The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide by Stephenie Meyer Read Free Book Online Page B

disappear. And then, when you pick the kind of car somebody drives, there are a million other vehicles, makes, and models that suddenly die. And as you narrow it down, you’re just taking pieces of it and destroying whole worlds that could have been. It’s a very interesting process.
    SH: I’ve got chills.

On Eclipse

     
    SH: So when you were writing
Eclipse, Twilight
hadn’t come out yet.
    SM:
Twilight
was not yet in stores. I had finished the rough draft of
Eclipse
. I still had a lot of editing to do, but it stayed pretty much in its present form.
    SH: Was
Twilight
successful immediately?
    SM: Yes—more so than I thought it would be. I mean, nothing, obviously, to what’s going on right now. But when I was out on tour, it did, for one week, hop onto the
New York Times
list—which, for me, was like the epitome of everything. It was like:
For the rest of my life, I get to say I’m a
New York Times
bestselling novelist.
    SH: [Laughs] Right.
    SM: So, for that one week, it felt like that was it—that was all I ever needed. [Laughs] So it started out really well. Booksellers were really great about getting the word out and hand selling it—which is awesome. Before
New Moon
came out, I had a couple of events with like a hundred people—and they were all excited and ready for what was coming next. That was really, really gratifying.
I had also started to get that people-didn’t-like-Jacob vibe, which really took me by surprise.
     
    SH: So at what point did you have to start balancing the success and the pressures from the outside while you were still writing?
    SM: I think the first real pressure was with
New Moon
, when the advance reading copies came out.
New Moon
had those two spoilers. Edward leaves, Jacob’s a werewolf. Once you know that, most of the suspense is gone from the book. Whether you figure it out or not, it’s still huge. So those two things ruin any possibility of suspense in the story, pretty much. Then a review written by someone who had an advancereading copy was put online and it gave away every plot point of the whole book six months before the book came out.
    That was the first time, I think, my publisher started to realize the power of the Internet with this particular series. Because it just started this huge outpouring of letters and people were so upset. Has this really happened? Why did this person tell us this? Can we read the book now? Is it out? What’s going on?
    So I felt pressure then—but the book was already written. And then, with
Eclipse
, it started to feel like a lot of people had their specific ideas about what should happen. That was the first time I was really conscious that people were writing the story differently in their heads. I had also started to get that people-didn’t-like-Jacob vibe, which really took me by surprise. I think it’s because they weren’t hearing his first-person the way I was. So then they got to, later.
    SH: I don’t know if you felt this way… but I never thought I would write from the point of view of a boy. Maybe because I read a lot of books where men wrote from a woman’s point of view, and I found them unrealistic characters.
    SM: Yes, yes!
    SH: Especially, you know, books written in the last century. But I was like: That is such crap! A woman wouldn’t think that—wouldn’t do that—and it bothered me. So I thought I would never write from the point of view of a boy.
    But then I met a character—almost exactly the same wayyou did. With
Goose Girl
there was a minor character named Razo. And then the book after that,
Enna Burning
, he was in it again—a minor character. And so by the time I got to the third book in the series, and I started to write from his point of view, I’d already known him for two books. And I was thinking:
I’m not writing this from the point of view of a boy; I’m just writing this person that I know.
And the gender wasn’t an issue. Was it sort of like that with Jacob?
    SM: Yeah. You know, I felt a