Julian Guiffre
Co-News Editor
A mormom housewife in Pheonix spent one summer writing a novel about a quiet teenage girl who falls in love with a devastatingly handsome vampire. She hoped to make $10,000 to pay off her minivan.
Instead, she signed a three-book deal for $750,000.
Five years ago Stephenie Meyer’s first novel in her now famous series premiered. Named Twilight, it featured her quiet but witty heroine, Bella, and the gorgeous and commanding vampire, Edward.
According to fans worldwide, Meyer is the second coming of J.K. Rowling. Some say that’s taking things too far?.yet the numbers would indicate otherwise.
Twilight has 3.3 million in hardcover and paperback, the sequel New Moon has 2.6 million in hardcover and paperback, the third novel Eclipse has 1.6 million in hardcover alone, and the end to the series, Breaking Dawn, printed 3.2 million copies before they were even on sale.
If Meyer’s fame wasn’t complete, her newest novel, The Host, not of the vampire series, is on the bestsellers list. And despite all four novels being released, the enthusiasm for this series won’t die down just yet. The first movie is being released on November 21.
Of course, with millions of obsessive fans comes the horde of memorabilia and propaganda. “Team Edward” and “Team Jacob” t-shirts, an online community called “Twilight Moms”, and thousands of fan sites splattered across the Internet.
It doesn’t stop there.
Some women quit their jobs to sell Twilight inspired t-shirts and jewelry online, and one teenager confessed to Meyer herself that these books convinced her not to take her own life.
The Twilight movie cast and crew received one of the loudest welcoming at Comic-Con this year, with more girls than ever attending a convention largely based on Comic books. In fact, they didn’t even wait until the actors appeared to start shouting. As soon as the staff placed the nametags on the panel table, the girls started screaming, and didn’t stop.
Facebook has over 500 groups featuring Meyer’s novels and the upcoming movie, and a fan page called “The Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer” has 108,231 fans. A fan of the novels wrote on the wall of a Stephenie Meyer fan group that about 20 people (ages 16-65) were at a party and spent over an hour discussing the Twilight series, “the characters and how much we loved the last book and the way it ended?Thank you for the for the fantastic entertainment and for giving such a diverse group so much to discuss!”
Senior Shannon Tolley, a fan of the now world-wide famous novels, said she enjoys reading the series “because its a twist on romance?they are very well written and it is very easy to get sucked into the books and loose track of time.”
In August, however, Meyer learned some of the unfortunate drawbacks to fame. A partial draft of her novel called Midnight Sun was leaked on the Internet.
A letter to her fans that is posted on her website says, “I think it is important for everybody to understand that what happened was a huge violation of my rights as an author, not to mention me as a human being.”
Meyer goes on to say that she is not sure if she can finish Midnight Sun, a novel that tells the Twilight story from Edward’s point of view.
“Writing isn’t like math; in math, two plus two always equals four no matter what your mood is like. With writing, the way you feel changes everything,” she says in the letter.
Despite these developments, Meyer’s novels show no signs of waning in the minds of avid fans.
“These novels are unlike any romance I have ever read before,” said junior Sami Ralli. “It’s amazing how Meyer has written a vampire love story that almost every reader can relate to.”