Stephenie Meyer Updates Her Website Regarding Alleged Lawsuit

Stephenie Meyer has updated her website to address the false media reports that she is being sued. Even today after a statement was released to the media confirming that the story was a hoax, various major media outlets continued to incorrectly report and perpetuate the story revitalizing the rumor that Stephenie was being sued, just that it wasn’t affecting the production. Their coverage was then cited by other sources. As you can see below the story never had any basis in truth, ever.

“There are a lot of things I should be doing updates on—for example, how awesome and successful the Book Babe event was, and how cool it was to meet all the other authors and hang out with them a little bit, and how much I appreciated all the tremendous support from the fans—but instead of commenting on happy things (which I admit I should have done a week ago; I was waiting for things to slow down for a day, silly me!), I’m commenting on ridiculous internet rumors so that my publicist’s day will be just a little bit better.

I am not being sued. No one has contacted me or my publisher to inform either of us that I’m being sued. I never had a roommate named Heidi. There is no professor in the BYU English department named Dr. Peter Benton (though there is a character on ER by that name). And most of all, I began writing Twilight exactly the way I’ve told people in countless interviews and events for the past six years: I had a cool dream, I wrote it down, writing it down was really fun, so I kept writing until I had a whole book.

The sad thing about this silly situation is that so many legitimate news outlets reported it without doing any research at all to determine if there was any truth to the story. And at least two of these facts are really, really easy to confirm. Particularly, the one about the BYU professor. A simple on-line search can give you that information. Also, a quick call to my publisher would have cleared up the whole lawsuit story. (Kudos to the fansites who did their due diligence and debunked this rumor days ago.)

I guess the moral of the story is that—big surprise—you can’t believe everything you read on the internet. Seems like it’s April Fool’s Day every day on-line. So no worries, the filming of New Moon continues uninterrupted. And, to end this on a bright note, the filming of New Moon continues to be awesome. It’s all so beautiful! Chris Weitz is brilliant. Kristen, Rob, and Taylor are beyond words. I have gotten choked up more than once on set due to their amazing performances. I can’t wait to see it all put together!

Steph”

Stephenie Meyer Lawsuit Story is bogus

It seems that the unsubstantiated story that Stephenie Meyer is being sued and filming on New Moon has halted continues to spread like wildfire on the web. Our inbox is exploding with various readers citing new places the story has cropped up.

Below are the official comments now from both Summit Entertainment and now Little Brown/Hachette:

Official comment from Summit Entertainment regarding the portion of the story as it specifically refers to filming is as follows(released April 19): “This rumor is certainly NOT true. Please let your readers know.”

Official comment from Stephenie Meyer’s publisher regarding the portion of the story that refers to the lawsuit(release April 20):

“This story is false.”

Second official statement released by Summit April 20: There is absolutely no truth to the rumor about any interruption to the filming of NEW MOON.  The production of the film has not been stalled or interrupted in any way and filming continues as planned.  Additionally, after consulting with Stephenie Meyer and her publishers, speculation about any claims of plagiarism are also completely not true.  This is a hoax, pure and simple.  The internet for all of its assets can still be an easy breeding ground for such hoaxes and detractors, and we hope that people will not be duped so easily, and use appropriate diligence before perpetuating everything or anyone that claims to have information about the TWILIGHT franchise,” according to a Summit spokesperson. “

The origination of the story on the Max Dan Wiz site has now been removed.

Stephenie Meyer Speaks to Australian Press

Stephenie Meyer gave an interview to The Courier Mail about her feelings on the whole book to movie process.

“That was when that really hit me [that her book was being made into a movie]. I was sitting there at dinner the first night. Everyone came in costume, because they’d just done a photo shoot. I was like, ‘Wait a minute, these are imaginary people and here they are’ – very weird.”

The DVD is just coming out in Australia and Stephenie’s interview follows recent interviews given by Kristen Stewart and Ashley Greene to the Australian press.

Jodi Picoult:Why Is It A Sin To Read For Fun?

Newsweek interviews author Jodi Picoult about what being a popular writer means, and if because her books are so popular, she is in fact a “sell out”. One of the best ideas explored by the novel is does popularity inherently make something bad?  Are “headier books” truly suffering for readers at the expense of lighter weight ones? Is lighter reading the demise of more challenging subjects, or is this lighter reading encouraging people who never read to begin with?

Picoult addresses the issues on a personal level stating:

“When I was at Princeton, there was this guy there, a great writer,” Picoult says, naming a New York author who has since published several sardonic, offbeat novels that have been well reviewed but sold nowhere near Picoult’s 14 million copies in print. “He used to walk around in this black trench coat like this”—she strikes a brooding, hand-to-brow pose—”and I was like, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ I just can’t do that.”

In the course of her interview, the Twilight Saga and the comparisons to Picoult’s similar audience demographic (females teen and up) arise. On Stephenie Meyer and the Twilight Saga, Picoult said:

“In terms of the literary content of the ‘Twilight’ books, they’re totally escapist. I think technically I am maybe a cut above,” she says. Picoult, who has a master’s in education from Harvard, is grateful to Meyer for getting kids to read at all, and she says many of her fans come to her through the “Twilight” series. “Stephenie Meyer has gotten people hooked on books,” Picoult says, “and that’s good for all of us.”

The article concludes by stating that “Maybe if reading wasn’t so “good” for us, we’d do more of it.” What do you think, is lighter reading turning our critical thinking skills into mush, or can it co-exist with pulitzer-prize winning novels?

The Buying Power of Twilight

In the last week we’ve had more stories about how even though we are in economic hard times, Twilight related items are going strong.

  • Bella’s jacket that was re-released, is now on back order due to demand.
  • Hot Topic is going strong because more mainstream teens are visiting their store for Twilight merchandise. (Now if they’d just cut their clothes larger!)
  • The Twilight movie, just opened in Japan and Turkey last weekend has raised its foreign box office to a staggering $188,447,533 foreign total. That’s nearly half of the movie’s total box office income of $191,465,414.

Now this one is really staggering. USA Today doesn’t, like the New York Times or Publishers Weekly, subcategorize the books in its bestseller list. In other words everyone is lumped in together. So, you get a really good picture of overall what is selling and what isn’t.

For a little bit of trivia the NY Times used to do this to with a distinction only for ficition, non-fiction, hardback, and paperback until Harry Potter sat at the top of their list for two years and people complained and now they have at least 20 categories and subcategories. In our opinion, the fact that the NY Times list is now so subdivided is the largest reason why it took the major media so long to catch on to what Twilight was doing.

So, according to USA Today Stephenie Meyer is responsible for 16% of all books sold in the USA in the first quarter this year. Now, if you were to add in The Twilight Companion Movie Guide and the Twilight Director’s Notebook, which obviously Stephenie didn’t write, but without her work would be impossible to have, that number floats even higher.

Here’s where those books ranked:

1. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
2. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
3. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
4. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
14. The Host by Stephenie Meyer

currently 122 The Movie companion
currently 16 The Director’s Notebook

Forks HS Set Photos

Twi-Crack has a collection of candid photos that she took yesterday on the set of Forks High School.

She managed to capture all of the humans and Stephenie Meyer. Ashley Greene was also spotted, but no sign of Rob or Kristen.

Rare Stephenie Meyer Items For Auction

Two authentic and extremely rare Stephenie Meyer items are up for auction. It’s all part of project Book Babe.

The first is a Twilight Saga boxset with every book and the box signed. The box set didn’t come out until almost Christmas, and there are very, very few authentic autographed versions of this. So if you want a genuine autograph on all books plus the case, this is the way to go.

The next is a signed Japanese set of Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse. In Japan the novels are broken into three parts and have artwork. In other words Stephenie signed all nine books. Honestly we don’t thing this exists anywhere else in the world. To the best of our knowledge absolutely no one owns a legitimate Stephenie Meyer signed complete Japanese series.

The Twilight Saga:Escapism At Its Best

According to the New York Times part to of why the Twilight Saga is such a success has to do with the economic climate.  And here we thought the last three years were all about a dead sexy vampire vs. werewolf and imagining yourself….(maybe somethings are better left unsaid). According to the Times:

“In a recession, what people want is a happy ending. At a time when booksellers are struggling to lure readers, sales of romance novels are outstripping most other categories of books and giving some buoyancy to an otherwise sluggish market.”

The Times goes on to state that fantasy romance is particularly hot:

“Such escapist urges are also fueling sales of science fiction and fantasy, said Bob Wietrak, a vice president for merchandising at Barnes & Noble. Mr. Wietrak said sales of novels with vampires, shape shifters, werewolves and other paranormal creatures were “exploding,” whether they were found in the romance, fantasy or young-adult aisles, where Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series continues to dominate…”

They also mention fellow vampire authors PC and Kristen Cast and J. R. Ward as further examples of the genre.  If you are into the YA genre check out the Casts, and if you are an adult who likes racy check out J.R. Ward (not that the entire admin team is plotting to attend a J.R. Ward signing or anything like that.)

Book Babe Wrap Up Final Part

When last I left all of you, I was in a deep funk over having lost Stephenie’s dress and had a bruised rear end from my cell phone. 🙂  Seriously though, it was a great time, and the best came next.

Be My Escape, Dano, Nena and I were in the platinum seating ( I was not flying to Phoenix for 24 hours and not having platinum seating plus Faith is way worth it.) so we got to attend a reception afterwords with the authors. We got this huge bag of books that the authors’ publishing companies had donated in a Twilight Saga messenger bag. (thank you Little Brown!) We also got a fabulous poster signed by the authors there.

Now next to Stephenie the person I most wanted to meet was Shannon Hale. One word: Austenland. Yes, folks, blame it on Alphie again. She’s the one who got me hooked on Shannon, and she’s probably a bigger fan than me, and she wasn’t there. So I waited to talk with Shannon and when I got up to the front of the line I said, “Hi, I’m one of the people who runs the Twilight Lexicon and my friend Lori who runs it with me got me hooked on your books. Could you sign this for her?” I then handed her a copy of Book of a Thousand Days. The next thing I know Shannon Hale gets out of her chair reaches over the table and says, “You run the Twilight Lexicon, can I have a hug?” I said sure, mumbled something really inarticulate from shock at being hugged by Shannon Hale, and smiled a lot.

Next I went over to J. S. Lewis’ table and asked him to sign a copy of his book. Seriously, this man is the nicest person in the world and has a great sense of humor. He totally rocked keeping the flow of the day going and was a genius during the auction.  He also didn’t tease me too badly when he realized I was from New Jersey.

Last but not least we went over to Stephenie’s table where she personalized a copy of Breaking Dawn for me for a friend that lives in the UK. In our group people were asking about the filming.  Stephenie couldn’t say too much, but she assured us that the wolf pack was very hot, and very up to the task. So no worries on the wolf pack, guys!

So finally the event was over and our very jet lagged and in my case stun gunned (AKA my phone) group headed out to the parking lot when what did we stumble on but a Twilight car.

It was totally decked out and even had purple under lights. The DVD player in it was of course loaded with Twilight and Paramore was playing on the radio.

For other excellent coverage please see Shannon’s blog! All the pictures but the car were from her site. Also see the Phoenix New Times.

Also check out the online auction.

Vancouver Sun Confirms: Stephenie Meyer On Set

According to the Vancouver Sun,

“Several dozen students and fans gathered at David Thompson secondary in Vancouver Tuesday hoping a for a glimpse of the stars on the set of Twilight: New Moon. They were not disappointed. A few lucky Twilighters saw series author Stephenie Meyer beyond the barricades set up outside the school cafeteria where filming is taking place.”

The filming at seemed to go off without a hitch. The crowd outside was orderly and didn’t cause any serious problem for the Vancouver police officer who was onsite. Unsurprisingly, given the plot, Robert Pattinson wasn’t on set.