From News.com.au:

“I WAS observing this perfect circle of a meadow with a boy and a girl having a conversation. She was unremarkable, but he was glistening in the sun. He was beautiful. And he was a vampire.

“He was telling her how much he wanted to kill her and yet how much he loved her.”

So recounts Stephenie Meyer, the Mormon mother-of-three living on the edge of the Arizona desert, of her June 2003 dream that stirred her imagination to ask: what happened next?

It’s a question for which the 42 million readers of Meyer’s four-novel Twilight saga and viewers of the box-office hit Twilight film will always be grateful, because later that day the young mother wrote down the dream – and kept writing.

Read the full interview here.

From USA Today:

Sales of her novels accounted for about 16% of all book sales tracked by the list in the first quarter of 2009. That’s about one in seven books. Top 20 sellers for the quarter:

1. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
2. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
3. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
4. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw by Jeff Kinney
6. The Shack by William P. Young
7. Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man by Steve Harvey
8. The Associate by John Grisham
9. Watchmen by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons
10. Eat This, Not That! Supermarket Survival Guide by David Zinczenko, Matt Goulding

The full list here.

**Congrats Stephenie! As always… YOU ROCK!

Stephenie Meyer’s “Breaking Dawn” won the “Oscars of the book world” Galaxy Award for Best Children’s Book.The award was announced Friday night!

Congratulations Stephenie!!

Check out the rest of the winners here. // Thanks NewMoonMovie.org for the tip.

The Times is running an Award for the 100 most influential people in the world, and Stephenie is one of the finalists! You can vote for her here.

Stephenie Meyer
AGE: 35
OCCUPATION: Author
PREVIOUS APPEARANCES ON THE TIME 100: 1

PRO: Her emo-vampire series Twilight is the biggest book franchise since Harry Potter, with four titles locked on the best-seller list. Last fall’s Twilight film, meanwhile, earned a No. 1 spot at the box office despite a starless cast.

CON: The Booker! The Nobel! The Pen/Faulkner! These are just some of the many awards her books won’t be winning anytime soon.

Stephenie updated her Official Site, with some important message:

Hey guys! This is just a heads up about an event I’m involved with here in Phoenix. The plan was for me to go entirely hermit this year (or decade), but there are always those things important enough to pull me out of my burrow. One of my dear friends and mentors, Faith Hochhalter—a truly gifted book buyer who put together some of my most successful events—was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. I am not the only author who was helped along by her talent and enthusiasm, and all of us who have enjoyed her influence in our lives and careers are eager to help her through this rough time. To assist with her medical bills, several young adult writers are joining together for a fund-raising event: Project Save the Book Babe. The event will be on April 4th in Tempe, AZ; it will include live music, a panel discussion with the attending authors, and an auction of some fun and/or rare items from each author. All the information about the event and the authors attending can be found at ProjectBookBabe.com. Personally, I’ll be auctioning some ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) of my books, an early marked up manuscript or two, my dress from the Eclipse prom, and the fluffy original epilogue to Forever Dawn, along with signed books, of course. We’re still in the process of putting this together, so more info will be forthcoming over the next week. Tickets will go on sale tomorrow (Tuesday the 17th) so if you’re interested in attending and helping us save our Book Babe Faith, hurry over to the site and check it out.

Thank you!

Steph

Stephenie Meyer has updated her site and she’s given us an exclusive spread from Catherine Hardwicke’s upcoming book, Twilight: Director’s Notebook out on March 17th. 

You can pre-order here!

Booksellers say Meyer’s books are helping fill the void left by Harry Potter after the last instalment in the stories the boy wizard was published in 2007.

Publishers had fretted openly about how they would maintain sales after the publication of the final part of the series Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Figures published by the retailer amazon.com show Meyer’s books dominating the top 10 lists for the last year in Britain, the US, Canada and France, enjoying an international success not seen since the height of “Potter-mania”.

In many of the national lists, compiled to chart international reading habits for World Book Day on Thursday her name appears two or three times in the top 10.

Read more.

Style.com has an excelent article about Stephenie Meyer, the complete story appears in the March 2009 issue of Vogue Magazine.

She may prefer to write late at night while her family sleeps, but for the record, there is not a lot about Stephenie Meyer, author of the better-than-best-selling Twilight series, that screams vampire. Yes, she has long dark hair and earthy brown eyes, casually highlighted this afternoon at her home in Arizona by a black Banana Republic cashmere sweater and jeans, but she lacks the arrogance associated with vampireness. Her vibe is homey; she sits you down on her living-room couch, one leg curled up under her, and starts talking as if you had been in the midst of conversation for years. She’s surrounded by her sons’ toys, games, and compasses (her husband is a Cubmaster), as well as her work—her office is in the front hall. There are family photos and a few paintings of the Washington coast, where Twilight takes place. The Phoenix neighborhood where she lives, a kind of desert suburb, is the opposite of the Washington coast, and lately she and her husband have been taking their three boys (ages six, eight, and eleven) on vacation to the Seattle area once in a while, to see green. “It’s nice to show them that there are places where things are alive,” she says.

Read full article.

The baltimoresun.com has an article about the rection of Stephenie’s fans about Stephen King’s critique:

didn’t see the approaching storm when I wrote a recent Read Street post about Stephen King’s critique of Stephenie Meyer, author of the immensely popular Twilight series. As you may have heard, he said in an interview with USA Weekend: “[J.K.] Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.” (He also skewered James Patterson, ran hot and cold on Dean Koontz and praised Jodi Picoult, but no one seemed to notice.)

Nancy warned me that posting his comments would unleash a torrent of fury from fans of Meyer’s teenage vampire saga. I ignored her advice and, as usual, regretted it.

More than 125 people responded to that post, and many called King an idiot – and worse. Those comments were offset by others calling Meyer and her fans idiots – and worse. So while the Baltimore area basked in unusually warm weather, much of my time was spent censoring the rudest language and deleting profanity-laden comments.

Read more here.
Via cullenboysanonymous.com

Copies of Breaking Dawn, the latest book in the four-part series, flew off Australian bookstore shelves at a rate of 19,800 copies each week during January, according to Nielsen Bookscan.

The previous record for January sales was held by The Da Vinci Code, with 14,500 copies sold in the first month of 2005.

Worldwide sales for the Twilight Saga are now at 42 million copies, with 1.4 million of those sales coming from Australia.

Read more