So here it is:

Prologue
I'd never given much thought to how I would die -- though I'd had reason enough in the last few months -- but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.
I stared without breathing across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and he looked pleasantly back at me.
Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for something.
I knew that if I'd never gone to Forks, I wouldn't be facing death now. But, terrified as I was, I couldn't bring myself to regret the decision.

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Now some people don't like prologues, don't read them, etc. So maybe you think the prologue isn't really the "first" 13 lines that "count."

I'm assuming I'm not breaking copyright etc, if I post also post the first 13 lines of the actually chapter 1 instead of the prologue, since it is clearly a different ballgame, as it were. (Incidentally, the entire prologue is only 5 lines longer than the first 13 posted above. It covers exactly 1 chapter-starting page, which starts 1/2 way down the page)

1. First Sight
My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was wearing my favorite shirt -- sleeveless, white eyelet lace; I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka.
In the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State, a small town named Forks exists under a near-constant cover of clouds. It rains on the inconsequential town more than any other place in the United States of America. It was from this town and its gloomy, omnipresent shade that my mother escaped with me when I was only a few months old. It was in this town that I'd been compelled to spend a month every summer until I was fourteen.

I'm going to hazard a guess here and say part of the strong attraction of this is that it's fantasy intrusion, which is increasingly hot these days, esp with the younger crowd.

Even Harry Potter is in part intrusion, right? And then the recent shows, Smallville, Heros, even Buffy the Vampire Slayer were all intrusion stories.

Think the prologue helps; it's the only thing keeping me reading past the intro, which sounds like the typical teen self-pity I hear a lot.

quote:

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Well, I think people use different terms. Another term I've heard is "contemporary fantasy", where fantasy elements intrude into the "real world".

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I've read Twilight, New Moon and I'm halfway through Eclipse. The story is good - she does do something different with the vampire mythos (I won't give spoilers). I think the books work well for the market they're aimed at - I've only witnessed positive responses from readers.

Okay, I've read about halfway through. I can see why some people thinks it reads slow. Well, not a lot happens there for a good while.

What I'm wondering is how many people who like this novel are female and how many (if any) are male?

I mean, the story events so far are for the most part such standard romance tropes. Her wondering how someone so beautiful/wonderful/fabulous as HIM could ever possibly be attracted to HER???? When reading through the first time, it didn't bother me, but on further study it's quite irritating. Of course, the book jacket warns me he's a vampire and he wants to drink her blood, so maybe that why it worked. I, as reader, knew all was not as it seemed to her.

There is something about the writing, about the words strung together to make up the text, that works. Everything is clear. Is that because the time and place are now, so easy to work with?

The author uses a lot of repetitive patterns. Nothing that gave me pause on first read.

I'd say most readers are female. They love the romance triangle between Edward-Bella-Jake, but moreso (from discussions I've heard) the conflict between vampires and werewolves ... that cold/hot divide in personality and the way the characters react to situations. Then, that could be identification ... teenagers have a jekyl & hyde personality, so many secrets, so maybe they identify. Hence, there is an equal divide between Edward or Jake fans from readers I've spoken with.

Stephenie Meyer's debut TWILIGHT, a teenage vampire love story, to Megan Tingley and Jennifer Hunt at Little, Brown Children's, in a major deal -- "the most Little, Brown children's has ever offered a first-time author" (later confirmed as $750,000) -- at auction, for three books, by Jodi Reamer at Writers House (world).