Twilight Series hits the news!

USA Today had this article about my favorite series!


Vampire tale takes bite out of 'Potter'

Move over, Harry Potter.

After three weeks, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in J.K. Rowling's series, has been knocked off its perch atop USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list by another fantasy aimed at teens.

Eclipse, the third book in Stephenie Meyer's series about a girl whose boyfriend is a vampire, enters the list today at No. 1, edging out Hallows (No. 2).

Little, Brown reports Eclipse sold nearly 250,000 copies its first week. The publisher is printing another 100,000 copies after a 1-million-copy first printing. Hallows sold a record 11.5 million copies in the 10 days after its July 21 release, according to Scholastic, which declined to release sales figures for the past week.

Meyer's back story nearly rivals that of Rowling, who was a single mother on welfare in 1995 when she finished her first Potter book after conjuring the boy wizard on a train ride.

Four years ago, Meyer, 33, was a stay-at-home mom in Glendale, Ariz., with no plans to write a book. But after a vivid dream about a girl talking to a handsome young vampire, "I starting writing it down so I wouldn't forget it."

Those 10 pages became Chapter 13 in her first novel, Twilight, published in 2005.

When she began, Meyer says, "I wasn't a writer; I was a reader, but I was curious to see what happened next." She kept writing, telling only her sister, who urged her to try to sell it.

In one of those rare success stories that inspire unpublished writers, Meyer found an agent via the Web and got a contract.

Eclipse is Meyer's first book to make its debut at No. 1. Before its release, she had been no higher than No. 39. It's also boosting her earlier books. Twilight, in paperback, is No. 10; New Moon (2006) is No. 31.

Many of her readers are girls, but Meyer is thrilled when boys tell her, "My girlfriend made me read this, but I really like it."

The books mix fantasy with romance, without sex, drugs or foul language. Meyer's "pet peeve about the (young adult) genre is that there seems to be an empty spot for novels where kids aren't doing drugs and having sex."

Meyer, a Mormon who studied literature at Brigham Young University, says her novels "aren't overly religious, but my characters, even the vampires, think about religion."