New 'Twilight' book by Stephenie Meyer on the way

'The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner' by Stephenie Meyer

It's a great day in the Twilight universe. Stephenie Meyer has just announced a new Twilight book, a novella entitled The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella!
Stephenie Meyer announced the publication in a new blog on her website, revealing that the book was an exercise in character development of "Bree" while writing Eclipse and that the book will be available to online readers for free. Those that actually purchase the book, though, will be helping the American Red Cross as $1 from each sale will be donated to the organization.
The book, Meyer revealed, was a surprise even to her as it was initially intended for inclusion in The Twilight Saga: The Official Guide but was far too long (nearly 200 pages).

Her story is a nice complement to Eclipse; it explains a lot of the things that Bella never knew. So I dusted it off and finished it up for placement in the Guide.

At the same time, it came in handy for the Eclipse film. Melissa (Rosenberg, the screenwriter) had a ton of questions about what exactly was going on in Seattle, how Victoria managed things, what Riley was like, etc. I let her read what I had then, and later gave the whole thing to the director, David Slade. David asked if Xavier, Bryce, and Jodelle (Riley, Victoria, and Bree) could read it as well, so all the parties involved would end up having a really strong foundation for their characters before the cameras started rolling. I was pleased that this side of the story would make it into the film and was looking forward to including it in the Guide.

She posted a photograph of actress Jodelle Ferland (who portrays "Bree" in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse film, due this June) with ashes from the burning of her copy of the novella.

My publisher approached me with the idea of releasing the Bree story on its own. One of the major benefits of this plan was that it would be out before the movie, so people would get to know Bree before they saw her in the film. That made sense to me, and we decided to go ahead with it.

There was one thing I asked for: since this story had always been an extra for me, and was meant to be released with the Guide, I wanted to be able to offer it to my fans for free. You all have bought a ton of my books, and I wanted to give you this story as a gift. My publisher was awesome and embraced this idea. We still wanted to also produce a physical book with a cool cover (see below) that you can add to your set if you like, but starting at noon on June 7th until July 5th, it will also be available online at www.breetanner.com.

One other aspect of this release is the plan to give a more important gift to people who really need it. One dollar of each book purchased in the US from the first printing will be donated to the American Red Cross for their relief efforts in Haiti and Chile and other parts of the world where people are in great need. We're going to have an option online as well, so you can choose to make a donation if you want when you read the story online. I hope you will. I think that we can really help a lot of people with this.

Meyer closed the blog entry by stating that she was "glad that after all this time cooling her heels in my files, Bree finally gets her chance to shine."
USA Today reports that the novella will be released on June 5th at 12:01 a.m., and 1.5 million copies will be printed to start. They also quoted Meyer to state that she is aware Twilight fans might be looking for Midnight Sun but that she's "not writing about vampires right now."