Connecticut-born author Stephenie Meyer never planned to become a full-time writer.

Not that her passion for literature was some sort of fleeting fancy. After attending high school in Scottsdale, Arizona – Meyer’s family relocated to Arizona when she was four – she used a National Merit Scholarship to help pay her way through Brigham Young University, where she majored in English. But Meyer never envisioned herself as a bestselling author, much less watching the cinematic adaptation of her first novel, Twilight, dominate the holiday box office to the tune of nearly $140 million in its first two weeks.

On the unusual trappings of fame:

“When I wake up in the mornings, I’m not thinking about the success of these books. But then I go somewhere like Comic-Con, where I’m not allowed to walk in the front door for security reasons, and it’s just weird. I have a very normal life, so for me to step out of that and realize that I have all these readers and all this excitement following me wherever I go, it’s strange. It’s great, don’t get me wrong, just strange. They’re loud screamers, too. It’s hard to be more vocal than Twilight fans.”

On the flash of inspiration that prompted her to begin writing:

“It was an actual flash. I was not planning to write, and I had no aspirations to be a writer. Then one day I had this really fantastic dream and I wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget it, and pretty soon I was hooked on writing. It was amazing to take this dream and make it concrete, to make it real so I could go back and visit it later.”

On overcoming her hesitation to option her novels for cinematic treatment:

“I lost a few nights of sleep over the adaptation, because more adaptations than not turn out badly. There are a few that are amazing, but a lot of times they’re not a good thing. On the flip side, I saw the book very visually as I was writing it. Just seeing one scene of it on the big screen – I didn’t care about anyone else going to see it, this was all about me alone in the theater – getting to see it on the screen and having it be real, that’s what swayed me.”

On the casting of Kristen Stewart as conflicted heroine Bella Swan:

“I think Kristin’s a really great actress. When they first told me about her, I’d seen her in other films where she played more of a blonde bombshell, so that gave me pause. But then when they got a hold of her makeup and hair, and after she started working with [director] Catherine [Hardwicke], who has a gift for coaxing brilliant performances out of her actresses, Kristin really got the part down. And I love her voice.”

On her favorite kind of vampire:

“I love them all in different ways. I can totally see things from the perspective of the more sensitive vampires, and obviously the Cullens get the spotlight most of the time. But I really have a fondness for my bad vampires. I see every single one of them as a very distinct character, but I think tiny aspects of my personality exist in all of them.”

On the amount of creative control she exerted over the Twilight movie:

“As an author, you can’t try to control this kind of project. When they had questions for me, I answered them, and I was really happy to see what was going on when I visited the set. But I don’t know how to make a movie, and it’s not my place to tell them how it should be done.”