Fans of Stephanie Meyer's seminal 'Twilight' saga were in for a shock today: They learned that the popular author was being accused of plagiarism by a former college roommate."She got those ideas from me," snapped stay-at-home mum Heidi Stanton, "I wrote a fictional short story with the same ideas when we were in college together!"
Given just how pervasive the Twilight phenomenon has been, it seems somewhat incredulous that Heidi could have been completely oblivious to her roommate's fame for the last half-decade - or, at least, to the four-book Vampire saga that some have labeled 'the new Harry Potter.'
Nevertheless, the mother of four has filed papers in Salt Lake City. Subsequently, production of the movie version of Meyer's second book, 'New Moon,' has been halted until this situation is resolved.Is there any validity to Stanton's claim?
"Yes," says Doctor Peter Benton, who taught Heidi while she and Meyer were students at Brigham Young University.
"She did write a vampire story that stood out in my mind, at the time, because it was more advanced than most sophmore students usually presented," Benton claims. "Also, the vampire theme stood out because I had recently taught a series of lectures on Brahm Stoker's Dracula."
Whatever the contents of that short story, it's tenuous to believe that Stephanie Meyer could have spun that yarn out across four large books.
Hate it or love it, Meyer's saga resonates with a vast (mostly female) audience and it's difficult to believe that she owes all of that to a couple of pages written by her roommate in the early nineties.
Besides, who exactly owns the copyright on vampires?
But this is America - the most litigious nation on Earth. What's right, wrong or even factual in most civil court cases falls to the wayside when hungry lawyers and greedy plaintiffs spot what's really at stake - a big, fat chunk of somebody else's money.
I'm no great fan of Stephanie Meyer and her Mormon-inspired melodramas, but I certainly don't think these allegations ring true.
