We all know the story of Bella Swan, the mopey girl from Washington who fell in love with a sparkly vampire named Edward Cullen, played baseball, had some kind of monster baby, became a vampire herself, and then allowed her werewolf ex-boyfriend to call dibs on her monster baby (a practice that we are assured is totally normal and not gross at all!), but do we know the story of sparkly vampire Edward Cullen? Yes, because it’s largely the same, but also not at all, because Twilight creator Stephanie Meyer is finally ready to release her long-awaited Twilight companion novel that retells the first book from Edward’s perspective and that would be a pointless exercise if it were just the same story.
The book is called Midnight Sun, not to be confused with the teen romance movie from 2018 or the Twilight Zone episode of the same name (does Meyer know about SEO?), and Meyer announced its release date this morning with the conclusion of a countdown on her website and with a video that aired on Good Morning America (via The Hollywood Reporter). The book will be available on August 4, and Meyer says there’s “so much more to his side of the story than there is to Bella’s” in the first chapter of Twilight. Who knows, maybe we’ll find out that vampires just shit on the floor like dogs.
This news comes over a decade after Midnight Sun was originally meant to come out, with Meyer canceling her plans for the book in 2008 when an early manuscript leaked online. It also sounds like she became a little disinterested in the concept, with THR saying she referred to it as “an exercise in character development that got wildly out of hand.” But hey, it’s finally coming out, which is good news for Twilight fans. And speaking of good news: It wouldn’t make much sense to make a movie out of this, so Robert Pattinson is free to continue appearing in better movies. Congrats, bud!