VANCOUVER — The highly anticipated next instalment of Stephenie Meyer's bestselling vampire book series has been put on hold after a partial draft of the story was posted online.
Meyer was rewriting her first novel, Twilight, from the perspective of vampire Edward Cullen (Twilight was written from the perspective of his human love interest, Bella). She had planned to call the book Midnight Sun.
But Meyer has stopped work on the project after a draft - which, on her website, she calls "messy and flawed and full of mistakes" - was posted online without her permission or knowledge, or her publisher's.
"This has been a very upsetting experience for me," she writes.
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"I feel too sad about what has happened to continue working on Midnight Sun, and so it is on hold indefinitely."
She goes on to say she would rather her fans not read the posted version, but has decided to make the draft available on her website nonetheless "to end the confusion."
Meyer writes that she has "a good idea" of how the leak happened as "very few copies" of Midnight Sun had left her possession and each was unique.
"What happened was a huge violation of my rights as an author, not to mention me as a human being."
When The Globe and Mail spoke with Meyer a month ago, just after the release of her novel Breaking Dawn, she promised that Midnight Sun would be a mostly chapter-by-chapter account of what happened in Twilight from Edward's perspective - with some extras thrown in.
"There's a lot going on with his family in reaction to what's happening," she said.
"And there's a whole car chase scene that Bella's never aware of. There are multiple cars stolen and destroyed on the freeway and I'm excited to write about that.
"I am a huge car enthusiast. When you're writing from Edward's perspective, you get to get into that a little more - and that's exciting."
Instead of continuing with the book, she says she plans to spend more time with her family and on other writing projects.
