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Hannah Agnew

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If you had asked me a few months ago if I liked vampires, my immediate response would have been "No." I have always thought of them as dark and creepy monsters or Halloween characters, and I never liked that they fed on humans and drank their blood.

Even now, I only like one kind of vampire: the vampires that were introduced to me in the Twilight novel series.

The author of the Twilight series, Stephenie Meyer, has a very interesting take on vampires. I mean, how many vamps do you know of that sparkle in the sun? In Ms. Meyer's books, the Cullens -- a family of vampires -- along with only one other vampire family, feed on animal blood to save the lives of innocent humans.

Stephenie Meyer has said that her inspiration for her stories came to her in a dream. As cliché as that sounds, it's true. She had a dream of a human girl and a boy, not human but something more, in a meadow. From that dream, came chapter 13 of Twilight around which the books took shape. The girl became Bella, the heroine of these novels, while the boy was the vampire, Edward, born in 1901 but still and always 17 years old. Their love story spans four complete books of between 400 and 750 pages each.

If you search online forums for Twilight, you'll probably notice the many fan fictions. Fans have written stories that vary from Bella and Edward after Breaking Dawn, the last book in the series, to stories about Bella and Jacob, a werewolf whose family is in an epic battle with Edward's. The stories imagine what could have happened if Bella had chosen Jacob over Edward.

Not only have there been fan fictions but also fan songs. Like Wiz-Rock for Harry Potter fans, the Twilight fandom has created Twi-Rock. Bands like The Twilighters, Mandala at Twilight, Midnight Sun and The Bella Cullen Project write songs about their favourite and least favourite characters.

The band names also have significance. Midnight Sun, for example, is the name of the discontinued book that Stephenie Meyer wrote to convey the plot of the first novel, Twilight, from Edward's perspective. Unfortunately, someone who had a copy of the manuscript leaked the first twelve chapters of Midnight Sun online and the author decided not to continue.

I consider myself a "Twihard", the name given to those hardcore Twilight fans, like the Twi-Rock bands and fan-fic writers. I'm consistently annoying my friends and family with new Twilight updates, factoids and trivia. Everything reminds me of Twilight.

Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn are classified under the "Young Readers" sections in book stores and online. I would have to say that the most hardcore Twilighters are the Twilight Moms.

The Twilight Moms is a group of women with young children. While struggling to take care of there kids, they also have enough time to read the Twilight series. This fan group gets special privileges, allowing them to visit the movie set, get interviews with the cast and behind the scenes looks at Stephenie Meyer's life. They truly understand what Stephenie Meyer went through while writing the books, as she is also a young mother who wrote while caring for her children.

Everyone has different reasons for liking books. Sometimes it's hard to explain. For me, my obsession with Twilight started with Edward Cullen, the mysterious vampire, who was drawn to an ordinary human, Bella Swan, by her blood but also by the desire to protect her from other vampires. I imagine myself in Bella's shoes and experience the tragic love story for myself.

* Hannah Agnew is a Grade 8 student at Edith Cavell. Her column appears weekly in Whatever.