Best-selling author Stephanie Meyer conceived the idea for the science fiction-romance The Host during a road trip. “I like to tell myself stories when I’m travelling because I can’t read. I thought about these two characters in one body, and the conflict, and them both being in love with the same person, and more conflict,” says Stephanie, in an email interview.
Interestingly, a decade ago, Stephanie, a young mom in Arizona, US, had dreamt of an average teenage girl in love with a beautiful vampire. That dream resulted in Twilight, the first of four books that sold over 100 million copies and was translated into 35 languages and spawned Twilight Saga, a multi-billion dollar film franchise. The last part of the cinematic version of Bella and Edward’s epic love story was released last year.
Stephanie is back in movie theatres with the adaptation of her 2008 bestseller, The Host, that released in India this week. The film tells the story of an alien race called Souls who take over the Earth. Directed by Andrew Niccol (who wrote The Truman Show), The Host stars Saoirse Ronan and has Stephanie also as the film’s producer. “The thing I like particularly about Saoirse’s portrayal of these two characters of Melanie and Wanda is that when you’re writing it, these two characters are every bit as distinct as two characters in two different bodies. Writing it is one thing, portraying it is another, and Saoirse made it look really easy, and she has a different chemistry with each of the boys, so it’s really easy to remember that these are two separate relationships,” she says about her leading lady who is best known for her work in Atonement.
While Twilight was primarily a love story, Stephanie describes The Host as science fiction for those who don’t like science fiction. “As I was writing The Host, one of the things that made it really interesting was the idea of looking at being human from the perspective of someone who hasn’t been human their whole life. The story is told from the perspective of one of the aliens. Usually, I don’t ever see anything good about myself. I’m hypercritical. But as I was writing, over time, it made me think differently and appreciate all the wonderful gifts I have.” The author is already working on the sequel for The Host. “We’ll see where it ends. I hate to predict anything, even if I have this great outline.”
One of the reasons for the delay in the sequel to The Host has been Stephanie’s close involvement with both the parts of Breaking Dawn, the last instalments of the Twilight Saga. “With the first Twilight, they (Summit) were actually really nice. A lot of times authors sign their rights away and that’s the last they hear until they go and see the movie, probably on their own dime, most of the time. (Summit)let me look at the script when it was done. I gave a few notes. I don’t know that a lot of them were implemented, because it was kind of at a late stage. Most of the actors were picked before, and then they would tell me about it. I think a lot of fans felt like, of course I would get to pick things and that my
involvement was a lot more, because I got a lot of letters, like, ‘Why did you pick this’, and ‘How come we don’t have this in the movie?’ But with The Host, it was the experience that I think people think you’re having, where I was involved with everything.”
First vampires and now aliens, what fascinates Stephanie about other-worldly characters? “I never decide to put a message in anything. I decide on a story that I think is exciting, and I entertain myself. When I write I think about the story that’s in my head. I get excited about it the same way you do when you’re reading a book. I want to see how it’s going to happen now.”
From being a suburban mom to two boys to having fans celebrate Stephenie Meyer Day (on September 13 which is Bella Swan’s birthday), life has changed dramatically since the first Twilight book’s success. “It’s been surreal, humbling and fantastic. I’m a naturally shy person. I’ve had to get over that a little bit. I got a massive amount of fans that I hadn’t expected, and the massive amount of people who hated it, which I also didn’t expect. I’ve moved twice since Twilight because of privacy issues, and to be a little safer. I live on top of a mountain now. It’s literally so steep, you need a car with six cylinders to make it up without the engine dying.”