Left to right: Cam Gigandet (James), Edi Gathegi (Laurent), Rachelle Lefevre (Victoria) in Summit Entertainment's Twilight Photo by Peter Sorel

Catherine, you seem to do a lot of work with younger people and to draw great performances out of them. What is special about young people to you that you work so well with them?
CH: I think it's such an exciting age, like, coming-of-age stories, like the first time you can drive a car or drink or kiss a boy, so all those emotional things are happening and it's really kind of like the greatest time, period.

What will you do next?
CH: I really don't know, because right now we're in the middle of this so much and totally thinking about it 24-7.

Will you direct another Twilight movie?
CH: Well, it's all kind of... it hasn't been exactly decided... I mean, we've all got our fingers crossed... and hope it keeps going and all of that.

Who are your own favorite vampire characters?
SM: See, here's the thing. I'm not a vampire person, so before I started writing about them, I had never seen... I mean, pieces of vampire movies, but I had never been to a vampire movie, I'd never read a book about vampires besides my own, so I'm really not into horror... I don't know the genre.

Do you think that is why your books resonate with a wider audience?
SM: I think it's why they're different, because it's not a genre I am stuck in where I would know what walls I break through, because I don't know they're there. I think it's more about just Bella being an ordinary person that people can relate to. When I was writing this, I was not writing this, at the time, for anyone else ever, ever to see... Even my husband didn't know what I was doing. I was just having fun, so if you could sit there and create your own little world... it was like, "What if she could see the future?" Well, that would rock. "What would happen if they played baseball?" Oooh... it was just pure fun.

What inspired the diamond skin?
SM: That was part of the first dream that I had, so that was sort of a gift from that dream. It's one of the really, I think, pretty things about it that's different from a lot of vampire stories.

Have you seen the footage?
SM: No. I have seen probably 15 minutes total.

Was it what you imagined in your dream?
SM: Some of it. You know, I mean, obviously there are going to be little differences, but some of it was nailed.

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