All Things Twilight

Dopamine, Stephanie Meyer and National Reading month

Something About my Journey and my Connection to Stephanie Meyer

In a Facebook group called Friends and Fiction someone asked, “Name the author who you have read everything they have ever written?”

For me the answer is Stephanie Meyer author of the Twilight Saga.

Please leave a comment on what author you have read everything they have written.

But I didn’t add Stephanie Meyer to the stream of FB comments that question generated. They are a literary group and I hesitated as Stephanie Meyer & Twilight, while a wildly popular bestseller, is not literary but is considered a bit YA.

Back when the book(s) first came out, I resisted reading them mainly because the apple and the glossy black cover didn’t speak to me. But my children’s babysitter was obsessed with the books and was sure me and my daughters would love them too. And boy was she right. When we finally cracked the cover and started reading, we fell head over heels. The sort of obsession where you can’t stop reading until 2 AM and as soon as you wake up the next day, all you can think about is when will you be able to get back to reading. More on the topic of obsessive reading below.

The movies came out shortly after we finished reading the four books. My daughters and I went to the midnight opening of all five movies (4 books, 5 movies), showing my obsession was real as I’m not a night owl and desperately love my sleep.

In addition to the four Twilight books, I gobbled up The Host and absolutely loved The Chemist along with the many different permutations of the Twilight books Stephenie published. During this time, I read everything I could about Stephanie. Her website was chock full of information and insight and that’s where I learned about her “journey”. Stephanie awoke one morning from a vivid dream about a vampire boy and a human girl lying in a beautiful meadow talking about the feasibility and dangers of their love. Stephanie had two small children but dropped everything to start writing and that is how she developed her wonderful, magical story that is Twilight. Twilight is a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice which is one of my all-time favorite stories.

Here is a great clip of Kurt Vonnegut explaining the shape of stories and the finite number of stories we have in the world that writers use over and over. It’s just four minutes and is wonderful. Despite being from years ago, he makes several prophetic references that computers should be able to copy these universal stories shapes (Yikes it’s AI). Kurt Vonnegut YouTube

On the topic of AI, you should watch Elle Cordova's very recent funny reel. She is my new favorite.

Let’s talk a bit more about books and the obsession that can gripe the reader. My son Eric was reading the book Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke, MD and it seemed interesting, and since I wanted to chat with him about it, I read a few chapters.

Imagine my surprise when there was a whole chapter about the author’s light addiction to Twilight. Anna Lembke is a freaking doctor and she fell into the same rabbit hole I did. She explained she barely did anything except read the books and when she was done with the Twilight saga, she moved onto all sorts of other similar stories. Turns out Twilight was her gateway drug into more and more vampire fantasy books. She eventually had to quit cold turkey because her obsession was negatively impacting her work, her life, and her family. Turns out, it is the dopamine flooding your brain and taking over. Clearly you need to be careful with that sort of brain stimulation. As with anything, too much of a good thing can be harmful.

So, this is my coming out newsletter to share that I’m a Twihard and a big Stephanie Meyer fan. She is one of the reasons I kept at writing. While I didn’t have an actual dream like Stephanie, I had my ending to my story that was compelling me to finish the rest of it.

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Something about Nature, kids, pets or something else altogether

I thought this was the perfect newsletter to introduce our dog, because he looks a lot like a wolf and wolves’ figure prominently in the Twilight Saga. Team Jacob or Team Edward? I’m straight up Team Edward but don’t tell Wyatt, he’s very sensitive.

I’m not really a dog person but my husband always wanted one, so years ago we started off with a golden retriever (so barely a dog). We moved on to a rescue pit bull followed by a rescue hound dog. But my husband really wanted a German Shepherd, but I was too afraid of them. Finally, after years and years, I agreed we could rescue a Fidelco (seeing eye dog nonprofit located in CT) “reject”. It took two years before we reached the top of the Fidelco list and in August 2017, we got Wyatt when he was a year old. He is the gentlest soul, and my fears were completely unfounded. We were his third family in a year as Fidelco pups are fostered for their first three months and then his first family gave him back after only six or seven months. Which means while he is a purebred, he has the rescue mentality of desperately wanting to please us and absolutely hating to get “in trouble”.

Final item (almost). March is National Reading Month and once a year I raise money for the Hartford Chapter of Read to a Child where I volunteer and am a board member. This charity supports literacy in under-resourced schools.

I’d really appreciate your support. You can donate or consider volunteering via the following link: Read to a Child. They have chapters in LA, Miami, Boston, Detroit and Hartford.

Final item (I promise), because my last post received double the number of likes when I asked you to hit the heart, I’m asking you again. Wyatt and I would really appreciate the love.