After I posted my original article defending Stephenie Meyer’s decision to put Midnight Sun on hold, I received more emails and comments supporting what I had said than I have received for any single article before. The fact that so many media venues have relentlessly attacked Stephenie since the leak is appalling, and my best reward was when many of the people who read my article told me they subsequently understood her decision a little better because of it.

However, since I published that article, even more trouble has arisen. For some reason, many people are under the impression that by Stephenie putting Midnight Sun on hold, we are being ‘punished’ for what a small group of people did. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

For some reason, there is a misguided notion that writers are simply machines with fingers, typing away at stories that write themselves with no emotion or thought involved in the process. With some stories and many non-fiction books, that could easily be the case. But a great number of writers put emotion into their work and connect with it far deeper than simply penning words onto a page and publishing it.

Any writer who is emotionally connected with his or her work can tell you that a shattering event, such as a divorce, death in the family, or a deep betrayal of trust (such as what happened with Midnight Sun) can severely damage the ability to write a moving piece of fiction. In the book “How To Be Your Own Literary Agent”, Richard Curtis* writes:

” [pg 187]: As an author myself, and a friend or agent of many other writers, I can testify how tightly interconnected the personal, financial, and creative elements of an author’s life are. Trouble in one area almost invariably indicates trouble in the others.”

This may not be for all authors: but many of us write with emotion, and when our emotions are affected, the writing will inevitably suffer.

You have to take a step back and seriously think about what people are claiming: Stephenie has postponed Midnight Sun to punish those who leaked it, and inadvertently punish her fans as well? How in any way would delaying the release of Midnight Sun punish the people who posted it online? If anything, that would be exactly what they wanted.

On the contrary, the decision to put Midnight Sun on hold is to me more of a display of how much Stephenie cares about her fans and the world she has created. Even on the basis of simple economics, the fact is that if Midnight Sun was to be published, it is a guaranteed international bestseller; and simply by attaching it to the Twilight franchise will generate millions in revenue no matter what is written between the covers.

I know to many of the critics it might sound like a outlandish idea, but maybe Stephenie does care more about her readers than the fame, publicity and money to be made from her writing. It would be far more of a punishment to the Twilight fans for her to just continue writing the book with her heart not into it, and put out something that is lacking feeling simply to add another book to the series. Perhaps she wants to write something that is good, with her heart in it, rather than something that is put out just for the sake of publishing.

Nowhere did Stephenie say she would never publish Midnight Sun. That is a rumor that has been going around and spread by multiple news websites, and it is false. From her statement:

“[...] In any case, I feel too sad about what has happened to continue working on Midnight Sun, and so it is on hold indefinitely**.”

Stephenie has put the work on hold: not canceled the project entirely. Most of the frenzy has no basis.

I certainly do not claim to know everything that goes on behind the scenes or to represent what Stephenie may be planning. But I do know that the strength to set aside a project that is worth millions in favor of what is best for her readers is something that Stephenie should be admired for.

ADDED: If you are a fan and would like to help support Stephenie, please consider being a part of our Youtube project. Submissions end on September 25.

——

*Richard Curtis is my literary agent and has worked with authors for over 30 years. More info on him can be found here.

*Indefinitely (AH Dictionary): ADJECTIVE: Not definite, especially: a. Unclear; vague. b. Lacking precise limits: an indefinite leave of absence. c. Uncertain; undecided:

202 comments »
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: Midnight Sun, Stephenie Meyer

As I’m sure most of you have already heard, Midnight Sun, the promised future book from Stephenie Meyer, has been put on hold indefinitely after about 150 pages of it was leaked online.

The leaked file contained direct photographic scans of a spiral-bound notebook with hand-numbered pages, posted online by a website of anti-Twilighters. After the initial buzz across the internet, Stephenie found out and announced that due to the ordeal, she has stopped writing on the book, and gave the chapters away for free on her site. This prompted an uproar of media attention, causing many anti-Twilighters to immediately lash out at Stephenie and proclaim that she is only making it worse by dropping the book, calling her reaction ‘childish’.

These people are gravely misguided. If you are looking for someone who is childish, turn instead to a certain group of so-called Twilighters who have taken what they wanted from Stephenie and then stabbed her in the back on the way out.

In recent months, I have seen a surge of hate directed at Stephenie from people who formerly called themselves her fans, surpassing any resemblance of even remotely constructive criticism and instead trashing her latest book, Breaking Dawn, over its very plot, as if they have any right to dictate what happens in any of Stephenie books. Even worse, Stephenie herself has fallen victim of completely irrelevant attacks. I honestly do not see what being a Mormon or Stephenie’s hairstyle has to do with writing or books. And yet people in recent months have relentlessly attacked Stephenie as if because she is famous, she is some sort of sub-human who deserves whatever she gets: be it a battering of hateful websites or the illegal distribution of her unfinished novel.

Just because Stephenie is a celebrity author does not mean that she writes her books any different than any other writer out there. Stephenie did not write to get famous. In fact, Twilight came out at a time when vampire and romance books were far from ‘in’. She just wrote a story, and became popular so fast she still hasn’t had a chance to come to terms with how famous she really is. It wasn’t until recent months, after being all over MTV, one of TIME’s Most Influential People, and on major news, that she removed her family photo from her website to protect her children from media scrutiny.

People are proclaiming that ‘Stephenie should know better than to give drafts out to her friends’ but they are overlooking the fact that Midnight Sun has been partially written for years. These pages were done long before Stephenie was world famous, and probably given or shown to people before she ever dreamed that her works would even be leak-worthy.

Blaming Stephenie for trusting her friends is absolutely idiotic. At the moment, I have 100 pages of my second book floating amongst my friends, which won’t even be heard of by the world until months after my first book comes out (even my publishers have not seen any of it). These pages are rough, unedited early cuts that I let certain people read just to see what they think about it.

Even though I am a literary flea, if I were ever to become half as popular as Stephenie, and one of my trusted friends were to distribute my unfinished draft publicly, I would not only feel enormously betrayed but I would probably react in exactly the same way and feel like withdrawing from the work entirely. People who are not writers do not understand the large amounts of emotion required to write a book. Things grow as you write them- ideas are used and ideas are tossed out. You are basically putting a piece of your soul into it, and if somehow it is taken while still growing, it is like someone has stolen your secret diary and read the most embarrassing lines to the world.

Other people, again, compare Stephenie to JK Rowling, and say that Harry Potter was leaked plenty of times and was still released. But there is absolutely no comparison. When Harry Potter was leaked, it was always finished, edited copies of the book that was about to go to printers. This is an incomplete, unpolished draft printed by Stephenie herself that was never meant to be seen by anyone besides people she knew. A better comparison would be someone breaking into JK Rowling’s home and stealing her writing notebooks.

I can only imagine how it is for Stephenie right now. The ordeal was all across the newspapers and covered the front of Yahoo.com for two days, more popular even than Britney Spears agreeing to be at the VMA’s. The entire world has gotten a peek at something that was incomplete.

I wrote a few months ago about how Stephenie is like a mother to all of her fans. It seemed that everyone agreed with me. Times have obviously changed. Take a step back, look around at what is happening, and try to imagine how she must feel now: these people she trusted as her fans suddenly turning against her.

I am not against criticism. I am not against people who do not enjoy Twilight, or Breaking Dawn, or even people who do not like Stephenie in general. But the relentless battering of Stephenie from her own former fans has come to such a maddening point, I honestly don’t blame her if she decides never to release Midnight Sun at all– or at least until her real fans show some respect for all she has put up with so far.

If you want to show your support for Stephenie Meyer in the wake of all the negative people trying to bring her down, please consider this petition that was emailed to me by one of her fans. I think now is the time for the real fans to come together.

ADDED: I decided to make some Support Stephenie Meyer buttons for people to post on their Myspace/Xanga pages. Check them out on the TwilightGuy downloads page, and show your support to Stephenie.

301 comments »
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: Stephenie Meyer, Twilight

What a few of you may still not know is I lead a double life. Over here, I am Kaleb Nation. Somewhere else, I am The Twilight Guy.

Recently on my other blog I have been helping get a new Twilight-themed Youtube channel started and promoting their auditions for new members. Today, weeks later, they picked the members who made it, out of over 70 auditions. So, as a congratulations to the winners and all the wonderful talent who tried out, I made this video:

If you haven’t read any of Twilight or are in the dark about Stephenie Meyer’s books (and my journey reading them…as a guy), you probably won’t get all of it. Along those lines, I must state that if you haven’t heard of Stephenie Meyer, you must not check the bestseller lists, or walk into any bookstore, or in fact not talk to 90% of girls and moms these days.

However, you still get to see me with a pot on my head. And I play the harmonica. You might need earplugs for that part

20 comments »
Posted in Twilight, Videos
Tags: Stephenie Meyer, Twilight, Videos

I am suddenly torn between two goods.

On the New York Times children’s bestseller list, Stephenie Meyer holds the #1 spot for children’s series. But, at #2, D.J.MacHale holds the spot for the Pendragon series.

My ‘STEPHENIE ROCKS’ flag suddenly wavers for a second, since D.J.MacHale…has the same agent as me. That means he’s practically Literary Family.

Yoiks. It’s like rooting for your friend to be President, but then yo Momma decides to run. Whose flag to wave this week?

Shhh. Don’t tell the Twilighters. My momentary hesitation is likely grounds for expulsion from Steph’s list. Hey, we’re talking hard decisions here! This could very well be The Ultimatum: like letting your mom drop in the pit of fire to jump up and save your wife from the vipers. Who to choose?

You’re all smacking me on the head now. Look, Kaleb, you say. Don’t you, like the majority of humans, have two hands? Just wave TWO flags, idiot.

Or rather, if you’re a Twilighter: Idiot! Use one hand to wave the Stephenie flag, and the other to smack yourself for considering such an outrage!

Anyhow, in other book news, I just received my ARC of Farworld: Water Keep by J Scott Savage. Also, he’s offered some books for a contest through my site, so I’ll be able to give some away when I get my review up. He’s got a pretty cool cover for it too:

Very watery. I’ll be reporting on it as soon as I can grab a spare moment. Before you run to the store, it’s not out until September, so hold your horses.

Also in publishing, most people just got back from the famous BEA. Someone asked if I’ll be there next year. Um, erm, I don’t know. After all, my book won’t be out until late next year, and publishers don’t bring authors to BEA unless, you know, we’ve done that sell books thing. And speaking of my publishers, they just put up an awesome new website you must check out.

Much prettier than the last one. My name won’t appear under their Authors, I assume, until after I’ve made them enough profit to pay the web designer to turn off Youtube, crawl off the couch, stow away the popcorn, hide the cans of Wolf chili, and add my name. Don’t ask how I know what web designers are like.

I have word of some stuff and if it comes, I’ll most likely have another video: Signing My Book Deal II. The last one was pretty fun, though this one will be shorter so as to avoid my rambling. Keep watch.

Oh, and I bought a keyboard. To make music. Or rather, to make more music- much easier than clicking all the notes in with my mouse. Anyhow, I just finished a new song draft. It’s another soundtrack score, though I’m still working on the mastering and some small edits. In this one, I have a cool piano line. Keep watch for it here.

In case you didn’t notice on the front page, TwilightGuy.com got almost 300,000 hits in the first month. It’s much more now, thanks to being a few days into the month on June. Pretty good for a start

I shall exit with this, my favorite new song of the Second-Half of 2008:

12 comments »
Posted in Authors, Twilight, Writing
Tags: Books, Bran Hambric, DJ Machale, Richard Curtis, Stephenie Meyer, Writing

Thanks to the enormous and wonderful readership that has graced my site TwilightGuy.com, I was asked to write an article about Stephenie Meyer for a large movie website called TheMovie-Fanatic.com. I tried to bring as much focus onto the actual words of Steph’s fans, since they are really the ones who can describe her best.

If you’d like to read my article, head on over to this page on tMF and check it out!

Also, there were so many positive responses from people wanting to help for the article (over 400!) that I couldn’t possibly get all of the best ones into the article. Thus, I posted my 25 favorites over here.

I find it very interesting to take a look at this, especially since I will be a very new author sometime late next year. There is something very different about Stephenie that sets her apart from everyone else, and I find myself watching Youtubes of her book signings as if they were videos in a class on How To Be An Author. Granted, I think I’ve already watched all the Lemony Snicket, JK Rowling and Rick Riordan videos as well– but unlike theirs, where the fans are simply fans, I find that Stephenie’s readers are something deeper.

It is a learning experience for me to see this, since for the years that I wrote my book, my mind was told in offhanded ways that authors must be reclusive, refuse fan mail, never appear without their publicist (and when they do, appear unkempt, drunk, and disorderly) and above all things: never, ever, ever have something like a Myspace page. I discovered Stephenie Meyer and all my old stereotypes for writers were gone: the same stereotypes I was dreading having to conform to. Here she was, knocking Harry Potter off the charts, and still being able to do fun things like music playlists for her books, a dream movie cast, a mega Myspace page and actually answer fan mail.

It was freeing, in a way, to learn that the best type of author was the real one: that before I went off and made myself a recluse because that’s what I thought authors were ‘supposed’ to do, the thing people really would rather is for me to be myself. For any writer out there, it is worth searching on Youtube ‘Stephenie Meyer Book Signing’ and really watching how it’s done like a professional (and the screaming crowds do loads to get you writing again ).

Also, my agent posted probably my favorite story from him ever. I originally read it in one of his books, but if you’re a writer and you want to know the secret lives of those great beings we call Literary Agents, as well as some of the many odd things agents do for their clients, you absolutely must read this article.

2 comments »
Posted in Twilight, Writing
Tags: harry potter, JK Rowling, lemony snicket, rick riordan, Stephenie Meyer