Hold on your seats Twihards, there’s a new Stephenie Meyer release from The Twilight Saga on the horizon. Unfortch, Meyer‘s next Twilight book will NOT be the much ballyhooed Midnight Sun (which tells the Twilight tale from vampire Edward Cullen‘s perspective) but, instead, a short novella based on the short life of a minor vampire character from the book Eclipse. Here is our first look at the cover art for this new novella titled The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella which will be released on June 5:

Fans whose hopes were dashed when Stephenie Meyer sidelined Midnight Sun, her planned fifth book in the Twilight Saga, after it was leaked online, have reason to get excited. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers will publish Meyer’s The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella on Saturday, June 5. The book goes on sale at 12:01 a.m. with a 1.5 million-copy first printing (an e-book version will be available at 6:00 a.m.). One dollar for each copy sold from the first printing will be donated to the American Red Cross International Response Fund. The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner tells the story of a newborn vampire introduced in Eclipse, who will also appear in the film version of Eclipse, scheduled to be released on June 30. The book was originally envisioned as part of Meyer’s The Twilight Saga: The Official Guide. “I’m as surprised as anyone about this novella,” said Meyer in a statement. “When I began working on it in 2005, it was simply an exercise to help me examine the other side of Eclipse, which I was editing at the time. I thought it might end up as a short story that I could include on my website. Then, when work started on The Twilight Saga: The Official Guide, I thought the Guide would be a good fit for my Bree story. However, the story grew longer than I anticipated, until it was too long to fit into the Guide.” In addition to the print edition, the book will be available to read online for free from June 7 to July 5 at breetanner.com. “[S]ince this story had always been an extra for me, and was meant to be released with the Guide, I wanted to be able to offer it to my fans for free,” Meyer said in a post about the book on her Web site. “You all have bought a ton of my books, and I wanted to give you this story as a gift.”

Kudos to Meyer for deciding that this release, which will surely be purchased by every single self-respecting Twilight fan on Earth, will benefit the Red Cross. At last … Twilight will serve to benefit mankind in some real way :) I know there is much demand for Midnight Sun but this release is even more important because it will raise much needed funds for a very important cause. I’m telling you, Midnight Sun will come someday … this is one Stephenie Meyer release I can really get behind. Who’s excited?

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