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The launch of Stephanie Meyer's latest book, Breaking Dawn (Hachette Livre, $34.99), barely caused a ripple here, but in the United States it was greeted with the sort of hysteria once reserved for a certain boy wizard - bookshops opening at midnight, panics over spoilers and screaming fans. In the first 24 hours the book sold 1.3 million copies. But that's not the most surprising thing about Meyer's vampire novels, written for the young adult market but popular with kids, grannies and those every age between.
Breaking Dawn is the fourth in a series of books that can only be described as bonkers but addictive. They tell the story of teenager Bella Swan who moves to the gloomy town of Forks to live with her father. She's trying to settle into her new high school when she meets Edward Cullen. He is a gorgeous, moody, Heathcliffe type and a vampire. What follows is a different spin on the traditional love story - Bella falls for Edward and he's crazy about her. The only trouble is he, and the rest of his vampire family, are tempted to eat her.
All this happens in Twilight, the first of the series. In the following books, New Moon and Eclipse, we discover that vampires aren't the only strange creatures walking among us. The plots are pacy, the action violent and there is constant sexual tension between Bella and her bloodsucking boyfriend.
It's all weird, but the strangest thing of all is the woman who wrote the books. Meyer is a Mormon mother of three who lives in Arizona and never had the slightest interest in vampires until one night she had a dream about them. In the morning she wrote the dream down so she wouldn't forget it. Then she kept on writing in secret until her dream turned into a novel.
"I used to think that sounded like the most cheesy story in the world," admits Meyer, on the phone from Chicago. "But it's actually the honest-to-goodness truth."
In retrospect it should have been obvious that Meyer was born to tell stories. "When I was bored or driving somewhere I used to make up stories in my head," she recalls. "I'd see a person in the street and create a story around them. I always thought everyone did that."
Vampires and Mormons may seem like an odd mix, and Meyer says she does sometimes get a negative reaction from people who share her faith, but Bella's story is a very moral one.
It's about a series of Narnia-style battles between dark and light and, although there's lots of passionate kissing, there's no extramarital sex because Edward daren't risk losing control in case he ends up making a meal of Bella. "There's not meant to be any moral to the stories," argues Meyer. "I write to have a good time and never expect the reader to take anything away from them - I just hope they have fun and are entertained. But being a Mormon is such a huge part of who I am and so I think it comes through in my characters and the questions they ask about life. Also most of the bad characters have good in them as well."
For a vampire, Edward is especially good. He and his family eschew human blood and instead hunt for animals at night. All are other-worldly gorgeous and Edward himself so adoring and protective of Bella that I can't help wondering if teenage readers might develop a hugely unrealistic idea of what men and relationships are like.
"There's a fairytale aspect to these men that's inconsistent to what you can expect from real people," concedes Meyer. "But I read a lot of fairytales growing up and it didn't impact on me negatively at all. And one effect of the books is that they make girls more particular about the treatment they get from men, they expect more kindness and courtesy. I've had a number of letters from girls who've been in abusive relationships and Twilight woke them up to the fact it wasn't right so they've gotten away from those relationships. I never intended the books to have that effect but think it's amazing and wonderful that they have."
While she says she's flattered by comparisons to Harry Potter, she is getting a bit sick of them. It's difficult to ignore the parallels though - like the Potter series, each volume is thicker and less like a kid's book than the last, Meyer has created a fantasy world that exists alongside our own and both she and Rowling are making millions.
"I'm pleased the books appeal to women my age because I wrote them for myself," says Meyer. "People don't forget being 17 and I think they're ready to remember what it felt like to fall in love for the first time."
Breaking Dawn is the last of the books to be told in Bella's voice, but not the end of the story. She's working on a novel that tells it from Edward's perspective. After that she's not sure what she'll do. "I have so many ideas it's going to take me a while to decide which to write," she says. "I used to have plans to go to law school once my kids got older but now I love writing. It's pure fun."
