Teen scream

Stephenie Meyer is the author of the popular Twilight teen vampire novels. (H.B. Fenn and Company)

As vampires go, they weren’t the scariest bunch. Dare I say it, they were pretty cute, like Beatlemaniacs — only paler. The first ones started trickling in at nine in the morning and now, 10 hours later, the mob was 500 strong, spilling over from the seating area and clogging the bookstore’s every artery. As the anticipation mounted, cries of “I’m so excited!” and “I love you, Edward Cullen!” bubbled from the sea of prom dresses, black chokers and prosthetic fangs.

Costumes in place, the teenage girls had journeyed to this mall in suburban Pennsylvania to see Stephenie Meyer, the 33-year-old force behind the unnervingly absorbing Twilight teen vampire series. Meyer’s saga — the third book was published recently — offers readers supernatural bodice rippers without much bodice ripping (more on that later). Since its 2005 debut, the series has sold upwards of 2 million books, and the latest installment, Eclipse, sold 150,000 copies on its first day alone. With a certain boy wizard in retirement, Twilight is the biggest young-adult phenom going.

Frothing with romance and gothic atmosphere, the books tell the story of Bella Swan, a regular jeans-and-T-shirts girl who moves from Phoenix, Ariz., to a drizzly corner of Washington state. It’s all doom and gloom — that is, until she encounters boy-vampire Edward Cullen on the first day of school. “He was glaring down at me,” she narrates in the first book, Twilight, “his black eyes full of revulsion. As I flinched away from him, shrinking against my chair, the phrase if looks could kill suddenly ran through my mind.”

This bronze-haired, marble-skinned creature turns out to be anything but turned off by Bella; he’s just reacting to her irresistible smell. To his credit, he refrains from sucking her blood, and turns out to be the most considerate boy to have ever existed. He anticipates her every need, protects her from “bad” vampires, and, in book number three, proposes marriage. In the latest book, Eclipse, Bella ponders her options. Does she want to let Edward bite her and turn her into a vampire for eternity? (Obviously, what would be cooler than that?) But should she really get married at the age of 18? And what about her best friend, Jacob Black, the boy werewolf who’s admitted to being besotted with her? He’s kind of cute, too.

Fans at a Pennsylvania bookstore wait to meet Stephenie Meyer, whose Twilight series features the boy-vampire Edward Cullen. (Lauren Mechling/CBC)

Meyer’s personal appearances tend to entail waiting lists, admission fees, and long lines — all pretty much unheard of in an industry where most writers don’t even show up in bookstores for fear of thin to non-existent crowds. But, unlike most authors, she doesn’t read; she focuses instead on answering fans’ burning questions, and on signing books, of course. Many of the kids at the event in Pennsylvania travelled for six hours to see Meyer up close. “I’ve had parents come farther than that,” said Meyer, whose website features a picture of herself posing with a fan who few from Munich to attend an appearance in San Francisco.

Most fans profess to have romantic feelings for Edward or Jacob, and attribute their love of Meyer’s books to her “realistic” writing style. It’s not unusual in her books, which are 550 pages on average, for a scene to span twenty pages, long enough to mention every sound, every change in speaking tone, every infinitesimal change in facial expression. But what may come across as flat-footed to an adult reader seems to hold youngsters in a hypnotic sway. “It’s like you’re actually living it,” said a freckle-faced 13-year-old who skipped school to see Meyer. “Of all the crushes I have ever had, whether it be on real people or characters, in books or movies, [Edward] definitely takes the cake, hands down,” another reader posted on Twilight Lexicon, one of the many fan sites devoted to Meyer’s oeuvre.

The series has been optioned for film adaptation by Summit Entertainment, the production company behind American Pie, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and In the Valley of Elah, and two more books are scheduled to come out by 2009. Meanwhile, Meyer is finishing edits on The Host, a body-snatcher tale for adults set for publication early next year. “I’m not the most prolific writer,” Meyer insisted. “Christopher Paolini’s [author of the dragon series Eragon] books are longer than mine, and I’m sure there are adult writers who have new books coming out every three months.”

Meyer is a former stay-at-home mom who preferred Jane Austen and the Book of Mormon to “scary stuff.” (As a self-described “extremely religious” Mormon, she doesn’t watch R-rated movies.) She said the idea that developed into Twilight, the first book in the series, came to her in a dream in 2002, when she was 29. She started writing it down and three months later she had a book, which she sent to ten different agents. Nine rejected her. One bit, so to speak.

(H.B. Fenn and Company)

“I think I’m a better writer now. I think Twilight was rough because I was just getting started.” Her characters are growing with her, Meyer said. “I never intended the series to feel like one of the serials where the characters are always sophomores in high school going to the same prom in every book. They’re aging, and the whole story has gotten more complicated. My characters always felt really real so they’re growing up quite a bit and learning a lot and every book reflects that.”

Vampire lust notwithstanding, Meyer’s books are fairly innocent, free of the drinking and sexual experimentation that she sees in most teen fiction. “I do get upset with the premise of so many YA books,” she said. “Regardless of what the story is about, the characters all smoke and drink and they all have had sex multiple times.… I think that girls who are not a part of that situation feel like they can’t identify with that.”

The Mormon Church has yet to issue an official statement on Meyer’s work, though they probably appreciate her success (the church requires members to tithe 10 per cent of their income; Meyer would not comment on the matter). When a Phoenix church representative was asked what he thought by a local newspaper, he said that he had no comment but his wife and daughter were big fans. “I thought that was really sweet,” Meyer said. “I’m very comfortable with [the series] and my dad reads it — that’s the biggest self-censoring thing you could have.”

She attributes Bella’s appeal to the simple fact that she’s normal. “In a lot of young adult books, characters find out they’re adopted and they’re some cool exciting exotic thing and they’re meant to rule some country you’ve never heard of,” she said. “That’s a cool fantasy but it’s hard for me to identify with because in reality I know I don’t have magic powers. I think Bella’s nice because you don’t have to know kung fu to feel like you could be in her shoes.”

Meyer has already come up with the plot for her next two “Twilight” books (and is developing storylines for future projects, including one about a mermaid, the mythical creature Meyer says she’d most like to be). Fans are constantly sending e-mails to her to suggest plot points, but with the “Twilight” narrative locked down, the only fan input she’s open to is the occasional name suggestion. “For instance,” Meyer said, “I needed to name a vampire and I wanted to make sure it would sound like what a teen’s name would be today.” A fan called Brie offered up her name. Meyer thought it was perfect, but made sure to ask Brie if she minded getting killed. “She was like, ‘No, that’s cool!’”

Stephenie Meyer will be appearing in Toronto as part of her book tour on Nov. 2, 2007.

Lauren Mechling is a New York-based writer.

CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites - links will open in new window.