Some fun news coming from Seth on Stephenie Meyer.com in the last few days. The Host is coming out in paperback on April 13th and is now available to pre-order on Amazon.com. Not only will you be able to buy The Host in paperback, but this edition is going to have a few surprises. Check out more from Seth below:

Good news: The Host paperback is now available for pre-order. I have just heard from the publishing company that the paperback release will have a Reading Group Guide that includes the following:

•New, never-before-published “bonus chapter”
•An interview with Stephenie
•Discussion topics and questions
•Stephenie’s annotated playlist

It will be released on April 13, 2010. As always, I highly recommend The Host to anyone who has not yet read it. Have a great day!

–Seth

To read all the updates on Stephenie Meyer.com, click here.

(Thanks Beth!)

I love getting updates from Seth! The Host is a fantastic book. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend it. I’m looking forward to the bonus chapter.

Are you going to buy The Host in paperback form?

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Melissa Rosenberg has posted a fantastic picture on her Facebook page of herself and Stephenie Meyer on the Volturi set from New Moon. The picture also includes Rob Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Charlie Bewley, Christopher Heyerdahl, Ashley Greene, Daniel Cudmore, Michael Sheen and Jamie Campbell Bower; all in character.

Melissa’s caption for the picture says “On the Volturi set for New Moon, June 2009“.

You can check out more on Melissa’s Facebook page here and be sure to check out TA’s Facebook page here.

I love this picture! What a cool shot to have so many from the cast in with the actual writer of the story and the writer of the screenplay! Michael Sheen’s smile is also priceless.

What do you think of this picture from the Volturi set of New Moon?

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We have a new update from Stephenie Meyer’s official site today! Stephenie talks about a variety of things including the Twilight fanisites helping Haiti, a new book recommendation, another music recommendation and a movie recommendation. Check out what she has to say below:

January 27, 2010

Hope your new years have all started off right. A few unrelated things:

- I’ve been very impressed with the world in general and the Twilight fansites in specific in the support and love everyone is giving Haiti. It’s amazing to see how Twilight fans have come together to help. You are wonderful people. At this point, I think it’s important for all of us to remember that the situation in Haiti is not going to be cured overnight, so… keep up the good work, and let’s all keep the Haitians in our thoughts and prayers.

- A new book recommendation: I recently read and adored The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. It was one of those books that feel absolutely perfect and satisfying, and when you finish it you sit around wishing that you could find another book just like it.

- I realized that there was an egregious oversight on my music recommendation page. How have I never listed Metric? That’s crazy. Anyway, Fantasies was one of the best albums of 2009.

- Finally, a movie recommendation: Dear John comes out Friday the fifth of February. Thanks to my cool friend Wyck (who many of you have seen in various Twilight Saga interviews, as he is one of the producers on our movies, and who is a producer on Dear John) I got to see this one early. I will confess, I cried. Also, I discovered Channing Tatum, who I’ve somehow missed until now. Likey. Lots. Amanda Seyfried is entrancing as always, and the chemistry (chemistry is always the crux of a movie for me) between them is lovely. Though the chemistry between Channing Tatum and Richard Jenkins (who plays his father) was my favorite part.

Have a great week!

Steph

(Thanks Rebecca!)

To read all the updates on Stephenie Meyer.com, click here.

What do you think of Stephenie’s recommendations? Are you going to try any of them?

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We’re at the end of the year and we’ve gone through several cast/crew member birthdays, but today is perhaps the most important Twilight-related birthday of them all! Today is the birthday of the creator of our Twilight world, Stephenie Meyer! She’s given us all so much (we wouldn’t be here without her!), so from all of us here at Twilighters Anonymous, we want to wish the amazing and talented Stephenie a very happy birthday!

Happy Birthday, Stephenie! We hope you have a wonderful birthday and an even more amazing year to come. Have a birthday wish for Stephenie? Leave yours in the comment box below!

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USA Weekend: Stephen King on J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer

I’m working on my big American Icons cover story on Stephen King today, and it could almost fill up two full issues. When I flew up to Maine to talk to him in December, we got into a discussion of popular authors vs. the academic elite, a subject he has strong opinions about, and I asked him if his mainstream success over the past 35 years paved the way for the massive careers of Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling and Twilight author Stephenie Meyer.

King, whose Stephen King Goes to the Movies collection came out last week, doesn’t know how much of an influence he had on Meyer, but he does know that Rowling read his stuff when she was younger.

Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people. … The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.

People are attracted by the stories, by the pace and in the case of Stephenie Meyer, it’s very clear that she’s writing to a whole generation of girls and opening up kind of a safe joining of love and sex in those books. It’s exciting and it’s thrilling and it’s not particularly threatening because they’re not overtly sexual. A lot of the physical side of it is conveyed in things like the vampire will touch her forearm or run a hand over skin, and she just flushes all hot and cold. And for girls, that’s a shorthand for all the feelings that they’re not ready to deal with yet.”

For complete article click here

(thanks Anitmichichi)

While I think Stephen King is pretty harsh, he’s right. Stephenie Meyer is not a great writer, in my opinion. What she is, is a great storyteller. I wish he had elaborated more because Twilight has way too many fans to write it off this way. I believe it’s the storytelling, oh and the sexual tension too. When it’s all said and done, I have never been able to put my finger on exactly what draws me to the Twilight series. What do you think of what Stephen King had to say? Do you agree, disagree? Why?

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Entertainment Weekly spoke with Stephenie Meyer about her Twilight inspirations. Cool question for Stephenie. Her responses below:

JANE EYRE

”I read it when I was nine,” says Meyer, ”and I’ve reread it literally hundreds of times. I do think that there are elements of Edward in Edward Rochester and elements of Bella in Jane. Jane was someone I was close to as a child — we were good friends! I think in some ways she was more real to me than any other fictional heroine.”

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES

”The series influenced how my series turned out. Because I was never a fan of the stories where everything ends and they kiss at the wedding. Anne of Green Gables started out with her as a child, she had a very fully described adolescence, she had a book-long engagement, we got to see her wedding, we got to see her have her first child and lose her first child, we got to see her children grow up. We got the whole life, and I loved that.”

X-MEN CARTOONS

”This is crazy, but those Saturday-morning cartoons…I was always fascinated with the X-Men. I love the idea of a group of people and all of them can do something really well. They’re special, but they’re strongest when they work together. Maybe that comes from having a big family, but I always clicked into that kind of story. And I think that really came into play when I was subconsciously forming the Cullen family. Though I certainly wasn’t thinking about Cyclops when I was writing about them, I think it was there in the layers underneath.”

MUSE

”They universally work for my writing style. If I have to write a scene of despair, ‘Apocalypse Please’ will work. And if I have to write an action scene, I can put on ‘Assassin.’ If I have to write a scene about love, ‘Starlight’ will work. They have so many emotions!”

LINKIN PARK

”Essential to me in the beginning! Something about the tempo of their songs really kept the action in the novel. Otherwise it might have been a lot more sedate! ‘By Myself’ was a song I listened to in loops because just the sound of it, and the words of aloneness, the attackers behind you. That was really a great one for me.”

MARJORIE FAIR

”For New Moon they were absolutely essential. They can put you into a suicidal state faster than anything I know. It’s just this heartbreaking music where the pain is done so beautifully. It really got me in the zone for writing about a person who is horribly depressed and yet not at all showing it. She’s not wearing black and refusing to come out of her room and yelling at the people she loves. She is completely containing it inside herself. Their songs really made it beautiful for me.”

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE

”This band is so in touch for me with Jacob’s character. This really raw, uncontrolled emotion — where it’s not about some person who’s grown up and callused over and learned how to control things. It’s someone who’s feeling it for the first time and just wants to go out and blow things up. The song ‘Famous Last Words’ is a really romantic version of Jacob saying, ‘Okay, I’m putting myself out there, and you’re probably going to break me, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m still going to make the offer.’ ”

SOMEWHERE IN TIME

”The one movie that I watched a lot as a kid. It combined music into the story. Oh my gosh, with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. The music is Rachmaninoff, and every time you hear that song, you’re poised to fall in love. The relationship there is just this impossible thing that he makes possible. That had to be an influence on me.”

BABY MAMA

”When I’m on the road, I need a comedy that is as mindless as I can find. I watched Baby Mama on tour. I love Tina Fey. I think she may be the most adorable person on the face of the planet. And Amy Poehler is a close second.”

HGTV

”When I’m not on tour, when I’m home — here comes the geek girl — what I have on almost all the time is the Home and Garden TV channel. I adore House Hunters International, I adore Designed to Sell; I just love looking at all the houses and watching people get their houses all prettied up. HGTV is a safe place, and everyone is always happy.”

ROBERT DOWNEY JR.

”Isn’t Iron Man the best superhero movie that’s ever been done? That’s how you should feel coming out of a movie. You go in, you’re excited, you come out all jazzed and pumped. The best parts of that movie are when it was only him. I’m so glad he’s back.”

STRANGER THAN FICTION

”There’s a scene where [the fictional character] Emma Thompson’s character created…tracks her down and walks into her living room and he goes, ‘Hey, I’m Harold Crick.’ And she collapses to the floor and says, ‘I know.’ That moment makes me cry. Imagine what that would be like! I actually did have a dream after Twilight was finished of Edward coming to visit me — only I had gotten it wrong and he did drink blood like every other vampire and you couldn’t live on animals the way I’d written it. We had this conversation and he was terrifying.”

SOURCE

I enjoy knowing my favorite author’s inspirations. I have some of the same favorites, like Anne of Green Gables and Jane Eyre.

Are you surprised by any of her inspirations? Are any of them your favorites too?

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Andrew McMahon of Jack’s Mannequin shares more information about how the video for The Glass Passenger came about.

Band’s new video

Author Stephenie Meyer, whose hugely successful vampire novels make their feature-film debut with “Twilight” in November, came up with the concept for the band’s new video, “The Resolution.” McMahon was told by a friend’s wife that Meyer was a fan. She includes a few Jack’s tracks on the online play lists that accompany each of her novels.
“We weren’t finding a story we really connected to, and that made sense for the song,” recalls McMahon. “In a brainstorm, I realized here is this woman who has written these books whose aesthetic has appealed to so many people.”

Meyer submitted a video treatment and the band loved it. And no, “The Resolution” isn’t the dark vampire tale one might expect from the author.

“The mermaid was as (fantastical) as we got. … She was even laughing about it – that everybody thinks we’re going to shoot a vampire video,” says McMahon, who is finishing up “Twilight” now. “I couldn’t get into a room and let the woman direct the video unless I’d taken in her art as well.”

SOURCE

Slightly old news, but I like how it came about that Stephenie and Andrew hooked up. Stephenie Meyer fans are everywhere….watch out we’re taking over the world. I like the video so much that I think Stephenie should consider directing other things. What do you think?

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