Twilight author Stephenie Meyer revealed that she started working on Midnight Sun again… until the Fifty Shades spin-off Grey was announced.
Update (May 4, 2020): Big news! Midnight Sun has been OFFICIALLY announced and will hit book store shelves this summer! You can pre-order it now. If you’re curious why the book took so long to be published, read on below:
Original story (January 10, 2020): Speaking on a panel to promote the 10th Anniversary Edition of Twilight, Meyer revealed she went back to work on Midnight Sun, which is Twilight from Edward’s perspective, in early 2015 after finishing Life and Death, the gender-swapped Twilight.
And then Fifty Shades of Grey from Christian’s perspective, titled Grey, was announced. So, she decided to hit pause on finishing and setting a release date for Midnight Sun.
Here’s how the revelation went down at NYCC:
Only after completing “Life and Death” did Meyer feel comfortable revisiting “Midnight Sun.” Meyer said after she “started back into it, it felt really good.”
The crowd at Comic Con cheered loudly when Meyer said she had recently written two more paragraphs.
But Meyer cut into the celebration: “So what do you think was the top story on Yahoo the next morning? ‘Grey.'”
Article Continues BelowThe audience groaned.
‘Midnight Sun’ release date suffers set backs
Stephenie went on to reveal that she put the Midnight Sun release date on hold after learning about E.L. James’s new book, according to a trusted panel attendee who spoke to Hypable after the event.
Meyer had presumably been hard at work fleshing out the remainder of Midnight Sun and editing the chapters she had published as a rough draft in 2008. To this date, Chapters 13 – 24 of Midnight Sun are still unavailable to the public.
Chapters 13 – 24 may’ve been written during her latest rounds of penning the spinoff, but those have yet to be released either online or physically.
Hypable spoke with Meyer days after her announcement at New York Comic-Con, and she told us that she’ll release Midnight Sun one day. “I’m working on it. I didn’t completely shelve it because of [Grey]. It was just that — I was telling this story — it feels like it’s cursed. Because every time I start it, something happens and it’s just like, ‘ugh.’ But… my mother is going to kill me if I don’t do it. It’s more true than you know. This is all she wants from me. Every birthday, every Christmas present I get her, [she goes,] ‘You know what I really want.’ This is my life.”
We don’t blame Stephenie for dropping Midnight Sun after the publication of Grey. Still, the timing of it all could not have been worse. To think that a Twilight fan-fiction by E.L. James brought down the publication of Midnight Sun is depressing — but justified.
It would’ve looked bad for Stephenie to release Twilight from Edward’s perspective after E.L. James published a fan-fiction of Twilight from Edward’s perspective.
No one would’ve guessed Stephenie would actually revisit Midnight Sun after all these years, so while we’re sad about the fate of the book, we’re pleasantly surprised that she gave it another shot.
And maybe one day, Stephenie will try again.
Stephenie was working on Midnight Sun in 2008 before a copy of it leaked online. The early release bothered the author so much that she halted its development and instead released a draft on her website for public consumption. Notably, this version of the book is still on her official website to this day.
In the years since Meyers’ update at New York Comic-Con, her frenemy E.L. James has gone on to release a second Fifty Shades from the perspective of Christian Grey, titled Darker. The third and final book in James’ trilogy has yet to receive a spinoff.
Meyer has released two books after The Twilight Saga: The Host and The Chemist. Both novels received rave reviews from readers.
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