"Yeah, there are no vampires in the treatment. There may be a mermaid, but I'm not sure. I don't want to give away too much, because we're letting [Meyer] run with her vision. ... I mean, I will say there's a good amount of water in the video and ... what else can I say?" he said Thursday (August 28). "It's cool. It's not some sort of exposé on my life. ... It's nice to know we're going to make a video for the sake of making a video. [We're] making something that's kind of fantastic and different and exciting but isn't about the song specifically, and it isn't about me specifically."

Of course, as any "Twilight" fan will tell you, Meyer is an avid music fan — she posts playlists on her Web site that are meant to be sorta-scores to each of her books — and she's long been a proponent of McMahon's work. So the collaboration seems like even more of a no-brainer — to everyone except for McMahon, that is. Seems he's still relatively new to the whole "Twilight" phenomenon.

"I'm quickly becoming super-aware of how big of a deal it is. I'm partway into 'Twilight' now. ... I found out about Stephenie through a close friend, who told me, 'I don't know if you know this, but you're referenced in a couple of places on Stephenie's Web site as being a musical inspiration for what she does,' and I was obviously incredibly flattered, especially considering the finger she has on a lot of pop culture," he said. "So we were getting to this place where we were getting video treatments, and we had seen a lot of good things, but nothing that was really jumping out at us. And I was talking to someone at the label, and I said, 'You know, let's try to do something different. Let's approach this video in a completely different way, like, rather than going out to a bunch of video directors and trying to do business as usual, let's try and come up with something clever.' And immediately, Stephenie Meyer came to my head.

"So I said, 'Can I reach out to her and see if she'd be interested in writing for the video and coming out and directing it?' And we got her music, and she was fantastic, and we've been working with her ever since," he continued. "And it works so well, because [with my music], I always try to create something super-visual and create a backdrop where people can take a bunch of experiences but relate them. And she's done that in a huge way with her books."
But now that he's indoctrinated in the ways of "Twilight," is McMahon bummed out that the video for "Resolution" isn't going to feature a single bloodsucker? Not at all. In fact, he's just happy that Meyer is onboard for the project. After all, she is rather busy these days.

"She seems genuinely enthusiastic about it. She's in the middle of editing her film right now, so I guess the implication is that she's excited because she's taking time away from her baby to make it," McMahon laughed. "But, like I said, I'm most excited because, when I was making this album, I wanted to find someone who was really talented and get them to write a treatment and just leave it alone and let it fly. And that's exactly what we're doing here."

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Remember you can send me your word art or any comment to thehostfanart@gmail.com Thanks!!!

While I didn’t think it was perfect, I did enjoy your first young adult novel, Twilight. So when my fellow blogger Jia was unable to get too far into The Host, a genre-bending speculative romantic thriller and your first book for adults, I agreed to give it a try. The premise of The Host, that of an “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” type story but told from the viewpoint of a body snatching alien, sounded interesting and different to me.

I must admit at the outset of this review that I almost never read books this long (600+ pages), because they can seem more like monumental tasks than like invitations for enjoyment. It took me around 120 pages to get caught up in The Host, and for those 120 I feared that a monumental task was what the book would turn out to be. Happily, The Host eventually revved up, and I enjoyed it more than I expected I would in the beginning.
The Host opens with a scene in which an alien known as Wanderer is inserted into the body of her host, a human woman named Melanie. At this point in the story, most of the people on Earth have been taken over by a parasitic alien species whose members refer to themselves as the souls. The souls inhabit the bodies of their hosts and take control of them. They have done so before on other planets and they believe they are making Earth a better, more harmonious place by doing so here.
Wanderer has asked to be placed in the body of an adult, but this presents a big problem for her because Melanie, her host, was one of the last surviving people captured by the seekers (a group of souls who devote themselves to searching out the remaining humans and capturing them so they can be hosts for other souls). Melanie attempted suicide in order to resist capture, and now that Wanderer occupies her body, Melanie’s consciousness refuses to go away. While Wanderer has physical control of the body, Melanie’s consciousness talks back to her and makes her life miserable.
In Melanie’s body Wanderer is bombarded by intense memories and dreams that center around a man named Jared, whom Melanie loved. It turns out that the souls are often drawn to other souls who occupy the bodies of the humans whom the people their own bodies belonged to once loved.
The seekers, and one of them most particularly, are interested in Wanderer’s new memories. It’s their job to capture the remaining humans who have formed a resistance and they believe that the memories Wanderer may have attained from Melanie may contain some knowledge of these humans’ whereabouts.

But when Wanderer attempts to access the information Melanie knew, which should now be available to her, she is blocked by walls that Melanie puts up to protect the humans she loved from the seekers. Wanderer’s inability to do as the seeker assigned to her has requested and provide the necessary information stymies and frustrates her, and she is so caught up in the struggle between Melanie and herself that she is unable to form friendships and relationships.
When the seeker suggests that Wanderer leave Melanie’s body for another human body, and allow the seeker to take over Melanie and mine her memories before killing Melanie, Wanderer is at first upset by the suggestion but eventually realizes she may have no other choice but to leave the body that resists her presence.
But before she takes that drastic step, Wanderer wants to visit the healer who inserted her into Melanie’s body, and see if he can help her. She decides to drive from California to Chicago in order to do so. While on her drive, Wanderer is again assailed by memories that belong to Melanie. She realizes that she may be near the humans’ sanctuary and close to the man she and Melanie both love.

With the help of Melanie, who does not want to die, Wanderer finds the human resistance. But what awaits her there isn’t exactly a warm welcome… and the man she remembers loving treats her as the enemy. Much of The Host is the story of how Wanderer eventually earns the humans’ trust and finds love and acceptance, and how the humans find hope. There is also a romantic tangle unlike any other I’ve encountered in the pages of a book, between Wanderer, Melanie and Jared… and eventually, another man who is thrown into the mix.
I liked that the story focused on the interpersonal relationships and on the moral and sociological issues resulting from the science fiction premise. Your website says that The Host is science fiction for people who don’t like science fiction. While I do like science fiction, I generally lose interest in the long explanations of fictional technologies that one sometimes finds in science fiction, and I appreciated the fact that The Host did not contain any of those. The fact that it was set in our own real world made for an interesting contrast with Wanderer’s alien viewpoint.
It takes about 120 pages for Wanderer to first encounter the human resistance members, and as mentioned before, those 120 pages went by rather slowly for me. My interest was not engaged in that section, and I almost gave up on the book. But after the first 120 or so pages, the plot tightens up and the book becomes quite engrossing. There is a lot of tension from the conflicts between the characters and the internal conflicts in Wanda’s heart. The moral dilemmas at the heart of the story are quite compelling, and in the middle section, the book kept me up until the wee hours of the morning.

There are some very interesting aspects to the souls’ background and the other lives that Wanderer, who is eventually nicknamed Wanda, has experienced. Even the names the souls give themselves and to some of things they’ve brought with them to earth fit the souls’ peaceful personalities, and I really liked these aspects of the worldbuilding.
But at the same time, other aspects of the worldbuilding are weak. For example, most of the souls are peace-loving, and it is not explained why enough of them would choose to be seekers and to hunt down the human fugitives. Nor were the explanations of how and why such a non-aggressive species had set out to conquer other worlds convincing to me.
There were also times, in the last quarter or so of the book, when I felt a little tired of reading about Wanderer/Wanda. All but a brief prologue is written in Wanderer/Wanda’s first person viewpoint, so I’m not sure if my Wanda fatigue was due to the fact that I rarely have the patience for spending so many pages in the POV of a single character (I almost never persist with series that follow the same main character past one or two books), or if it’s because of Wanda’s personality.

In the course of the story, Wanda ultimately becomes so self-sacrificing, sweet and sincere that at times I found her difficult to relate to. I don’t know if this would be a problem for other readers, but I prefer flawed characters and Wanda was almost too good to be true.
Also, though some of the humans initially wanted to kill Wanda, her eventual acceptance seemed too quick and too thorough to be entirely believable to me.
When the ending arrives, as heartwarming as it is (and it is very heartwarming), it is also a little like watching one of Cinderella’s stepsisters trying on the glass slipper — something doesn’t fit right. The problem is that because the body snatching premise is so dark, what I feel I know of how most human beings would respond to something like that seems to me to require a grittier tale and an ending that isn’t quite this sweet.
Combine this factor with the fact that Melanie and Wanda both seemed immature to me (albeit in very different ways), and The Host doesn’t always read like a book for adults — there is something of a YA feel to it.
Still, the concept of telling an “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” story from a body snatcher’s POV is fresh, the plot takes some unpredictable twists, the romantic conflict makes the love story different from any other that I’ve read, and all of these factors make The Host compelling enough to make me feel that I don’t regret reading it. C+ for The Host.
Sincerely,
Janine

Thanks to dear_author

That would be Ian. My favourite characters are the ones who decide for themselves who they want to be. It’s the characters who stop doing what you want that make the story feel special and out of your imagination, something that seems to exist on it’s own, and that’s an interesting experience. With Ian in the beginning drafts, Ian was Kyle’s backup guy, but the first time Ian spoke he was curious why Jeb didn’t kill Wanda instantly, and his curiosity set him apart, and then he spoke with Jared and thought about what was going on because Jared refused to.

About twenty-five, and Kyle is thirty.

Ian, but I’m really fond of Jeb because he was himself from day one. I don’t know anyone like him. He was another character that when he fit in the outline he didn’t deviate from that. He was a voice in my head that I didn’t know. I liked Doc a lot, he’s like my little brother, Seth, from my website. He’s a very cool guy and a very tall guy as well.

By the time this was published I had not read the host, so I was not aware of this, here you have. Thank you and sorry :)

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Artist's Comments

Should be in Scraps, but I have no dignity pt. II
I was reading The Host in the car, and when I got to the part about Cheetos, I was very amused because I happened to be eating a bag of Cheetos at that point. XD
You guys already know this, but I feel I should stick it on here because I don't want to get my ass sued:[Something Important I Should Have Said Earlier: The text on the page is from the book, The Host, which was written by Stephenie Meyer, NOT BY ME, and I in NO WAY am attempting to claim her writing as my own, for this is simply fan-based material.]

Added here this week, though it debuted on lists a week or two ago, is Brunonia Barry's The Lace Reader (Morrow), ranking this week among the top 10 fiction hardcovers at NYT, WP, and PW.

It's about mind-readers and fortune-tellers in modern-day Salem, Massachusetts, but the backstory is at least as good: a self-published novel that sold to a major publisher and became a bestseller. (Here's an NPR interview with the author.)

Meanwhile, Stephenie Meyer's Breaking Dawn still ranks #1 on Amazon lists (though as YA it doesn't qualify for some of the print lists), while her adult novel The Host remains in the top 10 fiction hardcovers on three of those print lists.

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Shannon Moore - Celebrity News Service

Hollywood, CA (CNS) - Book 12 of the Dark-Hunter paranormal series, Acheron, by Sherrilyn Kenyon is No. 1 on the New York Times Best Sellers list of hardcover fiction for the first week.
The Bourne Sanction, by Eric Van Lustbader, is No. 2 again this week and follows character Jason Bourne as he pursues the leader of a Muslim terrorist group.

Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows' book, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, jumped from No. 5 to No. 3 this week during its second week on the list. The book tells the story of a journalist who travels to the island of Guernsey after WW II to meet residents who fought against the Nazi occupation.

Daniel Silva's Moscow Rules dropped to No. 4 this week after spending the last couple of weeks at No. 1. The book tells the story of Gabriel Allon, an art collector and sometime spy for the Israeli secret service, who discovers a Russian arms sales plot.
Stephanie Meyer's The Host landed in No. 5 this week. The book follows a stubborn woman who refuses to let aliens take over her mind and body.

The top ten Best Sellers on the list of Hard Cover Fiction are as follows:
1) Acheron - Sherrilyn Kenyon

2) The Bourne Sanction - Eric Van Lustbader

3) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society - Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

4) Moscow Rules - Daniel Silva

5) The Host - Stephenie Meyer

6) The Story of Edgar Sawtelle - Daniel Wroblewski

7) The Lace Reader - Brunonia Barry

8) Tribute - Nora Roberts

9) Foreign Body - Robin Cook

10) The Last Patriot - Brad Thor

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In the first half of August, Stephenie Meyer once again tops the BooksOnBoard bestseller list with Breaking Dawn. Meyer’s Twilight Saga ebooks remain a fixture on bestseller lists, as does The Host, her novel geared toward an adult audience.

“Meyer’s Twilight Series, which includes Twilight, Eclipse, New Moon, and now Breaking Dawn, enjoys a huge fan base,” according to BooksOnBoard CEO Bob LiVolsi. “Fans anticipated the release of Breaking Dawn for months. Many of these fans prefer the ebook version since the paper books are extremely bulky; the ebooks are much more convenient and portable.”

General Fiction eBook Bestsellers

1 Breaking Dawn - Stephenie Meyer

2 Eclipse - Stephenie Meyer

3 The Last Theorem - Arthur C. Clarke

4 When You Are Engulfed in Flames - David Sedaris

5 Nothing to Lose - Lee Child

6 Beyond Reach - Karin Slaughter

7 The Tin Roof Blowdown: A Dave Robicheaux Novel - James Lee Burke

8 Darwin’s Radio/Darwin’s Children - Greg Bear

9 The Obama Nation - Jerome R. Corsi

10 The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch

Thanks to Webwire

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"Just a few things about the new release Nov. 21st release date for Twilight:

1) I have no idea how this affects international release dates. I'm not exactly in the loop on those kinds of things. Hopefully that information will be available soon. I'll see what I can find out...

2) I'm really, really sorry for any inconvenience the new schedule is causing people. I feel your pain. Let's just say that my Thanksgiving plans are going through a major overhaul, too.

3) Looking on the bright side, this new release date means that Twilight will get to be on more screens--a lot more. That might mean a shorter drive for some people."

To watch it in full size, click on the images below
Found on deviantart by shanaimal


Artist's Comments

heres a quick sketch of melanie stryder from the host by stephenie meyer, its not top quality or anything, just a five minute scribble fest. FULLVIEW looks better!hb mechanical and 6b pencils

Artist's Comments

FULL VIEW PLEASE! Heres a better pic of melanie! as promised, i love this one alot more, this is melanie before wanderer, when she was part of the resistance. This was fun to draw, i loved doing the eyes and hair, hope you like it too! hb mechanical pencil

Hardcover: 624 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (May 6, 2008)
ISBN-10: 0316068047
ISBN-13: 978-0316068048
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #47 in Books

Amazon Best of the Month, May 2008: Stephenie Meyer, creator of the phenomenal teen-vamp Twilight series, takes paranormal romance into alien territory in her first adult novel. Those wary of sci-fi or teen angst will be pleasantly surprised by this mature and imaginative thriller, propelled by equal parts action and emotion. A species of altruistic parasites has peacefully assumed control of the minds and bodies of most humans, but feisty Melanie Stryder won't surrender her mind to the alien soul called Wanderer. Overwhelmed by Melanie's memories of fellow resistor Jared, Wanderer yields to her body's longing and sets off into the desert to find him. Likely the first love triangle involving just two bodies, it's unabashedly romantic, and the characters (human and alien) genuinely endearing. Readers intrigued by this familiar-yet-alien world will gleefully note that the story's end leaves the door open for a sequel--or another series. --Mari Malcolm

In this tantalizing SF thriller, planet-hopping parasites are inserting their silvery centipede selves into human brains, curing cancer, eliminating war and turning Earth into paradise. But some people want Earth back, warts and all, especially Melanie Stryder, who refuses to surrender, even after being captured in Chicago and becoming a host for a soul called Wanderer. Melanie uses her surviving brain cells to persuade Wanderer to help search for her loved ones in the Arizona desert. When the pair find Melanie's brother and her boyfriend in a hidden rebel cell led by her uncle, Wanderer is at first hated. Once the rebels accept Wanderer, whom they dub Wanda, Wanda's whole perspective on humanity changes. While the straightforward narrative is short on detail about the invasion and its stunning aftermath, it shines with romantic intrigue, especially when a love triangle (or quadrangle?!) develops for Wanda/Melanie. 10-city author tour. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The video where stephenie talks about the host here!!!!!!

TEEN BOOKS AUTHOR CONNECTS WITH ADULTS, TOO
By Claire Martin Denver Post


Her fans devour the books in Meyer's "Twilight'' series — U.S. sales climbed to more than 5.3 million this year — about a searing but chaste romance between a devastatingly moral vampire named Edward and a mortal girl, Bella, the object of his tautly reined appetites. A movie version of the first "Twilight'' book arrives in theaters next winter.
"The Host,'' published 12 weeks ago, is her first for adults, and it has proven to be as much a success as her "Twilight'' books. The book has occupied the No."‰ 2 and 3 spots on recent New York Times bestseller lists.

"The Host'' departs from the earlier series in subject. Instead of vampires, it features a disconcertingly appealing alien who takes possession of a stubborn human, giving new meaning to the phrase "being of two minds.'' But spiritually, "The Host'' is right in step with the "Twilight'' books.

There's enough torrid frisson in "The Host'' to start major fires. The characters barely touch, "but there's more sex in that one paragraph than in all the snogging in Harry Potter,'' as Time magazine's Lew Grossman put it in his recent profile of Meyer.

Yet there's nothing that last century's National Legion of Decency could reasonably censure. It's a book that Meyer's mother and children could read without blushing.

"I think of the books as very romantic,'' says the impeccably groomed Meyer, who takes her new celebrity standing more or less in stride and still feels guilty about being unable to personally answer her stacks of fan mail with the "three-page handwritten letter they all deserve."
Meyer's special gift is infusing an electricity in holding hands or kissing, similar to film director Alfred Hitchcock's talent for implying horror far more exquisite than what the camera showed.
So, though the text simmers in "Twilight'' and its sequels, "New Moon'' and "Eclipse,'' high school students Edward and Bella remain as G-rated as the Bobbsey Twins, with perhaps a superior ability to resist temptation. (Edward belongs to a coven of vampires that foreswear human blood, sustaining themselves on wild animals.)

As she was editing "The Host,'' Meyer says, she read the text aloud to her eldest son, age 12, as she did with the first "Twilight'' books. She refrained from reading him more than the first three chapters of "Breaking Dawn,'' the latest "Twilight'' book released earlier this month.
"I don't read more than that to him, because I don't trust him not to sell me out to some cute 12-year-old,'' Meyer says.
She was quite serious about that, and with good reason. Readers were frantic to know what's next.

Unlike the "Twilight" books, "The Host'' is aimed at adult readers, and it is a little darker and grittier. But adolescents are reaching past grown-ups to get copies of "The Host.''
The "Twilight" series began, famously, with a dream that awoke Meyer on June 2, 2003. It was so compelling that she immediately logged on to her husband's PC and began to type.
"What compelled me to write it down was that I have a really bad memory,'' Meyer says, "and it was a story I didn't want to lose.

"It was always a story. I was not thinking, when I wrote, 'This is a dream.' I did not think of it as a book. The important part of the dream was the conversation.''
It took just three months for Meyer to finish the initial "Twilight'' book. The others followed as quickly. Agreeing with the publisher about a book cover, she observed, often takes more time than writing the book itself.

The idea for "The Host'' took a more conventional route but arrived as wholly formed. She has outlines for two "Host" sequels and is eager to get back to that story line.
"The Host,'' Meyer says, "was an idea I had on a long road trip. I was halfway into the story, and not really sure about it when I came up with an alien in someone's body, and both the alien and that human being in love with the same man.
"I tend to see everything like a movie in my head.''


The Host
By Stephenie Meyer
Little, Brown,
624 pp., $25.99

Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga, Book 4)
By Stephenie Meyer
Little, Brown Young Readers,
768 pp., $22.99

Thanks to MercuryNews

Thanks to metrolyrics

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There's a poll on your right side, You have until October 31st to do it, so Have fun.

YoU cAn SeE In ThIs BlOg A ChApTeR bY cHaPtEr AnAlYsIs aNd A cHaRaCtEr AnAlYsIs =D! Tell me you oppinions. lOVE YA

Stephenie Meyer is the most famous writer you’ve never heard of. But not for long. Meyer’s growing popularity is like a flashing billboard on our pop culture landscape.

The 34-year-old creator of the “Twilight ”teen vampire series is so sizzling hot, it’s not a stretch to suggest she’s heir apparent to J.K. Rowling, who gave the world Harry Potter.The self-assured Meyer doesn’t seem rattled by the comparison.“There will never be another J.K. Rowling. That’s a lot of pressure on me, isn’t it?” says Meyer, curled up on a leather sofa in her comfortable and airy adobe-style home in this sun-scorched desert community north of Phoenix.

“I’m just happy being Stephenie Meyer. That’s cool enough for me.”Meyer may be cool and composed, but her ravenous fans are in a frenzy. They’ve devoured the first three “Twilight ”saga novels and are ready to pounce when “Breaking Dawn”, the fourth and final book, went on sale Aug. 2 at 12:01 a.m. amid midnight-party madness befitting the final Harry Potter book. And they’re already overheated about “Twilight” the movie, which doesn’t hit theaters until Dec. 12.What’s all the fuss about?It starts with an otherworldly love triangle: human teenager Bella Swan, her hunky vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen and Jacob Black, the irascible werewolf who also loves her.

Fans are waiting to find out who Bella chooses, and if her choice means that she, too, will become a vampire.The numbers tell the story:After three years, nearly 8 million copies of Meyer’s first three books are in print in the U.S.; “Twilight”, the first in the series, was published in 2005.The first printing of “Breaking Dawn” is 3.2 million, the highest yet for a Meyer book.Meyer has dominated USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list this summer. “Twilight” was No. 1 last week; the second and third books, “New Moon” (2006) and “Eclipse ”(2007), wereNos. 2 and 4. Her first adult novel, “The Host”, a story of aliens published in May with 930,000 in print, was No. 15.Further proof that Rowling may be handing her magic wand off to Meyer: Last summer, Meyer ended Rowling’s reign at No. 1 when “Eclipse” knocked “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” off the top spot on USA TODAY’s list.Meyer’s road to literary fame is taking on the legendary quality that surrounds Rowling’s rise.

Rowling says the idea for Harry Potter simply “fell into (her) head” while she was on a train in England. Meyer says her inspiration came from a dream about a vampire she had five years ago.The stay-at-home mom was so moved by the dream she began writing “Twilight ”that day. She submitted the manuscript to literary agencies whose addresses she found online. “Twilight ”was plucked from one agency’s slush pile, submitted to publishers and bought by Little, Brown, which paid $750,000 for three books.Meyer still has a way to go to achieve Rowling’s stratospheric heights: 28 million copies of Rowling’s seven Potter books are in print in the U.S. So far, the money, the news media attention and the rock star reception from her fans haven’t gone to her head.“I think that after 30 years of being the most normal person in the whole world, it’s really hard to become ungrounded,” says Meyer. “When I’m not out on tour or doing photo shoots, I tend to just forget about it all.”And home is where she prefers to be, says the Mormon mother of three young sons.“The nice thing is that 95 percent of the time, I’m just Mom, and we’re just doing the normal thing, and I’m here, and it’s good.”The biggest change is that Pancho, her husband of 13 years, quit his job as an auditor to care for Gabe, 11, Seth, 8, and Eli, 6, when Meyer is on the road.Her Mormon faith, she says, is of intense interest to the news media, but to her, it’s just who she is.“It seems funny that it’s still a story,” Meyer says, “because you didn’t hear people saying, ’Jon Stewart, Jewish writer,’ when his book came out. I guess being a Mormon is just odd enough that people think it’s still a real story.

Obviously, to me, it seems super normal. It’s just my religion.”Right now, fans are more focused on her new book. Unlike the final Potter book, copies haven’t leaked out.Details are scarce, but Meyer, who says she finds it hard to keep secrets, has released a few.The most startling: Her editors asked her to tone down the violence in “Breaking Dawn”, which she did, and discussed putting an age warning on the book, which she says she supported, although it didn’t happen.“I was for an age limit of 15 or 16 and a warning,” says Meyer. “I think the content is just a little harder to handle, a little bit more grown-up for really young kids. I have 9-year-old readers, and I think it’s too old for them. Some of it’s violence, and some of it’s just mature themes.”Not that the first three books — told from Bella’s point of view - have been particularly bloodthirsty. Forget Dracula or Anne Rice’s metrosexual creatures of the night. Meyer’s good vampires, like Edward, satisfy their blood lust by hunting wild animals. No human blood for them.

She’s thinking about two sequels to “The Host” and is working on a ghost story.“I’m just going to try and stay home and write five books next year,” Meyer says. “It may not happen, but that’s my goal. And I’m not going to let anyone see them. It’s just going to be about sitting home and writing.”

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FICTION
1. "Breaking Dawn" by Stephenie Meyer (Little Brown)
2. "Eclipse" by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown)
3. "Moscow Rules" by Daniel Silva (Putnam)
4. "The Host" by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown)
5. "The Dangerous Days Of Daniel X" by James Patterson, Michael Ledwidge (Little, Brown)
6. "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown)
7. "The Bourne Sanction" by Robert Ludlum, Eric Van Lustbader (Grand Central)
8. "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows (The Dial Press)
9. "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" by David Wroblewski (Ecco)
10. "The Last Patriot" by Brad Thor (Atria)
11. "Tribute" by Nora Roberts (Putnam)
12. "Chasing Harry Winston: A Novel" by Lauren Weisberger (Simon & Schuster)
13. "New Moon" by Stephenie Meyer (Little Brown for Young Readers)
14. "Love the One You're With" by Emily Giffin (St. Martin's Press)
15."Sail" by James Patterson and Howard Roughan, (Little, Brown)

While it could be argued that Creed and Riana are more in lust than love, the second new novel I read this summer, Stephanie Meyer's "The Host," is a very human love story, even with the alien invaders.

For several years, a race of parasitic aliens has been quietly infiltrating Earth. The invasion was hard to spot because the "Souls" are implanted in living humans and take them over, no pods required.

While the "Souls" look upon themselves as benevolent and making life on Earth better, there are pockets of resistant humans who don't take kindly to being pushed out of their own mind in the name of a perfect, violence-free society.

When the "Soul" Wanderer is implanted into rebel Melanie Stryder, the hope is to pull information from Melanie's mind that will lead "Seekers" to her resistance group.
Instead Melanie bombards Wanderer with memories of her human life - the man Jared whom she loves deeply, her younger brother, the sharp quick knives that are emotions.
Soon Wanderer and Melanie are working together to reunite Melanie with Jared. What follows is a love triangle with Jared looking at the face of his former lover Melanie, whom he knows is inhabited by another, and Melanie and Wanderer sharing feelings of love and jealousy about Jared.

To complicate matters, Wanderer feels drawn to another human resistance fighter, Ian, and thus the triangle becomes a square.
I know I said summer books shouldn't be thought-provoking, but, for this one, I will make an exception. It brings up the questions: What is love? What do you fall in love with - the mind or the body? And what price should be exacted for peace?
The "Souls" are parasites - this they acknowledge. Every other species they have inhabited has allowed them in without a fight, until the humans. Should one sentient species be destroyed to let another live?

During their time together, Melanie and Wanderer learn about each other and their respective races. Wanderer learns that humans aren't as brutal and violent as she has been lead to believe, and Melanie learns that what could become the extinction of her race comes from a place of benevolence.

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Hardcover fiction
1. Moscow Rules by Daniel Silvar (Putnam, $26.95). Gabriel Allon, an art restorer and an occasional spy for the Israeli secret service, uncovers a Russian arms sales plot.

2. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski (Ecco, $25.95)/ A mute takes refuge with three dogs in the Wisconsin woods after his father's murder.

By JOHN MARK EBERHART
The Kansas City Star

Maybe it’s because she’s a mother to three boys; maybe it’s just because she’s a compassionate person. But Stephenie Meyer loves to see the good in people -- even the "bad guys."
"My books really aren’t horror novels," Meyer says from her home near Phoenix.
"The vampires are a source of light in my novels. I tend to look at the bad-guy side of things -- giving them their side, letting them talk."

The vampires in question populate Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse, the first three books in Meyer’s outrageously successful Twilight Saga series. The fourth, Breaking Dawn, will be published Aug. 2. Meyer’s appearance Thursday in KC is actually to talk about her first non-vampire novel, The Host.

Young-adult readers and older ones have embraced the vampire series with the kind of passion J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter elicited: millions of co? pies sold (4 million in the last 12 months alone), ardent devotion (143 weeks combined on the New York Times best-seller list), and the inevitable film adaptations - the first, “Twilight,” hits theaters Dec. 12.

As for why the books enthrall readers: There's always the old-fashioned sex appeal of vampires - the taking of blood, neck biting, the intimacy of the exchange. Yet Meyer downplays it a bit: “Since I haven't read a lot of vampire books, I really haven't absorbed that assumption. The act of sucking blood is not this sensual, sexual, romantic thing; it's a very violent, gruesome act.”

Perhaps. But these characters are teens. In Twilight, Bella Swan is a “new kid” who leaves Phoenix for a small town in Washington state, where she feels (of course) out of place.
She falls for Edward Cullen, a handsome boy vampire. As Booklist opined: “This is a book of the senses: Edward is first attracted by Bella's scent; ironically, Bella is repelled when she sees blood. Their love is palpable, heightened by their touches, and teens will respond viscerally.”

Viscerally but also safely, or at least somewhat innocently, given the fantasy setting. At the very least, the Twilight books are once removed from the realities of teen sexuality explored in such young-adult books as Meg Cabot's Ready or Not.
Tuesday, though, will bring the publication of The Host, in which Meyer will take her fans in a different direction: It's a non-Twilight novel that is ostensibly science fiction, though on her Web site (http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/) the author calls it “science fiction for people who don't like science fiction.”

Preorders already have ensured The Host's success; last week it ranked 24th on amazon.com and 19th on bn.com.
Meyer will be in Kansas City Thursday to sign and discuss the book, but according to Rainy Day Books, the thousand tickets are gone.

“It's definitely a departure in that it's a whole new cast and crew in my head,” Meyer says. “But, at the same time, I think my established readers will be comfortable with it; they'll get into the rhythm of it and find that it sounds like me. Stylistically it's very similar.”

The Host is the story of Wanderer, a member of an alien species that takes possession of human minds and bodies. Nearly all of humanity has yielded to these alien beings, but Wanderer's host, Melanie Stryder, is an especially strong human. Her will is not entirely broken; she pushes back at Wanderer, and the two minds must find a way to deal with each other.

“It's science fiction because it's about aliens,” the author says, “so there's no other way to categorize it. And I like science fiction. But this doesn't feel to me like science fiction; once you get past the basic premise, it's just about being human.”

Read more here

Stephenie Meyer's hyped "The Host" (Little, Brown, $25.99, 619 pages) isn't quite as mind-bending as the jacket blurbs would lead you to believe, but it's still pretty good stuff.

The setup is solid: An alien race of parasites has invaded Earth, and through insertion into the brain stem, inhabits and changes human beings. But the hosts don't become monsters; quite the contrary. In fact, they become super-civilized, nonviolent, cooperative and pretty much happy all the time.

"The Host" is told from the point of view of one of these parasites, who takes over the human body of a young woman who was part of the tiny resistance movement that still fights the alien takeover. Once connected, she discovers that the passions of human beings are much more powerful than the emotions of submerged flowers, flying batlike beings and the others the host has inhabited in her journey across the universe.

Aside from the fact that the host is just too good and wonderful to be true, Meyer does a nice job of delineating an interesting cast of characters and sets up conflicts that flow naturally from her premises. Unfortunately, though, the "twist" at the end is obvious for about 150 pages, and speaking of 150 pages, the book would have been better minus about that many — but those two flaws can't detract from a satisfying, enjoyable read that almost lives up to the hype.

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READ: `THE HOST,' BY STEPHENIE MEYER:

Stephenie Meyer fans shouldn't stop with "Breaking Dawn," the fourth and final book in her hugely popular "Twilight" teen vampire series due out tomorrow. "The Host," her new debut novel for adults, is just as worthy of acclaim. It's a sci-fi thriller about a plucky parasitic alien, who - when implanted into the body of a young woman on Earth - discovers the power of the heart and soul. It's a quietly compelling read with a unique alien heroine, who teaches humans a thing or two about humanity. (Little Brown publishers, $25.99)