“Twilight” author Stephenie Meyers announced today on her website that she is not ready to stop earning ridiculous mountains of cash from her vampire empire. On June 5, Meyer’s publishing house Little Brown Books for Young Readers will release “The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella.”

The 192-page novella centers on the life of newborn vampire Bree Tanner, a character who only appears briefly in the “Eclipse” novel as part of Bella Swan hater Victoria’s army. Meyer’s insists that she thought of the Bree spinoff long before “Twilight” was adapted to the big screen.

She lies through her teeth says:

I never intended to publish this story as a stand-alone book. I began this story a long time ago—before ‘Twilight’ was even released. Back then I was just editing ‘Eclipse,’ and in the thick of my vampire world. I was thinking a lot about the newborns, imagining their side of the story, and one thing led to another. I started writing from Bree’s perspective about those final days, and what it was like to be a newborn.

Hmm. Looks like those crafty Twilight Saga movie producers have found a new way to keep the tween-loved vampire-soap going. Along with splitting Breaking Dawn into two movies, it’s pretty clear we’ll be seeing a Bree Tanner flick in the near future.

I’m gonna say it right now: “novella” will be the new “prequel” in Hollywood. What better way to keep a franchise going?

Studios won’t have to wait as long for an author to turn something in. New characters are pushed to the forefront, allowing for fresh faces to emerge and providing producers an opportunity to save money by not having to bring back all of the original franchise’s cast members. It’s genius.

“The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella” will be available for purchase on June 5 at 12:01 a.m.

A dollar from all U.S. sales will be donated to the American Red Cross International Response Fund to provide aid to Haiti and Chile. But, if you hate brown people, you can read it for free on BreeTanner.com from June 7-to-July 5.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse arrives in movie theaters on June 30.

Rocker/director Rob Zombie is collaborating with comic artists Donny Hadiwidjaja and Val Staples to create Whatever Happened to Baron Von Shock, a dark comic series centering on the misadventures of a television horror host.

Zombie explains on his MySpace blog:

This comic venture is very, very different in tone for me. Instead of a crazy over-the-top monster-fest like El Superbeasto, I wanted to create something that works more on a slice of life human level.

Whatever Happened to Baron Von Shock is published by Image Comics and will be made available on May 26.

Seth Grahame-Smith took the publishing world by surprise last year with his clever Jane Austen-meets-the-living dead mash-up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (a film adaptation is in the works). The New York Times bestselling author is now sinking his teeth into American history with his new novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, available March 2 from publishing house Grand Central.

A trailer for the book has been circulating the web. Check it out:

The book’s official synopsis reads:

While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.

Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time-all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.

Man, I really hope someone writes The Diary of Ann Frankenstein next. That might actually make me leave my 60″ Bravia to seek out a library card.

The Yen Press has announced the launch of a new Japanese manga series based on author Cecily Von Ziegesar bestselling Gossip Girl books. Written and illustrated by HyeKyung Baek, Gossip Girl: For Your Eyes Only will re-imagine Ziegesar’s storylines and focus on two of it’s lead bitches: Blair Waldorf and Vanessa Abrams.

The Gossip Girl books—13 in all—follow the backstabbing adventures of troubled teen girls at an elite  private high school in New York. The CW Television Network adapted the first novel in the series to produce the hit show “Gossip Girl,” now on its third season.

Kurt Hassle, publishing director for Yen Press, says:

There are few series in the publishing world that have been as impactful or successful as Cecily von Ziegesar’s GOSSIP GIRL. The novels have captured the imaginations of young women around the world, and we look forward to demonstrating with GOSSIP GIRL: FOR YOUR EYES ONLY that graphic novels as a medium can be just as welcoming to girls as it is to boys.

Especially, if the girls are down with tentacle rape!

OMFG

I kid. Tentacle rape is only found in hentai. However, manga can be pretty racy and, judging this book by its cover, I’d say we’re finally gonna see some hot snooty beyotches get owned!

Gossip Girl: For Your Eyes Only debuts in January. It will be published monthly.

Someone is killing your favorite Star Wars characters. No, it’s not George Lucas again. This time around, the culprit is Joe Schreiber, author of Star Wars: Death Troopers. This looks like the greatest book ever.

The synopsis reads:

When the Imperial prison barge Purge–temporary home to five hundred of the galaxy’s most ruthless killers, rebels, scoundrels, and thieves–breaks down in a distant, uninhabited part of space, its only hope appears to lie with a Star Destroyer found drifting, derelict, and seemingly abandoned. But when a boarding party from the Purge is sent to scavenge for parts, only half of them come back–bringing with them a horrific disease so lethal that within hours nearly all aboard the Purge die in ways too hideous to imagine.

And death is only the beginning.

The Purge’s half-dozen survivors–two teenage brothers, a sadistic captain of the guards, a couple of rogue smugglers, and the chief medical officer, the lone woman on board–will do whatever it takes to stay alive. But nothing can prepare them for what lies waiting aboard the Star Destroyer amid its vast creaking emptiness that isn’t really empty at all. For the dead are rising: soulless, unstoppable, and unspeakably hungry.

Schreiber is the author of the horror novels Chasing the Dark, Eat the Dark, and No Doors, No Windows.