What to do if your vampire novel comes out of the coffin too early

Bad news this week for author Stephanie Meyer, who had previously distributed a few rough copies of the manuscript of her latest novel, Midnight Sun, and was disappointed to learn that … bum bum BUM! — you guessed it — somebody put one on the Internet.

The novel would have been the last installment of Meyer’s Twilight series, which, as far as I can tell, is basically Wuthering Heights set in the present … with vampires. This week, Meyer said she is too distraught to continue working on the project and that it is shelved indefinitely.

A few years ago, something similar happened to the Dave Matthews Band

the band went back into the studio, polished the leaked songs, and arranged them onto a new CD, Busted Stuff, which I bought even though I already had the “rough drafts.”