Twilight vs Twighlight

Okay.

First off, I have no idea who Edwards is. Sorry, but I have no idea what you are talking about. Glad you like the guy, he sounds great. I'll have to read the book myself someday.

Secondly, I did not write the Twilight series I wrote the Twighlight Manor series. That's a horse of a different color if ever I saw one.

Thirdly, while the Twilight series is fairly new, my Twighlight Manor series is very old and has been out of print for some 20 years now. I wrote volume one "Friends Are Forever" in 1978. Most of the rest of the series was written in the 1980's. A few more volumes were written in the 1990's, and a couple more have been written in the 21st century. More than 30 in all.

Fourthly, unless you are a Mormon you are highly unlikely to have ever had contact with my Twighlight Manor series. To my knowledge, no none Mormon has ever read any of the series at all. Why? Because The Twighlight Manor series is a very small run small press series of chapbooks. Yes, chapbooks. The stories were limited to a few locals, all of whole went to one of the 3 LDS wards I went to. In other words, the only people who ever even heard of my Twighlight Manor series were Mormons, and than only local ones and if you are not one of those few, than it's not plausible that you've read my Twighlight Manor series.

Fifthly, while I am glad you like the Twilight books and the characters and all, I did not write them. Sorry, but I wrote the Twighlight Manor series not the Twilight series.

No, I don't. I mean, yes, the titles are almost identical, and yes there's the whole vampire thing and all. But my understanding of the Twilight series is that the stories are pretty modern day and about teenaged vampires. That does not sound like my Twighlight Manor series at all.

Do I think the author got the idea from my stories? Don't know. It's possible. I mean, think about it. It was a very small run series and less than 750 people ever even heard about it, and every one of them were members of one of 3 local wards (LDS/Mormon church buildings).

Well, granted, Mormons are known for their love of gossiping . . . I mean socializing. So yeah, it's possible that the author of the Twilight series somehow heard mention of my Twighlight series, but in order to do that he/she would had to have somehow come in contact with one of the Mormons who had been in contact with me AND knew about my series. The odds of that kind of thing happening and than that person writing a series with the same name as mine, and about vampires to boot? Yeah. That's what I'd call a pretty big long shot.

Of course, in recent years info about my series went up on the internet, but still, traffic to those sites are what? 20 - 30 visits per year? I never did do much to publicize the series. I would rather write than promote.

No, not at all. Like I said, other than the titles, the two series' are nothing alike. Granted I have not read the Twilight series so I don't know what it is about more than from what I've heard people say about it. Based on what I hear people saying about it, it is nothing like mine.

For one thing, the Twilight series is said to be for young adults, right? Well, let's just say that most people have a hard time digesting the Twighlight Manor series. . . it's small run, small press for a reason: it's rated M, and it's rated M for a reason. The series is not for the faint of heart. It's not even for those who normally read gory horror, as it goes far beyound the norm.

Secondly, while people refer to my Twighlight Manor series as a vampire series, actually a closer examination of the stories will reveal that there is not one single vampire in it.

Thirdly, the Twighlight Manor series is listed as science fiction not horror. My characters are aliens. Their ship crashed here by accident. They are trapped here on earth. They took up residence in a huge mansion, and keep to themselves. They eat meat. Humans are meat. They harvest humans as their food supply. They think of humans the same way humans think of cattle. Humans look at a cow and see hamburgers. My characters look at humans and see steak.

Fourthly, I doubt if the main characters of the Twilight series are anything like my main characters: a drag queen, a talking bobcat, a schizophrenic lord with a haunted mansion, a blood thirsty phooka, a power crazed sorcerer, and a house that eats people.

The Twighlight Manor series, started in 1978 and continuing into the current time. A long running series spanning nearly 30 years.

I have devoted more than three quarters of my life and nearly all of my energy into writing this series and yet, I have done very little to promote it or make it known to the world.

Why? Well for one thing I don't think the world is ready for it. The fact that it deals with very controversial issues can not be overstated enough. Issues that most of the general public would rather sweep under the rug than deal with.

I did once ask an editor about the possibility of my series going mass produced. He thought that for starters I would have a really hard time finding a publisher willing (or crazy enough) to even touch a series like this. Secondly, even if I could find a publisher, it would be highly unlikely that anyone would buy many copies, due partially to the gory graphic nature of the details and the in depth look inside the dark side of some controversial issues. I would also have some serious problems with politically correct laws, and if the series ever did go into mass production, it would likely be banned faster than any other book in history.

Uhm... yeah... about that, here's the thing of it:

The world is not ready for a drag queen as a main character. And even if he wasn't a drag queen, no publisher will touch a book where the hero is also the owner of a whore house where the girls are all under 18. This guy is a *vampire* who feeds of the life energy of young girls. This is a guy you don't get mad, because he can suck in all the electricity on the planet and than through it back at you, setting you, your house, or even your entire town on fire... dead in the blink of an eye. He is the main character throughout most of the series. Keeping in mind here that this guy is the hero of the series, should tell you how much worse the villains are.

Than there's the alternate main character, father of the first one, as well as the schizophrenic owner of The Twighlight Manor. This man has schizophrenia, a mental disorder that is frighteningly nothing like the way it is portrayed in the movies and a shear hellish nightmare to live with. Many of the stories in the series are written through his eyes. Very few people are able to cope with a person who suffers from schizophrenia, even fewer people know what clinical schizophrenia even is. No one wants to know the truth of this frightening disorder, they would much rather read about the Hollywood-ized version of it, as it is much more sugar coated. I don't believe in sugar coating things. People usually have a hard time reading very far into one of my stories about Roderic and his *haunted* house. Note here, that The Twighlight Manor is not in fact haunted. This is one of Roderic's delusions that went extreme and scared half the humans into thinking the place was haunted.

In the Twighlight Manor series the earth has been invaded by not only the family trapped on earth, but also by a second race: a race of talking animals that came to earth seeking friendship and were quickly swept away by scientists at a test lab where the animals were tortured to death. This race of talking animals retaliated by sending back their leader a bobcat known as The EelKat, who authorized the capture and torture of humans using the very same science labs formally used to torture animals.

Throughout each volume in the series you will find graphic violence, extreme gore, and bloody details.

The most common questions I get asked about the Twighlight Manor series are:

Why is it so very violent?

You don't think you could write a little less graphic do you?

I know there needs to be a better understanding of mental health and animal rights, but do you have to use so much real-life details? Couldn't you tone it down a bit? I'm finding it hard to read.

Men are not all evil you know. They don't all treat women like cattle. They don't see young girls they way you say they do. Most men really are good you know. Can you portray a man as anything other than evil? Just once I'd like to see you write a man as kind and loving.

Why do you never write a happy ending? Why does everything you write end with heart break and death and pain and suffering? The best books have happily ever afters. Can't you just once write something with a happy ending?

Why do I write all male characters as evil? Why are all my victims young girls? Why do animals rise up and practice Draize Eye tests on humans? Why do I get inside the heads of mental health patients and write the world of pain and confusion they see? Why are the gory detail so very accurate? Why do I never write a happy ending?

I guess I'm weird, but I have never written anything for anybody other than myself. I know every one says write what your readers want to read, but you know what? I don't care what other people want to read. If I have something to get off my chest I write it down, without giving my readers a second thought. Strange? Yes, but than again, I've not lived what most people would call a normal life either. I write what is inside me.

There is a simple and easy answer to all of this: I write what I know.

What do I know? I know that real life is hell. I've lived through hell. I have lived through things that the average person would never think about let alone have to live through. Life is hell, there are no happy ending. There are no happy endings in the real world. I write what I know. I can not write a happy ending because I have never seen one.

I can write graphic details of what someone looks like dissected, cut up, and body parts strewn all over the place, because when I was 14 years old my best friend was murdered, dissected, and pieces thrown all over the yard. I was the one who found him, and in spite of what had been done to him, he was still alive and did not die until nearly 48 hours later. I never left his side, even though his side was no longer there and his heart was beating on the outside of his chest. I can write details about such violent murders and the horrid deaths that follow, because I have seen it first hand. I write what I know: I know the horrors of violent murder and disturbing death.

People with mental health issues need understanding not sugar coated pills and push into the closest. I have Aspengers. My grandmother had autism. My grandfather was delusional (thought he was a prophet of god), schizophrenic and bi-polar. I have seen first hand what people with mental health issues have to go through just to survive. I know what I have to live with and how hard it is to live with the human race when the human race would rather medicate you than be your friend. I write about mental health issues and through the eyes of these people, because it is what I know and I write what I know.

Men are not kind. Men go after young girls. I know, once upon a time I was a 12 year old girl who was the obsession of a 37 year old priest. You can turn a blind eye to the truth of it all you want, but the fact remains, men are predators and young girls are always on their minds. I write what I know, and this is something I know to be true.

I love animals. When no human would be my friend, animals were always there for me. I was very young when one of my uncles lost his two dogs and it was later found out that those two dogs, my friends, had gone to a pound which later sold them to Proctor and Gamble. Those dogs died at the hands of scientists and the Draize Eye test. I have hated Proctor and Gamble ever since, protested, and boycott them, and became the most outspoken local resident for animal rights. I write what I know and my animal rights protesting of Proctor and Gamble quickly became part of the Twighlight Manor series.

My best friend was murdered (hacked up in pieces all over the yard) when I was 14 years old. I was the one who found him. It had a really bad effect on me and sort of put me in a state of shock for several months. That was when I stopped talking (I've spoken only a few words in the 20 years since). It was during the next 4 or 5 years that I wrote my most bloody and violent volumes of The Twighlight Manor series. That was when you saw the switch from the space opera sci-fi stories into the dark horror stories. My villains became darker, meaner, crueler. Serial killers took over as my prime villains instead of alien war lords. These dark, bloody, slasher stories quickly became my trademark, and yet so few of my readers are even aware that the reason I can write such graphic details about violent bloody murder, is because I am simply writing what I saw. I was in effect, retelling my friend's murder, over and over again through my books.

When I was 17, my grandmother died with cancer. My Twighlight Manor series saw a drastic change of events the following year as the main character and owner of the Manor, my beloved Sir Roderic, fell victim to cancer as well, and would never again be used as the main character in the series, instead being replaced by his son.

When I got a new kitten, a new character with the same name, debuted in my next story. When my 7 month old kitten died in 2006 due to the pet food recall, the next story saw the character carrying his name die in the same horrible death by poison, that my kitten had died.

Grief, death, and pain is what spurs me to write what has since become my most memorable and passionate stories ever. They allowed me to deal with the deaths in a way that allowed me to vent my frustration and anger. When you read my Twighlight Manor stories you are reading much more than just stories, you are reading into my very heart and soul and reliving my very real memories of actual events in my life.

People always ask me why my stories never have a happy ending, but the fact is, the stories were based on real events that ended badly and I was unable to rewrite it in a happy manner because I was not happy when I wrote it.

In short, I write what I know, and what you read in the Twighlight Manor stories is largely based on actual events from my own life retold through the eyes of some very odd vampire like alien characters.

People don't like what I write, because it is not pretty and it forces them to see the dark side of the world we live in. People want rainbows and sugar sprinkles, but all I give them are dead roses and blood.

I do not write happy endings. I kill off main characters, and my villains always get away with their crimes because that's just the way life is like it or not.

I don't think about if my story is something people WANT to read or not. Frankly I don't care if it gets read or not. I write them for me and me alone. If my readers like them: great! If my readers hate them: who cares? I wrote volume one of the Twighlight Manor series in 1978 and I wrote it for myself not for them. In the 30 year since I've written dozens more stories for the series, each coinciding with actual events in my own life. The series was written 100% for me, myself, and I, to hell with my readers.

Honestly, I have no idea. Of course I haven't read Twilight so I'm not really sure what it is. It could be more like Twighlight Manor than I think it is, but I doubt it.

But to confuse a set of books with another set of books based of the title just confused me. I mean you have two books out there with the title "Phantom of the Opera"; one is a Gothic Romance written in the 1800's while the other is a detective story written in the 1980's. The only thing they have in common is the title. This is not unusual. A lot of books have the same title as other books, but you don't see them getting mixed up with each other do you? Or do you? I don't know, maybe it's the fact that I live in a room filled wall to wall and floor to ceiling with 10,000 books, that I never confuse one book with another.

The thing that is puzzleing me is how can Twilight be confused with Twighlight Manor. For one thing the words are spelt different, and for a second thing one has a one word title while the other has a two word title.

I remain confused.

The content of this lens was created by Wendy C. Allen compiled in part from posts on Star Log Pink, Star Log White, EK's Writing Blog, EK's CosPlay & Sewing Blog, Xavier's Nest, and EK's Business Blog, the official blogs of author and artist Wendy C. Allen, a.k.a. EelKat. Reprinted here on Squidoo with permission.

EK's Star Log and it's sister sites Copyright © Wendy C. Allen 2004-2008.

Star Log, Space Dock 13, The Twighlight Manor Press, Moonsnails, Buried Treasure, Copper Cockeral, Black Bobcat Fashions, Purple Peacock Patterns, The Rabbit Hole, and Xavier's Nest Copyright © Wendy C. Allen 2003-2008.

All art shown on this page originally appeared in the Twighlight Manor series and are used here with permission.

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