Read The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide for Free Online Page B

Vampires cannot have babies… because vampires aren’t real. [Laughs] And vampires can’t have babies with humans, because humans can’t actually copulate with vampires—because vampires are not real. [SH laughs] It’s a
fantasy
.
    SH: Right. And yet people believe those characters, and the possibility of those vampires is real enough that they have to say: Wait—those aren’t the rules.
    SM: It’s flattering in a way, that this is so real to them that they feel like there are things that can’t happen in this fantasy.
    SH: Now I have a nerd-girl question. Does Nessie’s bite do anything? Did it do anything to Bella, when Nessie bit her?
    SM: Nessie is not venomous.
    SH: You did say in the book that Nessie wasn’t venomous. I mean, it’s just about food. [Laughs] Extreme nursing. [Laughs] But I guess when Bella did so well with the transition, as the new vampire, I was thinking:
I wonder if Nessie’s bite did that for her
.
    SM: [Laughs] I hadn’t even thought of that. No, Bella’s transition was unique among new vampires, in that she knew whatwas coming. None of the other Cullens had any warning. It was just, all of a sudden, this overwhelming need to drink blood—just without any kind of readying. You know how sometimes you have to brace yourself for something? Bella was braced—she was ready. And it wasn’t like it was easier for her than it was for them. She’d just already made up her mind that that’s the whole key to everything. She’s the only person in the entire history of the Twilight universe who chose beforehand to be a “vegetarian” vampire.
    SH: I liked that Jasper had a hard time with that. His personal struggle was that it wasn’t inevitable.
    SM: You know, when you’re really used to giving in to instant gratification, that makes it harder not to. If you’ve never given in, it’s easier to keep it that way.
Just to have Bella and Edward really be able to understand each other—that made it worth writing four books.
     
    SH: I remember when you were writing
Breaking Dawn
, you told me that this story made you happy. What is it about this story that made you happy?
    SM: Well, it goes back to what we were talking about before, about Edward. And it’s an interesting thing to me, how I worry about my characters like they’re real people. Like how after I wrote
Eclipse
—even though I knew exactly what was going to happen in
Breaking Dawn
—until I actually got to the part where Jacob sees Renesmee for the first time, and his life comes together for him, I worried about him all the time.
    And Edward, this whole time, has had a lot of happiness—and, yet, he’s not trusting any of it to last. He’s feeling like he’s doomed, and there’s no abating it—that something bad is going to happen to him because of who he is. And now I could finally watch that change and watch him come to accept happiness—even more than Bella does. Because Bella sees the end coming and sort of loses hope, but he never does.
    After he accepts that he can have happiness, he just clings to it. And I really enjoyed that, and I enjoyed writing the end. I had to write all four books to get to those last two pages. Just to have Bella and Edward really be able to understand each other—that made it worth writing four books.
    SH: And he really makes the journey—even though vampires, as you’ve said, are frozen sort of in that moment when they first become vampires. But he changes so much in
Breaking Dawn
, and so quickly in becoming a father. What was it like to take him through that journey, as well?
    SM: You know, all that really changes is his outlook—which, of course, changed everything. But who he is, what he loves, how he does things—it all stays the same. He did get a lot of things that he hadn’t even let himself think about wanting, though. I mean, getting to have this daughter that he had never envisioned—that he never could have conceived of—was this unbelievable thing for him, you