To: New Moon Fans
From: Entertainment Muse
Date: New Release
Subject: Author Stephenie Meyer

Author, Stephenie Meyer's life changed dramatically on June 2, 2003. The stay-at-home mother of three young sons woke up from a dream featuring seemingly real characters that she could not get out of her head.

"Though I had a million things to do, I stayed in bed, thinking about the dream. Unwillingly, I eventually got up and did the immediate necessities, and then put everything that I possibly could on the back burner and sat down at the computer to write—something I hadn't done in so long that I wondered why I was bothering."

Meyer invented the plot during the day through swim lessons and potty training, and wrote it out late at night when the house was quiet. Three months later she finished her first novel, Twilight.

Q & A
How did you come up with the Twilight character names, were they random or did you have a reason behind them? - Carly

I'm not a huge research junkie, because I'm always more into creating the fantasy than the reality, but names are one of the things I do spend some research time on. For example, for Jasper's name I searched roll calls for the confederate army in Texas. Both "Jasper" and "Whitlock" are on those lists, but not together. The name Cullen exists on seventeenth century English headstones. Other names I find by time and place of birth—I look through the most baby popular names from that year or census records from that city. Some things are more random; if I'm really stuck for a surname, I'll flip through the phone book. For Edward, I wanted a name that had once been very romantic, but had fallen out of use (See: Edward Rochester, Edward Ferrars). Bella was the hardest for me to name, because I needed a modern name but nothing seemed to encompass her personality. I tried a lot of things that didn't fit at all. In the end, having just surrendered the hope of ever having a daughter, I gave her the name I would have given one of my children if any of them had decided to be a girl.

Since many of us will not have the opportunity to visit a movie set, what part of film making was fascinating to you? Thanks again for the opportunity to ask questions! It is appreciated! Anny

The most fascinating thing about filming is probably just what a huge undertaking it is. I'm constantly stunned by the sheer number of people it takes, by the size of the sets, by the intricate planning necessary. It's surprising to me that given all the effort and expense necessary, so many movies even get made. I love the care that goes into the set design, and the amazing things they can build (like tower interiors and mountain tops). I love watching the actors make dozens of minute shifts for each take of a scene, so that the director has a variety to work with when he starts cutting it together. I love it when everything comes together just right and even on the tiny little monitor, with no music and no editing, you can see that something exceptional just happened. It's a cool process, and one I never expected to have the opportunity to be involved with.

Of course, being on set is not constant excitement by any means. It takes hours to set up for each different camera angle, and during those times, it's pretty dead. On the last set, a bunch of people learned to knit. It can be very slow.

I am curious, when you think of Edward and Bella, or read or talk about them, do you still picture the people from your dream? Or has your images of these characters changed over time, especially now after seeing your books adapted to film? Thanks! Danyeal J.

When I read the books or think about the characters in a writing scenario, I still see them they way I first did. I can still see exactly what they looked like in that first dream. When I'm reading the script, however, it's all Kristen and Rob and Taylor.

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