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might go in the future.

On Breaking Dawn

     
I was aware that it was taking Bella in a new direction that wasn’t as relatable for a lot of people.
     
    SH: I loved
Breaking Dawn
. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but it might be my favorite. It was so the book I wanted, and so what it felt like it needed to be for me. And I have to say I loved the pregnancy and birth stuff, because I love the horror. Your books are romance, but there’s also this real, wonderful undercurrent of horror that’s different from any kind of horror I’ve read. And I love what horror can do: shine a light on what is real. And you make it bigger and more grotesque—just so you can see more clearly how grotesque what really happens is.
    SM: I do think that sometimes I put horror in unusual places for horror to exist, and I take it out of places where it might have been easy to have it. You know, that birth scene really was horror for me. We live in a time where having a baby is not much more dangerous than giving blood. I mean, it’s horrible, but it’s unlikely that you’re going to die.
    But that’s something new for this century. You know, there was a time when childbirth was possibly the most terrifying thing you could do in your life, and you were literally looking death in the face when you went ahead with it. And so this was kind of a flashback to a time when that’s what every woman went through. Not that they got ripped apart, but they had no guarantees about whether they were going to live through it or not.
    You know, I recently read—and I don’t read nonfiction, generally—
Becoming Jane Austen
. That’s the one subject that would get me to go out and read nonfiction. And the author’s conclusion was that one of the reasons Jane Austen might not have married when she did have the opportunity… well, she watched her very dear nieces and friends die in childbirth! And it was like a death sentence: You get married and you willhave children. You have children and you will die. [Laughs] I mean, it was a terrifying world.
    And Bella’s pregnancy and childbirth, to me, were a way to kind of explore that concept of what childbirth used to be. That made it very specific for readers who were interested in that, and it did take it away from some of the fans who were expecting something different. I was aware that it was taking Bella in a new direction that wasn’t as relatable for a lot of people. I knew that it was going to be a problem for some readers.
    SH: Yeah.
    SM: My agent and my editor and my publisher all said: “Um, can we tone down the violence here? It’s making me a little sick.” [Laughs] But I was kind of proud of myself. I was thinking:
I actually wrote something violent enough to bother anybody? I’m such a marshmallow. Wow—you go, Stephenie!
[SH laughs] And I toned it down for them, and I made it a little bit less gruesome. Although I kept some of the gruesome stuff in, too.
    SH: I know you hate spoilers. You don’t want any leaks.
    SM: You know, though, I wonder with this last book… I wonder if it would have been an easier road for readers who have difficulties with
Breaking Dawn
if they’d known more in advance. If people had asked me, “Can vampires have babies with humans?” And, instead of saying, “I can’t answer questions about those crazy things that might or might not happen”—which is what I said because I didn’t want to make it super-obvious it was going to happen; I mean, that just seems wrong—I could have just said, “Yeah, they can.”Maybe it would have been easier for them if they’d been expecting it.
My scientific reasoning works for me, but for people who don’t buy into it, I can only agree.
     
    SH: So you knew, even before
Twilight
was published, that in your world a vampire and a human would have a baby?
    SM: Oh yeah. I’ve got it all worked out in my head. My scientific reasoning works for me, but for people who don’t buy into it, I can only agree. It’s true.