Dreamcatcher.(Stephen Meyer and her writing of Twilight)

Byline: Photographed by Jonathan Becker.

How did a suburban mother of three become the next big thing in publishing with her chaste-but-erotic Twilight series? Robert Sullivan meets Stephenie Meyer.

She may prefer to write late at night while her family sleeps, but for the record, there is not a lot about Stephenie Meyer, author of the better-than-best-selling Twilight series, that screams vampire. Yes, she has long dark hair and earthy brown eyes, casually highlighted this afternoon at her home in Arizona by a black Banana Republic cashmere sweater and jeans, but she lacks the arrogance associated with vampireness. Her vibe is homey; she sits you down on her living-room couch, one leg curled up under her, and starts talking as if you had been in the midst of conversation for years. She's surrounded by her sons' toys, games, and compasses (her husband is a Cubmaster), as well as her workher office is in the front hall. There are family photos and a few paintings of the Washington coast, where Twilight takes place. The Phoenix neighborhood where she lives, a kind of desert suburb, is the opposite of the Washington coast, and lately she and her husband have been taking their three boys (ages six, eight, and eleven) on vacation to the Seattle area once in a while, to see green. "It's nice to show them that there are places where things are alive," she says.

During the day, she might go to the deli down the street for lunch with her husband ("I'm obsessed with the Greek salad," she says), but she's mostly just aroundrunning errands, picking up the kids, hanging out, which in her case means fielding calls about scripts and producers and interviews. Even in a year in which she is theoretically taking a break from promotional activities, the Twilight industry is booming. She cranks out chapters and reads them aloud to her boys, whom her husband takes care of if she has to go on a book tour or take a meeting in L.A. "I'm a hermit, basically," she says. "I'm just that kind of person." It's not that she has to get back to her coffin before dawn; Meyer is a homebodyeven, sometimes, a procrastinator. She never gets out to movies, and it takes her a while to watch them. "We bought The Dark Knight when it came out, and I know we will watch it someday," she says. If Law & Order is on TV at her house, forget writing. "I can't move until it's over," she says. "If it's a marathon, the day's gone."

As much as she has brought glamour to the lives of teenage girls with her Romeo and Juliet -with-blood lust story, the glamour she surrounds herself with is decidedly unglamorous, unless you are a boy, that isthe backyard is an aspiring athlete's paradise. Inside, the kids' playroom is actually played in, though Meyer fights her sons on having to buy the absolute latest video game, indicating to them that their heads will not explode if they do not get it. "The idea of enjoying something you already have has been lost," she says. For her, happiness is being at home or attending a Little League game or the elementary school band concert. She believes this is what success in writing has given her, a kind of luxury that would not be listed as an asset by the IRS. "Luxury for me is getting to take care of your kids," she says.

Yes, she will show up at a star-studded opening of her own film, mugging with the actors more like a schoolgirl than the creator of this gothic juggernaut, and yes, she clearly loves her fans (mostly girls), but the very thought of her own success can make her a little queasy. Just about a year ago, on the set of Twilight a film even the studio had modest hopes for but that eventually was a phenomenon, like everything else Meyer has touched since she suddenly appeared on the scene four years agoshe watched dozens of people re-create the cafeteria she had imagined as the lunchtime home of her heroine, Bella, and Bella's problematic suitor, Edward Cullen, who is older than Bella by a century or so, as well as undead and living with a large family of vampires. "I suddenly realized that all of this was happening because I wrote a story down," she says, "and it made me a little sick to my stomach."

It's only when she waves goodbye to her husband and son and jumps into her Infiniti that a reader familiar with Twilight' s hunky vampire would quickly notice something a little Edwardesque about the 35-year-old authorshe drives like Danica Patrick on her day off. "I like to drive," Meyer says. As she exits the dirt road that runs through her desert neighborhood, her foot is on the pedal like teeth on a neck. She is cranking her iPod on the car stereo, a tune by Muse, a band that is exactly that to Meyer. She is not breaking the law, but the law should be a little nervous. "My husband sold our coupe," she says, "and I was so mad."