Twilight author Stephenie Meyer has announced she will finally publish Midnight Sun.
Meyer has been teasing an announcement on her website for a week with a countdown timer, which hit zero this morning. Of course, the server immediately crashed as hordes of Twilight fans tried to find out what was going on. So the best-selling author took to Good Morning America soon after to reveal what fans already suspected: the sequel Midnight Sun will finally be released this summer.
“I am very excited to finally, finally announce the release of Midnight Sun on 4 August,” Meyer said. “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 anymore. 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.”
Midnight Sun will be a retelling of her bestselling series from vampire Edward Cullen’s perspective, rather than Bella Swan’s. In 2008, Meyer abandoned the manuscript after a copy was illegally leaked online, calling it “a huge violation of my rights as an author, not to mention me as a human being”. She then made a rough extract available to read on her website in 2009, but as the years went past – with Meyer releasing two thrillers for adult audiences, The Host and The Chemist – fans were beginning to lose hope of ever reading the final version the Twilight prequel.
But finally, amid the colossal mess that is 2020, Stephenie Meyer came to fill the vampire drama-shaped hole in our lives, and Midnight Sun will finally be available to purchase on 4 August.
The four-book Twilight saga has sold over 100 million copies, with the film adaptation raking in £2.6 billion.