ANNOUNCING: New Stephenie Meyer Book, “The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella”

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Yes, I’m just as surprised as everyone else to see this news of a new book by Stephenie Meyer titled “The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella“! If they’d put it out two days later, I’d think it was April Fools. From StephenieMeyer.com (I’ve shortened this quote, to see the full thing visit her website) :

Surprise!

I have a new book coming out. It’s called The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner. Well, it’s more of a novella than an actual book—my version of a short story.

Actually, this has been a surprise to me, too. The reason why it’s a surprise was that I never intended to publish this story as a stand-alone book. I began this story a long time ago—before Twilight was even released. Back then I was just editing Eclipse, and in the thick of my vampire world. I was thinking a lot about the newborns, imagining their side of the story, and one thing led to another. I started writing from Bree’s perspective about those final days, and what it was like to be a newborn.

This story was something that I worked on off and on for a while, just for fun, in between the times I was writing or editing other Twilight novels. Later, when the concept for The Twilight Saga: The Official Guide came up, I thought that might be a good place for Bree. Her story is a nice complement to Eclipse; it explains a lot of the things that Bella never knew. So I dusted it off and finished it up for placement in the Guide [...]

Then I got the news: my “short story” was nearly 200 pages long when typeset. It was too long to fit into the Guide—without ending up with a tome as heavy as the Oxford English Dictionary. My publisher approached me with the idea of releasing the Bree story on its own. [...]

There was one thing I asked for: since this story had always been an extra for me, and was meant to be released with the Guide, I wanted to be able to offer it to my fans for free. You all have bought a ton of my books, and I wanted to give you this story as a gift. My publisher was awesome and embraced this idea. We still wanted to also produce a physical book [...] if you like, but starting at noon on June 7th until July 5th, it will also be available online at www.breetanner.com.

One other aspect of this release is the plan to give a more important gift to people who really need it. One dollar of each book purchased in the US from the first printing will be donated to the American Red Cross for their relief efforts in Haiti and Chile and other parts of the world where people are in great need. We’re going to have an option online as well, so you can choose to make a donation if you want when you read the story online. I hope you will. I think that we can really help a lot of people with this.

I really hope you all enjoy this story. I had a blast writing it. I’m glad that after all this time cooling her heels in my files, Bree finally gets her chance to shine.

Thanks for all the support,

Steph

What do all of you think of this idea of an Eclipse spin-off book? Will you be buying it?