Stephenie Meyers is the bestselling author of the Twilight vampire series that is being made into a feature film. She's sold seven million books so far and teens are ready to camp out at the bookstore for the next book. But did you know she's a teetotaling Mormon mother of three?
Never heard of her? Well that's probably because you are not 13 and female. But you soon will. Although five million of her sales have been in the US, momentum is growing in Europe and with the release of a film of Twilight, the first book, scheduled for early next year, the books are expected to take off here. British bookshops are planning midnight openings on the day that the fourth book in the series is published in August.
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She says that some people are surprised that a Mormon is writing vampire novels, but they generally haven't read her. "When you think about vampire novels, there is a lot of gruesomeness, a lot of sexuality, a lot of darkness, blood obsession. When you read my books it is completely different. Really, the whole vampirism thing is a metaphor for feeling trapped in a certain role. I never got into any trouble from the Latter Day Saints people. My strongest fan base is probably in Utah." How Meyer came to write about vampires, however, is a mystery to her, given that she was very far from steeped in the vampire tradition. She is too "chicken" to read horror and doesn't watch R-rated films because “there are things that you don't need to have in your head. There are R-rated movies that I would like to go and see - I heard The 40-Year-Old Virgin was hysterical. But when you have an unbroken streak, you don't want to mess that up."
Stephenie is definitely an author on her way to the top.
