Author of the week

Stephenie Meyer

Stephenie Meyer gives her fans what they want— eventually, said Samantha Leach in Bustle.com. Twelve years ago, the Twilight author was rewriting the first novel in her blockbuster teen romance series from the perspective of Edward, the immortally young vampire who falls for high schooler

Bella Swan. But then unfinished chapters were leaked online, and Meyer, feeling wronged, dropped the project. Luckily for fans, Meyer’s mother is a fan, too, and one year she told Stephenie the only thing she wanted for Mother’s Day was Edward’s story, told up through a famous scene with Bella in an idyllic meadow. “There was nothing else I could get her,” Meyer says. Still, a dozen years after the last Twilight book, would any other readers still care about teenager-vampire romance? “I thought I’d missed my window,” Meyer says. Then she announced the book and the news crashed her website.

“A lot has changed in the world since the first book,” said Concepción de León in The New York Times. The #MeToo movement cast a spotlight on abusive relationships, and Edward, beneath his brooding good looks, is a killer who spies on Bella and manipulates her. Meyer hopes Midnight Sun contextualizes Edward’s behavior, revealing his gnawing anxieties. “When you’re in his head, it’s a whole different experience,” she says. “He starts off fairly confident, but boy does he get broken down by the end.” Still, she has no desire to rewrite any other entry in the series from Edward’s viewpoint. “I plan to spend a lot of time in other worlds where vampires don’t exist,” she says. “My hope is that I can finish another book in a lot less time.”