Who is Stephenie Meyer?

There’s a Twilight phenomenon that’s rocked the world, and Stephenie Meyer is the woman behind it. A dream led to the outpouring of the story that captured millions of imaginations, crossing the boundary between teen and adult fiction and triggering fan clubs on and off line and all around the world.

Born of a dream

The story behind the stories goes like this: On June 2, 2003, Stephenie Meyer woke from a dream in which a young woman was talking to an otherworldly-beautiful man in a sunlit meadow. He was a vampire, she didn’t seem to mind. He was trying to tell her that she was in danger in his presence. They were both in their late teens. This was heart-stopping romance! Meyer couldn’t shake the dream from her thoughts, and once the stay-at-home mother of three young boys had done her mommy chores for the morning, she sat at her computer to write. “It was something I hadn’t done in so long that I wondered why I was bothering,” she says. (She graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in English Literature).

Twilight Saga had record year

Good thing she bothered, because in 2008 she sold more books than any other author (22 million, according to her publisher) and did what no else — not even J.K. Rowling — has done in the 15 years of USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list: she swept the four top slots with her Twilight series, which includes the first novel Twilight, followed by New Moon, Eclipse and the latest, Breaking Dawn. She’s also taking the four top slots on Amazon.co.uk with the Twilight series right now, with none other than Barack Obama’s Dreams from my Father in fifth place.

So what’s the fuss? The story of Bella, who leaves her home town of Phoenix – incidentally, also Meyer’s home town – to stay with her father in grey, rain-soaked Forks in Washington State, resonates with women, young and not-so-young, the world over. She’s the new kid in school, who feels like an outsider until she meets the inexplicably attractive – and to her fascinating and desirable – Edward Cullen, part of a group of siblings who don’t mix with the other kids at school.

Vampires with morals

She discovers that the Cullens are vampires, but the best kind, mind you. They restrain themselves from drinking human blood, and instead hunt wild animals when the urge is upon them. They are vampires with morals. But that doesn’t mean Edward is immune to Bella’s scent and the prospect of indulging in her blood, which creates the tension that keeps the reader riveted throughout the book.

“Resisting that temptation is a constant struggle,” writes Lev Grossman in his essay on Meyer published in TIME magazine last year. “”Edward’s choice – and the willingness to choose a different way in general – is a major theme in Meyer’s books,” he concludes. Meyer agrees. “I really think that’s the underlying metaphor of my vampires,” she says. “It doesn’t matter where you’re stuck in life or what you think you have to do; you can always choose something else. There’s always a different path.”

Meyer a Mormon and a "rock star"

Meyer is a Mormon, and much of the “moral hygiene” that characterises her books can be attributed to her own lifestyle. There’s no sex in these books, just hand-holding and some kissing – more of that self-restraint she so advocates. “You can go anywhere for graphic sex,” she commented to TIME. “It’s harder to find a romance where they dwell on the hand-holding. When I was 16, holding hands was just – wow.”

To date, over 42 million copies of the Twilight Saga series have been sold, and Meyer has become akin to a rock star – thousands of fans show up at her book signings, some dressed as characters from the books. There are fan websites springing up all the time. One, www.twilightmoms.com, is specifically for fans over 25 – the site originator was tired of sharing her Twilight obsession with 13-year-old girls only, so went online to find like-minded, Twilight mad moms to chat to. She found lots. There are more than 200 000 posts on the site.

Twilight fans line up

Last year was huge for Meyer. In August, when the fourth and final book in the Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn, was launched, fans lined up for hours at bookstores to be among the first to get their hands a copy. The movie version of Twilight was released in December 2008 and became the second highest grossing independent film of the year, just behind Sex and the City. New Moon is in production and is set to be a major hit over the 2009 holiday season.

Stephenie Meyer lives in Arizona with her husband and sons. She’s apparently quite publicity-shy and what we know about the person behind the books is all she would like us to know at the moment. Right now it’s enough. We just don’t want her to stop writing.

The Twilight DVD releases in April.

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Author info: Cindy Moritz

Cindy Moritz is All4Women's contributing editor based in Cape Town. She spent ten years in magazine publishing, and was editor of fashion business title Pursuit for most of that time. She went on to edit popular parenting title Cape Town's Child, drawing on her own experience as mother of two young children. Deciding to practise what she preached, after a couple of years Cindy gave up the office job to pursue that fine balance of work and life which freelancing offers, and after having features published in a number of local magazines including Elle, Longevity, Femina and Strictly Business, she discovered www.all4women.co.za and online publishing. She's never looked back.