Chase: “All right everybody, this is Chase March and I have Talia Soghomonian on the line right now. She’s the author of Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart & Taylor Lautner – In their own words.

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This book is coming out just prior to the release of the final installment of the Twilight movie franchise. How did you go about compiling it?

Talia: “I’d already met the actors a bunch of times. I’d been on the set, I’d reviewed the films, and I’d interviewed them during junkets. So I was pretty familiar with the material. I used some of my old material and did further research in case I’d missed something. I did a lot of fact-checking, of course. It was actually pretty east to do. If you’re familiar with the subject, then it’s not that hard. There is so much about Twilight, that you could literally write volumes and volumes about it.”

Chase: “Were you a fan of the books before the movies?”

Talia: “I didn’t know of the books before the movies. The first time I’d heard of Twilight was the screening of the first Twilight movie. I didn’t know what to expect. I thought it kind of looked like an art-house movie and then there was this vampire story. I thought it was cool and pretty well made. That got me into the whole series. When I interviewed the actors a few weeks later, I was surprised to see so many fans who knew about the books and the series. I was kind of in the dark,”

Chase: “Yeah, it’s really captured the attention of millions and millions, which is crazy when you think about it. When I was a kid, I don’t remember a book ever having this much of an impact.”

Talia: “I don’t either. When I was like ten-years-old, I think The Outsiders was really popular.”

Chase: “You get forced to read that in school now.”

Talia; “Forced?”

Chase: “A lot of teachers are still using that book in novel studies. I find that it’s not as accessible for kids these days. I think there is a lot of great young adult literature coming out.”

Talia: “Absolutely. JK Rowling and Stephenie Meyer have really encouraged that. I think the young adults use much more imagination and they go into fantasy and there is a real story behind it. I think kids want imagination, escapism, and something they don’t have in everyday life or in any other book.”

Chase: “I’m a teacher so I really like to see that kids are reading. The interesting thing is that many of them only discovered the books after the movies. They like to read them after watching the films because they can picture their favourite actors in their head while they’re reading.”

Talia: “Absolutely, and often books are different so they can be pleasantly surprised. They get the best of both worlds. They get two different interpretations of the same story. In my book I mention that Stephenie Meyer and JK Rowling and all these authors have encouraged kids to read 500 + page books. 12 year olds are reading books like this. That’s a feat in itself. It gets them to use their imagination and maybe it will inspire them to become writers.”

Chase: “That would be amazing. It’s something to see all of the cultural book phenomenons that keep coming out. We had Harry Potter and then we had Twilight and now we have The Hunger Games. I wonder if this trend is going to continue. Are we going to see a new superstar title every few years?”

Talia: “I hope so. I hope that people are steering away from vampires though because Stephenie Meyer did that so well. Everybody wants to be the next Stephenie Meyer but the people who succeed will have original ideas. I hope that this trend does continue.”

Chase: “We’re talking with the author of Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart & Taylor Lautner – In their own words. This book is interesting because you’ve compiled over 30 different cast interviews from the very start of the first movie coming out to the present. There are five years of interviews in this book with pictures and you can also get an enhanced version of the book complete with audio clips.”

Talia: “That’s pretty awesome because you can actually hear them talking. It’s one of the great things about ebooks. It allows you so much more.”

Chase: “I’m a big fan of audio books, I don’t have an ebook reader, but it’s interesting to see how they can cross different platforms and be multi-media works.”

Talia: “I think kids are much more technologically advanced than we were as kids. They kind of expect things to be multi-media. I hope that, with the advent of ebooks, that audio will also encourage them to want to read the book more, any book. I find it amusing that you can listen to the book as you are reading it.”

Chase: “How much of the book is available in audio? Is it the entire thing or just portions of it?”

Talia: “Just portions of interviews.”

Chase: “You have quite the history of writing credits, specifically with magazines such as In Style, Elle Girl, Rolling Stone, Marie Claire, and NME. Can you tell us about your background as a writer?”

Talia: “I started out in the late 90s as a rock journalist. I interviewed just about every rock star except Mick Jaggar, Bruce Springstine, and David Bowie, which is a bummer. I did a lot of rock journalism.

I worked for a time at The New York Times; Paris Bureau, but I didn’t do entertainment stuff, it was much more serious. This story really changed my life. I was hired on September 11th and it was exciting to work in the foreign offices. It was a great opportunity too.

After that, I worked for nine years at a French newspaper, which exists in many countries, including Canada. I wrote about music and film there.”

Chase: “Where are you based out of now?”

Talia: “Right now I’m in Paris and I fly back and forth between Paris and L.A. I was recently in Atlanta doing a set visit at The Walking Dead. That was fun.”

Chase: “Oh wow, You are getting quite into film and television. Are you writing about The Walking Dead series as well?”

Talia: “No. They are very secretive about it, so not yet.”

Chase: “The interesting thing about that phenomenon too, is that is also started as a book, more specifically a comic book.”

Talia: “I think they’ve changed a little bit and they’ve added characters that don’t exist in the book. A lot of the actors were telling me that they bought the entire series of the comic book and it’s still continuing. They are finding it interesting how the writers are interpreting the story for the television series.”

Chase: “I think it is amazing how books are becoming so huge culturally. They are becoming films and television series. When I was a kid, it seemed the classic stories were the only ones that became movies and I didn’t find them all that exciting or engaging. Now, you don’t have to force kids to watch any of this stuff. They’re seeking it out and reading it themselves.”

Talia: “I think they are making better choices now as to what stories to adapt on film. They are much more marketing savy today. They know which books are better left as books. They know what kids like. A lot of the writers are young and they have more street cred.”

Chase: “That’s a good point. Some books are fine just being books. Orson Scott Card is one of my favourite writers. He writes science fiction for the most part, but he is absolutely brilliant. He has a lot of great audio books and at the end of the story, he does a little talk about the book. There’s one moment I really remember in those. He is talking about everyone asking him when the Ender’s Game movie is going to get made and they are pressuring him about it. His answer was, ‘It’s already a book.’ Why does it need to be a movie? It’s already a book. I love that answer.”

Talia: “I read The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury and I could never imagine how they could adapt that as a movie. I’m sure they’ve tried but it’s so complex and so much better to read it. I read it when I was ten years old.”

Chase: “So, what’s your favourite book? If you had to choose, I know I have a favourite book of all time, do you have one?”

Talia: “What’s your favourite?”

Chase: “My favourite book is Heartbeat by Sharon Creech. It’s probably not that well-known. It’s a verse novel so when you flip through the pages, you’d think it was a collection of poems, but it actually tells a cohesive story of this twelve year old girl who loves to run just for running sake. Everyone is pressuring her to join the team at school. It’s a really nice book. It’s beautiful, poetic, and sounds amazing.”

Talia: “Okay, I’ll have to get that. My favourite book isn’t a novel. It’s a non-fiction book called On Writing by Stephen King.”

Chase: “I love that book.”

Talia: “It’s the best book on writing. I think when you read too many of writing advice books, you just become crazy and you don’t want to be a writer anymore. His advice is so simple, and yet, so efficient. I also love that he listens to Iron Maiden when he’s writing.”

Chase: “Yeah, I really like that book but I’ve been torn a little bit lately. I’ve been reading writing advice blogs like The Story Fix blog by Larry Brooks. And I read his book Story Engineering. He is really an advocate for planning everything out before writing. Whereas, Stephen King just writes and lets the story steer itself, and that’s the way I write as well. I think Stephen King has something there about story being a found object and he’s uncovering it as he’s going.”

Talia: “Absolutely. I think it should flow like a fountain. You can always go back and rewrite but I think the first draft should just be whatever goes through your head. Stream of consciousness.”

Chase: “I even try to do that with my interviews. I’ve seen so many interviews where it’s basically ten questions and those same questions get asked over and over again to new person interviewed. It’s boring. With my interviews, I try to make it more of a conversation. It’s more exciting for the audience as well.”

Talia: “I think the audience wants to hear a conversation or read one if it’s in print. They don’t want to read or hear something that they’ve read or heard in fifty other places.”

Chase: “Your new book, has a lot of different interviews in it, are they conversational as well?”

Talia: “Some of them are. I didn’t do all of them. The publisher compiled some interviews from their sources. The interesting thing about the interviews is you see how the actors have grown. You see a progression from the first film when they were quite young, and see how they’ve grown and matured since then. It’s quite interesting.”

Chase: “Especially since some of them were relatively unknown and have now become huge superstars. It’s the end of an era though because the last Twilight movie is coming out really soon. A lot of people are going to be excited, but also mournful of the end of the movie franchise. But it’s something they will always have with the books and the DVDs, and your book to see some of the behind-the-scenes stuff with the three main actors in the film.”

Talia: “Fans shouldn’t be sad. They can always go back and watch the movies.”

Chase: “So your book, the interview compilation is 300 pages long, has over 100 photos, and more than 30 cast interviews is available right now. How can people go about purchasing that?”

Talia: “They can get it from Amazon.”

Chase: “We have free copies of the ebook to give away right here now. How should we go about doing that?”

Talia: “We should ask a good question that only die-hard fans will know.”

Chase: “Thanks Talia. I hope people will enjoy the book.”

Talia: “Thanks for having me”

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