ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Your success is huge, and it's come really fast. How do you explain it?
STEPHENIE MEYER: I didn't realize the books would appeal to people so broadly. I think some of it's because Bella is an everygirl. She's not a hero, and she doesn't know the difference between Prada and whatever else is out there. She doesn't always have to be cool, or wear the coolest clothes ever. She's normal. And there aren't a lot of girls in literature that are normal. Another thing is that Bella's a good girl, which is just sort of how I imagine teenagers, because that's how my teenage years were.

If you pitched the first book to publishers as a ''suspense romance horror comedy,'' which of those do you think your books are most?I think that it's romance more than anything else, but it's just not that romance-y. It's hard to nail down, but romance tends to be my favorite part of any book or movie, because that's really the strongest emotion. Orson Scott Card is my favorite: The romances are a small part of his books, but they bring his people to life.

He's your favorite writer?
He's sort of my favorite writer who's alive. My favorite-favorite is probably Jane Austen.

Have you read Bram Stoker's Dracula?
No, but it's on the list. I should've read that one a long time ago, but right now I can't read any vampire novels. I tried, after I wrote Twilight, to read The Historian, because it was the big thing that summer. But I can't read other people's vampires. If it's too close [to my writing], I get upset; if it's too far away, I get upset. It just makes me very neurotic.

Is it true you've never seen a vampire movie?
I've seen little pieces of Interview with a Vampire when it was on TV, but I kind of always go YUCK! I don't watch R-rated movies, so that really cuts down on a lot of the horror. And I think I've seen a couple of pieces of The Lost Boys, which my husband liked, and he wanted me to watch it once, but I was like, It's creepy!

But you're a big fan of alternative music, right?
I'm addicted to satellite radio. We just got a new car and we haven't had the satellite radio put in yet, and it's driving me insane.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What do you listen to when you're writing?
STEPHENIE MEYER: [For a while], it was almost exclusively Linkin Park. Linkin Park is fantastic for action scenes, because it just has that beat that drives the momentum of the writing. [Writing] New Moon, I listened to a lot more Muse all the time. Muse is my favorite band, and they're really good for writing because they've got an angsty kind of emotion. The new book [Twilight] was perky; I listened to OK Go and Gomez.