Breaking Dawn Midnight Release at Vroman's Bookstores

Submitted and authored by Dan Collins

Friday night at midnight (the witching hour), the final installment of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight vampire novels, Breaking Dawn, was released to the waiting arms of teenaged girls everywhere. And Vroman’s Bookstore was there to cash in, with themed events more flush with girl power than anything the Spice Girls have done since 1995.

I started off at the Pasadena Vroman’s “Breaking Dawn Prom Party,” which looked like the high school dance from an eighties movie—gaggles of girls in prom dresses, confused party matrons fiddling with the DJ gear trying to make it play more indie rock, non-alcoholic punch, a few parents and teachers (one wearing a homemade “Teachers for Twilight” shirt) waiting in the wings to make sure everybody had good, harmless blood-sucking fun. Only a few of the boys seemed to go goth with the whole event—one kid wore a top hat, fangs, and a ruffly white shirt that would make Robert Downey Jr. in Restoration blush, and a coven-ous trio huddled in a corner near the Laemmle Theater dressed up like characters from the Lost Boys—though the most tricked-out dude, with his prosthetic ears and tailcoat, actually succeeded in looking more like the Lost Boys from Robin Williams’ Hook.

The whole sold-out event had the feel of a movie opening or a rock concert, so it was hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that this was a book release, and the author wasn't J.K. Rowling. But I guess author Stephenie Meyer has marketed herself like a rock star from the beginning, associating herself with MTV, posting track listings of songs that inspired each novel on her website, and doing a Q & A tour this week that co-stars the secular Worship music of Justin Furstenfeld, from the painfully sappy and generic indie band Blue October. Vroman's paid tribute to that spirit by hosting their own band, a far better combo called Ovideo, who matched the eighties theme by playing straight-faced danceable alt-rock with some cool classic keyboard sounds in the mix.

I'd seen how the city kids celebrate literacy, so thought I'd hoof on down next to the Vroman's branch out in the Hastings Ranch area of Pasadena, near where the Gold Line ends. Here the crowd was more subdued, but a little more fun--there was still the punch, but also arts and crafts, baked goods, and once again, blood-red non-alcoholic punch. The band was more subdued as well: three gals going by the name of c-horse strumming and plunking along to some great songs with two and three-part harmonies, almost Spector-esque in structure and lyricism aside from that whole no-sleigh-bells thing.

This Vromans had a display of other teen-fiction vampire authors out on a table, all of them trying to be the missing link between Anne Rice and Buffy. Looking through them, I realized that there are some edgy vampire tales out there, most of which explore teen sexuality far better than the chaste characters in Twilight--think Judy Blume's Forever, but with fangs. But if screaming girl fans are any indication, Meyer is probably more than happy to be the clean scream queen who could get the post-Potter fans' adolescent blood boiling. We'll see if they get even crazier when the Twilight movie (starring Harry Potter's Cedric Diggory as the vampire hottie Edward) comes out this fall.