The Southwest Voice

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"Darkness falls across the land; the midnight hour is close at hand.  Demons crawl in search of blood to terrorize ya'lls neighborhood!"  These immortal words were spoken by legendary horror flick king Vincent Price as he "rapped" the lyrics on Michael Jackson's Thriller, the title track, and one of the number one singles from the best selling solo album of all time.  Those same words were heard all over Barnes & Noble the evening of August 1st, as fans of Stephenie Meyer's best-selling Twilight saga gathered to await the release of the fourth book, Breaking Dawn.   Lead by bookseller and local thespian Brian Brown, and local actress and dancer, Heather Witcher, about ten would-be "Rockettes" joined the two in the Barnes & Noble Cafe to recreate the famous choreography created by Michael Jackson and Michael Peters for his best-selling video. 

But that's not all.  There were Edwards and Bellas, Esmes and Alices.  Even a Rosalie and one very tall Jacob!  Who are these people you wonder?  Well, if you have to ask then you've been living under a literary rock for about three years as the rest of us have watched this first-time writer from Utah became a household name with books like, Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, The Host and now Breaking Dawn.  Stephenie Meyer has struck teen book gold!  She's done what only Harry Potter and soon Eragon have and will do.  Convince book stores across the country to stay open past midnight to "sell"- ibrate the release of their latest works.  On a hot August night, we did just that.  

We created our own little "prom" in our cafe and invited our guests (of which we had over 500!) to join us in some old town activities you may find in Forks, Washington.  We were "bobbing" for apples,  answering trivia, creating a toilet paper wedding dress in 45 seconds, painting our nails black and sticking fake tribal tattoos on our arms.  We dressed in costume and dressed for the prom.  We even had contestants who brought cheers and whistles when a very tall "Jacob Black" and a very demure "Alice" competed for first place.  (Jacob won.)  Prizes included specially made Twilight chocolate bars by Godiva, Breaking Dawn t-shirts, wrist bands, buttons and stickers, too!  The most prized possession of the evening, though, went to the winner of the dance contest who received a brand new hardcover copy of the book itself.

The release party was a blast!  We had a great time hosting and participating in all of the evening's events.  Now with talk of Stephenie Meyer's new book, Midnight Sun (a return to the original Twilight story, but from Edward's point of view),  coming out, we may just do this again next year!

The open past midnight formula is not new... as I mentioned earlier, we've had several midnight release parties for the Harry Potter series, all of which were extremely successfull.  It's rare when we do this, because a lot of planning needs to be done in order to get something like this off the ground.  Not only that, but one  has to ensure that there's a crowd out there for a particular book.  We will do this again in September for the release of the much anticipated Brisingr, the third book in the Eragon Trilogy by Christopher Paolini.  

It is nice, however, to see people get this excited about words in a book... and you don't even have to plug it in!