For those of you still sporting Team Edward t-shirts and proclaiming "real vampires glitter," have I got some good news for you. A new Twilight book by Stephanie Meyer is heading to shelves this summer. That's right, the long-awaited Midnight Sun will explore the epic love story of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan, but this time from his point of view. The book's upcoming release comes 12 years after Meyer abandoned the manuscript when it was leaked online without her consent.
Meyer built anticipation for the coming film over the past week, using a timer to count down to Monday when she made the big announcement during an appearance on Good Morning America. Even with so much time elapsed since the original series of books came out, the Twilight fanbase was so eager to learn what was coming that they caused the website to crash the moment the timer ended, The Guardian reported.
"I am very excited to finally, finally announce the release of Midnight Sun on August 4th," Meyer announced in a prerecorded video broadcast that was played on Good Morning America. "It’s a crazy time right now and I wasn’t sure it was the right time to put this book out, but some of you have been waiting for just so, so long it didn’t seem right to make you wait any more. Sorry about the bad timing. Hopefully this book can be a distraction from the real world. I'm so excited to finally be able to share it with you."
Twilight fans have been waiting to hear about Edward's side of things for quite some time now. Back in 2008, Meyer released a section of the story’s first chapter called “First Sight” on her website, giving fans a peek into what the story would look like from the other point of view. "There is so much more to his side of the story than there is to Bella’s in that first chapter," Meyer wrote on her website at the time. "His side of Bella’s first day at Forks High School is a hundred times more exciting than her own."
But when the manuscript of Midnight Sun was posted online without her consent that same year, Meyer described the leak as "a huge violation of my rights as an author, not to mention me as a human being." She then put the project on hold indefinitely, citing a change in her mindset saying, "if I tried to write Midnight Sun now, in my current frame of mind, James [a vampire tracking Bella] would probably win and all the Cullens would die, which wouldn’t dovetail too well with the original story," she wrote on her website.
Fortunately for Twilight fans everywhere, Meyer seems to feel that enough time has passed to revisit the story. Her publisher, Little Brown, has described the story as drawing "on the classic myth of Hades and Persephone" to reexamine the story of Edward and Bella in "an epic novel about the profound pleasures and devastating consequences of immortal love."
With an Aug. 4 release date, fans won't have to wait too much longer to get into the mind of Edward Cullen. So, hold on tight, spider monkeys. You're in for a wild ride.
