released on November 21, 2008. Twilight debuted at #1 at the box office with $70 million, making it the highest grossing opening weekend for a female director.
Stephenie lives in Arizona with her husband and three sons.

***The Story Behind* *Twilight***

I get a ton of questions about how I came up with the story of Twilight and how I got it published. I may be killing my FAQ page by doing this, but here is the whole story:

(Warning: there are Twilight spoilers contained in the following; if you don't want to ruin the suspense, stop reading.....now. Warning #2: As you might have guessed from the length of my book, I can't tell a short story—this is going to take a while. You have been warned.)

The Writing: I know the exact date that I began writing Twilight, because it was also the first day of swim lessons for my kids. So I can say with certainty that it all started on June 2, 2003. Up to this point, I had not written anything besides a few chapters (of other stories) that I never got very far on, and nothing at all since the birth of my first son, six years earlier.

I woke up (on that June 2nd) from a very vivid dream. In my dream, two people were having an intense conversation in a meadow in the woods. One of these people was just your average girl. The other person was fantastically beautiful, sparkly, and a vampire. They were discussing the difficulties inherent in the facts that A) they were falling in love with each other while B) the vampire was particularly attracted to the scent of her blood, and was having a difficult time restraining himself from killing her immediately. For what is essentially a transcript of my dream, please see Chapter 13 ("Confessions") of the book.

Though I had a million things to do (i.e. making breakfast for hungry children, dressing and changing the diapers of said children, finding the swimsuits that no one ever puts away in the right place, etc.), I stayed in bed, thinking about the dream. I was so intrigued by the nameless couple's story that I hated the idea of forgetting it; it was the kind of dream that makes you want to call your friend and bore her with a detailed description. (Also, the vampire was just so darned good-looking, that I didn't want to lose the mental image.) Unwillingly, I eventually got up and did the immediate necessities, and then put everything that I possibly could on the back burner and sat down at the computer to write—something I hadn't done in so long that I wondered why I was bothering. But I didn't want to lose the dream, so I typed out as much as I could remember, calling the characters "he" and "she."

From that point on, not one day passed that I did not write something. On bad days, I would only type out a page or two; on good days, I would finish a chapter and then some. I mostly wrote at night, after the kids were asleep so that I could concentrate for longer than five minutes without being interrupted. I started from the scene in the meadow and wrote through to the end. Then I went back to the beginning and wrote until the pieces matched up. I drove the "golden spike" that connected them in late August, three months later.

It took me a while to find names for my anonymous duo. For my vampire (who I was in love with from day one) I decided to use a name that had once been considered romantic, but had fallen out of popularity for decades. Charlotte Bronte's Mr. Rochester and Jane Austen's Mr. Ferrars were the characters that led me to the name Edward. I tried it on for size, and found that it fit well. My female lead was harder. Nothing I named her seemed just right. After spending so much time with her, I loved her like a daughter, and no name was good enough. Finally, inspired by that love, I gave her the name I was saving for my daughter, who had never shown up and was unlikely to put in an appearance at this point: Isabella. Huzzah! Edward and Bella were named. For the rest of the characters, I did a lot of searching in old census records, looking for popular names in the times that they'd been born. Some trivia: Rosalie was originally "Carol" and Jasper was first "Ronald." I like the new names much better, but every now and then I will slip up and type Carol or Ron by accident. It really confuses the people who read my rough drafts.

For my setting, I knew I needed someplace ridiculously rainy. I turned to Google, as I do for all my research needs, and looked for the place with the most rainfall in the U.S. This turned out to be the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. I pulled up maps of the area and studied them, looking for something small, out of the way, surrounded by forest... And there, right where I wanted it to be, was a tiny town called "Forks." It couldn't have been more perfect if I had named it myself. I did a Google image search on the area, and if the name hadn't sold me, the gorgeous photographs would have done the trick. (Images like these of the Hoh Rainforest (a short drive from Forks). Also see forks-web.com ). In researching Forks, I discovered the La Push Reservation, home to the Quileute Tribe. The Quileute story is fascinating, and a few fictional members of the tribe quickly became intrinsic to my story.

All this time, Bella and Edward were, quite literally, voices in my head. They simply wouldn't shut up. I'd stay up as late as I could stand trying to get all the stuff in my mind typed out, and then crawl, exhausted, into bed (my baby still wasn't sleeping through the night, yet) only to have another conversation start in my head. I hated to lose anything by forgetting, so I'd get up and head back down to the computer. Eventually, I got a pen and notebook for beside my bed to jot notes down so I could get some freakin' sleep. It was always an exciting challenge in the morning to try to decipher the stuff I'd scrawled across the page in the dark.

During the day, I couldn't stay away from the computer, either. When I was stuck at swim lessons, out in 115 degrees of Phoenix sunshine, I would plot and scheme and come home with so much new stuff that I couldn't type fast enough. It was your typical Arizona summer, hot, sunny, hot, and hot, but when I think back to those three months, I remember rain and cool green things, like I really spent the summer in the Olympic Rainforest.

When I'd finished the body of the novel, I started writing epilogues...lots of epilogues. This eventually clued me in to the fact that I wasn't ready to let go of my characters, and I started working on the sequel. Meanwhile, I continued to edit Twilight in a very obsessive-compulsive way.

My older sister, Emily, was the only one who really knew what I was up to. In June, I'd started sending her chapters as I finished them, and she soon became my cheerleading section. She was always checking in to see if I had something new for her. It was Emily who first suggested, after I'd finished, that I should try to get Twilight published. I was so stunned by the fact that I'd actually finished a whole, entire book, that I decided to look into it.

Getting Published: To put it mildly, I was naive about publishing. I thought it worked like this: you printed a copy of your novel, wrapped it up in brown paper, and sent it off to a publishing house. Ho ho ho, that's a good one. I started googling (naturally) and began to discover that this was not the way it is done. (Movies lie to us! Why?! A side note: you will not be able to enjoy the new Steve Martin version of Cheaper by the Dozen when you know how insanely impossible the publishing scenario it contains is.) The whole set up with query letters, literary agents, simultaneous submissions vs. exclusive submissions, synopsizes, etc., was extremely intimidating, and I almost quit there. It certainly wasn't belief in my fabulous talent that made me push forward; I think it was just that I loved my characters so much, and they were so real to me, that I wanted other people to know them, too.

I subscribed to WritersMarket.com and compiled a list of small publishers that accepted unsolicited submissions and a few literary agencies. It was around this time that my little sister, Heidi, mentioned Janet Evanovich's website to me. In her Q and A for writers section, Janet E. mentioned Writers House, among a few others, as "the real thing" in the world of literary agencies. Writers House went on my wish list as the most desirable and also least likely.

I sent out around fifteen queries (and I still get residual butterflies in my stomach when I drive by the mailbox I sent the letters from—mailing them was terrifying.). I will state, for the record, that my queries truly sucked, and I don't blame anyone who sent me a rejection (I did get seven or eight of those. I still have them all, too). The only rejection that really hurt was from a small agent who actually read the first chapter before she dropped the axe on me. The meanest rejection I got came after Little, Brown had picked me up for a three-book deal, so it didn't bother me at all. I'll admit that I considered sending back a copy of that rejection stapled to the write-up my deal got in Publisher's Weekly, but I took the higher road.

My big break came in the form of an assistant at Writers House named Genevieve. I didn't find out until much later just how lucky I was; it turns out that Gen didn't know that 130,000 words is a whole heck of a lot of words. If she'd known that 130K words would equal 500 pages, she probably wouldn't have asked to see it. But she didn't know (picture me wiping the sweat from my brow), and she did ask for the first three chapters. I was thrilled to get a positive response, but a little worried because I felt the beginning of the book wasn't the strongest part. I mailed off those three chapters and got a letter back a few weeks later (I could barely get it open, my hands were so weak with fear). It was a very nice letter. She'd gone back with a pen and twice underlined the part where she'd typed how much she enjoyed the first three chapters (I still have that letter, of course), and she asked for the whole manuscript. That was the exact moment when I realized that I might actually see Twilight in print, and really one of the happiest points in my whole life. I did a lot of screaming.

About a month after I sent in the manuscript, I got a call from Jodi Reamer, an honest to goodness literary agent, who wanted to represent my book. I tried really hard to sound like a professional and a grownup during that conversation, but I'm not sure if I fooled her. Again, my luck was tremendous (and I don't usually have good luck—I've never won anything in my life, and no one ever catches a fish when I'm in the boat) because Jodi is the uber-agent. I couldn't have ended up in better hands. She's part lawyer, part ninja (she's working on earning her black belt right now, no kidding), a pretty amazing editor in her own right, and a great friend.

Jodi and I worked for two weeks on getting Twilight into shape before sending it to editors. The first thing we worked on was the title, which started out as Forks (and I still have a teeny soft spot for that name). Then we polished up a few rough spots, and Jodi sent it out to nine different publishing houses. This really messed with my ability to sleep, but luckily I wasn't in suspense for long.

Megan Tingley, of Megan Tingley Books, of Little, Brown and Company, read Twilight on a cross-country flight and came back to Jodi the day after the Thanksgiving weekend with a preemptive deal so huge that I honestly thought Jodi was pulling my leg—especially the part where she turned the offer down and asked for more. The upshot was that, by the end of the day, I was trying to process the information that not only was my book going to be published by one of the biggest young adult publishers in the country, but that they were going to pay me for it. For a very long time, I was convinced it was a really cruel practical joke, but I couldn't imagine who would go to these wild extremes to play a hoax on such an insignificant little hausfrau.

And that's how, in the course of six months, Twilight was dreamed, written, and accepted for publication.

Things keep getting crazier, what with the movie deal and all the pre-publication attention that Twilight continues to receive. Though I've gotten impatient from time to time, I'm glad I've had the last two years to try to come to terms with the situation. I'm greatly looking forward to finally having Twilight on the shelves, and more than a little frightened, too. Overall, it's been a true labor of love, love for Edward and Bella and all the rest of my imaginary friends, and I'm thrilled that other people get to meet them now.

Twilight – Bella’s Moving

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Feb 102010

Isabella Marie Swan.

A brunette girl who sees herself as simple, ordinary, plain, outcast and different, moves out from her mother's roof in the sunny Phoenix to Forks, Washington which she hates because of its climate and bitter memories of her parent's separation. Here she stays with her father, Charlie Swan, the town's chief police, whom she is not really closed to. This move was to give her mother Renee more time and freedom to spend with her new husband.

At the first day of school, instead of being outcast and hated as she expected, she was fondly received by everybody. The male hormones lined up for this beautiful new girl in school and even girls wanted to be friends with her. Well, everybody except this tight ensemble of cool-to-be-true Cullen siblings who sat at the "coolest" table in the cafeteria whom Bella describes as perfect-looking models waiting for their photo shoot. Their skin, their eyes, their mystery - they who look so similar yet so different. They pair themselves - Rosalie and Emmette, Alice and Jasper - and then the devastatingly and inhumanly beautiful bronzed-hair Edward.

Incidentally, they sat as partners in their biology class. At their first class together, Bella was offended by Edward's apparent avoidance at her as if she "smelled" different that he has to sit very far from her and his chair angled against her. And she overheard him convincing the teacher to change his Biology class schedule. This brought a new wave of insecurity to the already-insecure Bella.

Days passed, Bella noticed Edward being absent and wondered if it was because of her but dismissed it immediately by assuming she is no one important to him in any ways. Upon his return, Edward made amends to the new girl for being unfriendly. Through days of altering friendliness and smugness from Edward, Bella felt a pulling force toward him that he is different. Nobody can't be that gorgeous like him, she says. His hair's casual disarray, his perfect crooked smile, his sculptured nose - just too beautiful for a human. His chalky-white skin, his eyes that change colors from golden honey to pitch black, his cold-as-ice hands - just too mysterious to be a human. She started dreaming of him every night.

Every curiosity in Bella's mind was triggered when one rainy school morning; Edward did something out of the ordinary. Due to the slippery road brought by the heavy rain, a van lost control and was about to smash Bella to death when far from a distance, Edward came to her side and rescued her. She swore she saw Edward pull the van away from her single handedly. But he insisted otherwise.

She eventually found out from a family friend, Jacob Black, about the treaty in their land involving legends of vampires and "protectors" and gave her self conclusion that Edward is a vampire.

During a girls' night-out, Bella got lost in the strange town of Port Angeles and was again almost close to her death because of this group of serial killers chasing her. Between fear and thoughts of self-defense, Edward's silver Volvo screeched tires to rescue again. In spite of knowing he is a vampire, Bella mysteriously trusts him and feels safe with him. She gets in the Volvo finding the furious Edward staring at her would-be attackers. Then when Edward was calmed by Bella, they went to a restaurant where they spilled out all the beans. He told her though that his family don't feed on human blood only on wildlife - "vegetarian vampires", he jokes. He also can hear people's thoughts except Bella's; a mystery to both of them. Edward himself feels that his secrets are safe with Bella.

Since then, they have been inseparable. Edward picks her everyday from her home and off to school together they go. They spend the lunch together, sits close during Biology class, he watches her sleep to guard her, she meets his family, they spend the unforgettable time in the meadows where he shows how his skin glistens like diamonds when sun reflects on it; she loved him even more - A set of motions settled in place where none of Bella's other admirers can not insert. Edward told her why he acted the way he acted during her first day in school - her blood smelled TOO sweet for him to resist. And when he heard her speak his name in sleep, he was fighting over ethics, moral and nature on how he felt - he loved her ever since.

The conflict starts when a trio of nomad vampires arrived in the peaceful town of Forks - James, Laurent and Victoria. James wanted Bella's blood and the Cullen family would stop at nothing to keep the beloved human of their son and brother. But because of James' trap, Bella was bitten by James and both releasing venom into her body and leaking great amount of blood from her. Edward saves her life again in time and together with Emmette and Jasper, killed the lethal vampire James. Edward sucked out the venom from Bella's system just in time not to spread enough to make her a vampire.

Then after the turmoil, they were safe again at Forks. They went to their prom. Since then, Bella had made clear to Edward her desire to become a vampire. They went outside their prom dance floor, and out in the darkness, Edward reached for her throat while Bella anticipated for a life with her beautiful vampire - forever.