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30 Mar |
The Host Shirts Now Available! Shirts and stuff, Stephenie Meyer, The Store, Twilight Merchandise
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The Host
It’s hard to believe with all that has happened in the last year that it’s only been about a year since the release of Stephenie Meyer’s The Host. It seems like it’s been much longer than that, but it’s true. Just 12 short months ago, we were introduced to Jared and Mel and Ian and, of course, Wanda. And it seems like its’ been forever that we’ve been working on our own shirt designs to show off our support for that wonderful story, but we have them finally. Our new The Host shirts are now available for immediate delivery and they are, in my humble opinion, awesome. I can’t wait to get my own.
The first design I’d like to point out is the one we call simply Renegade Human. It is a simple silouhette of Picacho Peak in Arizona, the setting of the book. A beautiful Arizona sunset adds some color to this piece, and the text Renegade Human appears underneath in white ink. Currently this shirt is availble in black, but if there’s a demand we can make it available in other colors as well.
Our second offering in The Host series is from our favorite paternal figure in the family – Jeb. His mantra was pretty straight forward. This is his house, and therefore he makes the rules. You don’t like it? You don’t have to stay. The funny part about that was that really, for the charactes in the story, the alternative to leaving wasn’t all that great. I think this shirt will resonate with many parents, especially those who have teenagers. I’m looking forward to wearing mine.
Personally, as fun as the graphics on the front of the shirts are, I’m particulary pleased with how the backs of these shirts came out. The backs show off a Soul (Wanderer?) with its tendrils extended. This graphic took some doing to get just right. We knew that if we messed it up, Stephenie’s fans would most certainly let us know. The Souls in The Host are not merely beautiful, but they shimmer as well. And so does the graphic on the back of these shirts. We have worked with our printer to deterine the perfect shimmering ink to use with these shirts, and let me tell you they look AWESOME! The pictures here do NOT do them justice!
I’m so pleased that we can finally offer these shirts to you. We do have others in the works, but I have no timeline as to when those will be available. For now, we hope that you will like what we have and will consider purchasing them to add to your growing Stephenie Meyer collection.
In Other News…
We’re working dilligently to finalize several new designs that we want to make available. I can’t post any of the images here, but here’s a brief look at what we’re offering in the very near future.
First up – and I’ve been touting this for some time – is our Dave Barry line of shirts. We have four approved designs set for manufacturing, and all show off various aspects of Dave’s work. Quotes include "Camping is nature’s way of promoting the hotel industry" and "There’s a fine line between a hobby and a mental illness." Dave is also famous for suggesting great names for rock bands. Some of his suggestions include "Combat Alfalfa", "Mosquito Hunters and the Unreliable Pollinators", and who could forget "Heave". If none of these strike you as funny, then I highly recommend making an appointment with your doctor to have your sense of humor checked. We have a design for a shirt which will highlight these names and many more, soon to be released exclusively from Twilight Teez.
If you’re not familiar with Dave’s work, and if you’re in need to laugh so hard you spew your Coke on your computer monitor, I highly recommend visiting his site and reading some of his past articles. Click here to read some of his best work.
We are also on track to launch a new line of t-shirts that feature our own designs created by our in-house design staff. These shirts will range in topic from humor to fantasy to sci-fi to poignant to cute. Let it be known now that they are NOT Twilight related. Our inspirations come in all forms, including one from my 3-year-old daughter. You can expect these new designs to start cropping up in our catalog in the very near future.
On a final note, we’re gearing up for AccioCon, which will be going on at the end of this week. We hope to see you out there. We’re very excited about the opportunities this con will offer us. We are also going to have a presence at several other conventions throughout the year, including Summer School In Forks and Twicon. There’s so much to do and so little time.
-Brian
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1 Jan |
The New Year Brings New Opportunities Shirts and stuff, Twilight Books
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Has it really been over two weeks since I last posted anything? Holy Crap, I guess things have been a bit busy. I do hope that everyone has had a safe and happy Christmas and New Year. For us, fortunately, things get to slow down a bit and we can have a break. But not for long. Let’s see, where to begin?
New Character Slogans Now Available For Immediate Delivery
I suppose the first thing I should mention is that we finally have the new character slogan shirts up on the site. Renesmee and Rosalie now join the rest of the crew with their own shirts, which you can find at the following links:
Also available is the new Edward Fan Club design, "Humor Me" with the famous apple in an outline. We decided to differentiate the two apples because (a) we felt it would add a certain value to the design if there was a slight difference, (b) making slight differences in designs happens a lot in the themed t-shirt industry, and (c) it’s going to make it a heckuva lot easier to differentiate the two when we are pulling them off the shelves to fulfill orders.
Those who suggested the slogans can expect to receive their new shirts soon.
New Products For 2009
I keep mentioning this, and for some reason things keep getting pushed back. We do have plans for some new products coming early this year. We have approved The Host designs that we are working to get into production. The only hold up here is the graphic that goes on the backs of the shirts, which is taking more time to get the right "look" for than I expected. Now that the character shirts are released, I can devote much more time to this issue and get these shirts on the web site.
We also have a line of Dave Barry shirts getting ready to hit the printers. If you don’t know who Dave Barry is, shame on you get over to his web site and get to know him. He is quite possibly the world’s funniest guy. And by the term "funny" I mean funny in the way that is not only laughable, but also makes you think. I do not mean "funny" in the way of, say, Kevin Federline’s music career, which was just plain laughable. Dave Barry is a humor writer, and has spent a good portion of the last 30-years of his life writing stuff that made us laugh so hard that we’d fart and tear up at the same time. Well, at least that’s what I did. Others in the room were tearing up as well, but I don’t think for the same reasons. Anyway, I highly recommend reading his stuff. Dave is one of my heroes.
Finally, in regards to new products, we are developing our own line of stuff that isn’t related to Twilight or Dave. Some of you have seen some samples of these ideas in the form of my cartoon character, Howard. Howard is a computer, and as such, has a very logical view on life. For example, he has logically determined that there are several very good reasons why computers do not play football; quarterbacks being just one of them. In the same venue, computers do not make good soccer players, basketball players, hockey players, or boxers. I’m sure you might be able to imagine why, but soon there will be shirts that demonstrate these reasons visually. I, for one, hope that you like them.
Twilight Teez Appearances
Twilight Teez will be attending several of the big Twilight-themed entertainment conferences coming up this year. Below is a list of conferences at which we will have a vendor booth. We’d love to see you all, if you can make it to any of them.
ComiCon Phoenix 2009 – January 23 -25: The first of these conferences is already nearly upon us, and we just barely received word that we will be able to attend. The Phoenix equivalent of the big ComicCon (in San Diego) will be the biggest of all the converences we’re attending. This is going to be a major test for us. The largest gathering that we have ever been involved with to date was the Eclipse Prom back in May of 2007. There was only 1,000 people at most in attendance. ComiCon Phoenix will have somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 to 7 times that number, and maybe more. ComiCon Phoenix will also have several very big names in sci-fi attending, including Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca), Brent Spiner (Data from Star Trek), Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi), Gil Gerard and Erin Gray (Buck Rogers and Wilma Deering), and several others too numerous to mention. I have absolutely no idea how we’re going to handle it, but we’ll do our best.
AccionCon 2009 – April 3-5: Acciocon is going to be about 1/3 of the size of ComiCon Phoenix, but it’s going to be AWESOME! First of all, Twilight Teez is the primary sponsor for this event. Second, Summit Entertainment is on-board to promote the event big-time (last I heard, anyway). Third, it’s in Orlando, FL – home to such incredible attractions as Walt Disney World, Gatorland, and – I am not making this up – home to the World’s Largest McDonald’s Restaraunt. On top of all of this, Orlanda is where my wife and I spent our honeymoon. We stayed in The Polynesian Resort at Walt Disney World. I made it a point to be in the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, and we enjoyed many of the other attractions. I look forward to being able to revisit it again, 14-years later, with my wife and my oldest son. But of course, the big thing is ACCIOCON! Did I mention that TWILIGHT TEEZ IS THE PRIMARY SPONSOR?
Summer School in Forks: A Twilight Convention – June 25-28: This is going to be a much smaller event than either of the previous two, but we are looking forward to it big time. Mainly it will be our opportunity to FINALLY visit the place where it all happened – fictionally speaking, of course. Some of the activities being planned are a prom, Kaleb Nation (The Twilight Guy) is going to be there, and a bunch of other things. The video below is a good source for more information. As is their web site (provided in the link above).
TwiCon 2009 – July 30-August 2: I think that this might be the big one that most people are waiting for. At least, it’s the one I hear most people mention. This will be in Dallas, TX (yes, in the United States). We are a sponsor for this one, too, but not in the same vein as we are for AccioCon. There is a very large cost involved in being a sponsor, and we could only pick one of the two to fork (ha ha) out that amount of money. However, we will definitely have a presense at this one. There’s going to be a lot to do here, and it’s going to be totally AWESOME!
So there you have it. Four major conventions this year, and we are so stoked about them all. In fact, we are so stoked that it is impossible to stoke us any more without having some kind of major bursting of something. We look forward to seeing everyone who can come, and for those who can’t, well, sucks to be you we are sorry.
-Brian
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14 Oct |
Attention All Units! Bella's Engagement Ring, Shirts and stuff
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We are looking for one of our slogan contest winners. We have yet to receive a response from the person who submitted the winning entry for Renesmee Cullen. The winning entry slogan is "Go Hybrid" and the graphic to go along with it is that of a DNA strand.
In order to make sure that we get the right person, we will not be listing the name of the person, but we know who you are. Please contact us immediately, as we have made three attempts now to get ahold of you at your e-mail address. However, you have yet to respond, and we cannot send you your prize until we get your mailing address.
It’s entirely possible that our e-mails have been stuck in your spam filter. We would ask you to check your spam filter and see if our messages are waiting there.
Please send your information directly to me, the webmaster for Twilight Teez. My address is brian at twilightteez.com (replace the word "at" with the @ symbol).
If we do not hear from you by midnight on October 31, 2008 then we will forfeit your prize.
Leave comments here if you have questions. No, we will not be giving this person’s prize to anyone else.
UPDATE: We found our winner! Thanks to everyone for helping us look! I’m so glad that we won’t have to keep this ring to ourselves!
-Brian
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14 Sep |
Another Contest Update Contests, Shirts and stuff
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Just thought y’all would like another update on the progress of the contest. We are well on our way to having the finalists ready to submit for Stephenie. We already have the submissions for Edward sorted out and Rosalie and Renesmee are not far behind. At this time I thought it might be a good idea to let you know our criteria for selecting the finalists. There’s really not much to it, but we do have at least a little bit of a method to our madness.
First, let me tell you, it is not easy trying to pick just a few out of the hundreds of submissions we received. You all have such great imaginations and it’s apparent that so many of you have a deep understanding of these characters. With so many great ideas to choose from, it really was a hard thing just to come up with the 20 or so per character that we will be submitting to Stephenie. I assure you, every single submission was read and considered.
Our first basic criteria boiled down to did we like the entry? This wasn’t so easy. Like I said, there were hundreds of great entries, but like so many things of this nature there are going to be ones we just basically don’t like. There’s no offense intended here. Just because we didn’t like something, doesn’t mean it’s no good. There were submissions with awkward wording or phrases that just didn’t fit the characters. Those that we felt were not good matches to the characters were eliminated.
Next, we had to consider the appropriateness of the submissions. I’m not talking about appropriateness for the character, but how appropriate would the slogan be for the person wearing the shirt. Remember that these shirts will be worn by people of all ages – from 12 to 112 (maybe not that old)(you never know). We need to be responsible here, so slogans that could be considered provocative or offensive were eliminated.
One of the hardest things we had to deal with were multiple submissions with the same slogan suggestion. We knew we were going to have to deal with this, and trying to figure out the fairest way to determine a winner was not very easy. How we ultimately decided to deal with this situation was to pick the first one to submit that idea. So let’s say if Jane and Jenny both submitted a slogan which says "Dazzling Daddy" and we decided that Dazzling Daddy was a good slogan (it isn’t) then we would pick the one submitted first. If Jane submitted the idea at 10:30 in the morning and Jenny submitted it at 1:00 in the afternoon, then we would pick Jane’s as the submission to send to Stephenie.
Make sense?
Good.
We expect to send the finalists to Stephenie by Monday evening. Stephenie’s schedule will be the determining factor as to when we get her final decisions. Good luck to everyone!
-Brian
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11 Sep |
Contest Update Shirts and stuff, Stephenie Meyer, The Store
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The time for submissions to our second character contest has past, and we want to thank everyone for all of their submissions. We’ve been reading through them already, and I can tell you that this is NOT going to be an easy task to choose just one for each character. The breakdown for the number of entries for each character is as follows:
Edward Cullen: 534 total submissions
Renesmee Cullen: 653 total submissions
Rosalie Cullen: 672 total submissions
In all, we have 1,859 submissions to sort through. Here’s what’s going to happen next. We will begin disitilling the entries down to about 20 or so per character. Similar ideas will be judged based on the time of entry as well as the description of the graphic to go along with the slogan (both slogan and graphic will be considered). Decisions as to which submissions make the final cut will be at the sole descretion of Twilight Teez. Stephenie Meyer will then choose the winners from the finalists that we submit to her. All decisions are final.
Winners will be notified by Twilight Teez via e-mail once they have been selected. Once notifications have been sent, we will announce the winners here. We hope to have the winners picked by September 17, 2008.
The winning designs will go into product development immediately and be made available as soon as possible.
Thanks again for all who participated! This is an exciting time for us here at Twilight Teez.
-Brian
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1 Sep |
New Character Contest Shirts and stuff
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In the spirit of Stephenie’s contest from last year to introduce new character shirts for Bella, Emmett, Carlisle, Esme, and Jasper, we are hosting our own contest for Rosalie, Renesmee, and an alternate Edward Fan Club shirt. The contest will be open for fan submissions starting on Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2008 at 8:00 am PST, so get your imagination engines revving. The winner for each character shirt design will receive a Signature Edition Fashion ring. The contest will run for one week, and will officially close at 11:00 pm PST on September 10, 2008.
This contest is open to anyone in all countries. Poland, Thailand, and Mexico residents will not be able to receive the ring as a price due to import regulations imposed by those countries. However, we will make accomodations for other prizes of equal value for winners living in those countries.
You can download the official rules for this contest here. Note, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to view this file.
The rules are also available on this page.
Post any questions you may have on the contest as comments to this post.
UPDATE: All you wonderful people that submitted your ideas BEFORE 8:00 am PST on September 3, 2008…guess what? Those messages have been deleted! This is because the rules say that the contest starts at 8:00 AM PST ON SEPTEMBER 3. You will have to resubmit those ideas. Just thought you should know.
UPDATE UPDATE: It’s on! You may now legally submit your ideas with wanton abandon. Just remember the rules.
-Brian
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21 Mar |
Jasper’s Shirt Redux Shirts and stuff, Stephenie Meyer, The Store, Twilight Books
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Many of you have been waiting for this, so I am posting it now. I received a note from Stephenie yesterday pertaining to the name on Jasper’s shirt. So here is what Stephenie has to say about it all.
Jasper’s real last name is Whitlock, not Hale. Hale is merely an assumed name for this one short stay in Forks. The names change every time they move. Like all the other members of the family, Jasper thinks of himself as a Cullen. Alice, Edward, Emmett all have their own last names, too, but they all think of themselves as Cullens.
-Stephenie Meyer
There you have it, folks. Jasper’s shirt is staying as Cullen because, frankly, that’s how Stephenie wants it. And there’s her reason. Nothing exceptionally revealing, I think, and many of you probably already understood this, anyway. But for those who didn’t, there you go.
I have a bigger blog post planned that will sort out my thoughts on some very important recent happenings here at Twilight Teez. There’s been some interesting developments on our end, and we’re very excited about them. It would also be untrue to say they haven’t caused us a certain level of anxiety.
-Brian
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1 Mar |
Jasper’s Shirt Goofs, Shirts and stuff
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Okay, so we messed up on Jasper’s shirt. His last name is Hale, not Cullen. I suppose that when you make five character designs who all but one have the last name of Cullen, you sort of get in a groove and forget to be diligent. I think Jasper’s shirt was the last one I worked on, and I was so focused on getting the designs done I completely neglected to change the name on the graphic. Heck even Stephenie, who was making preparations to go to Germany at the time, didn’t notice the mistake!
So now we have an entire stock of Jasper shirts with the wrong name on them. Our mistake, your gain. To help get these off the shelf, we’re discounting them severely. 50% off the regular price until March 5th. If you ordered a Jasper shirt already, please contact us so we can discuss how you’d like to proceed. We can either hold your order until the corrected shirts come in, or we can give you one of the misprinted shirts and refund you the difference between what you paid and what we’re offering them for, or we can cancel your order entirely and refund the entire amount of your order. It’s your choice.
Keep something in mind, though. Sometimes these things become exceptionally valuable collector’s items. Think of what happened with Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. Initially, the movie was named Revenge of the Jedi. Lots of promotional materials were produced with that name, including many theatrical display posters. Then George Lucas, deciding that it was not entirely an accurate name, changed the name to what we have today. All of a sudden all of those promotional items with Revenge on them became hugely valuable and highly sought after. I’m not deliverious enough (yet) to believe that our shirts are highly prized, but you never know.
UPDATE – We just got information from Stephenie that suggests we do not have a mistake on our hands after all. Stephenie says she’ll explain things when she gets back from Germany. So keep your eyes open on the site for an explanation.
-Brian
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1 Mar |
Character Slogan Shirts Now Available Shirts and stuff
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Many of you probably remember the character slogan contest that Stephenie held back in October of 2007. I’m very pleased to announce that we finally have four of the five slogans available for sale and immediate delivery. The following characters now have their own "fan club" shirts.
- Bella Swan – Danger Magnet. Suggested by Eileen of Bellevue, WA.
- Carlisle Cullen – Smooth Operator. Suggested by Varsha of Daly City, CA.
- Esme Cullen – Play Nice. Suggested by Emelia of Poole, Dorset, United Kingdom.
- Jasper Cullen – Feel Better? Suggested by Jillian of West Valley City, UT.
These new designs are currently available only in short-sleeved shirts, and can be found here.
Some of you may be wondering why Emmett’s slogan is not in the mix. There is a simple reason for this, but I can’t remember what it is at the moment. Seriously, the delay on Emmett’s shirt is merely due to getting a color for the shirt. You’d think this would have been a simple matter, but the fact is that nobody sells the color of shirt we wanted for Emmett, which was supposed to be a light tan/khaki sort of color. We are now looking into other options, and hope to have Emmett’s shirt up on the site very soon.
UPDATE: Emmett’s slogan is Bear Hug, as suggested by Ashley of Bristol, CT.
UPDATE UPDATE: The reason Rosalie does not have a shirt at this time is becuase, if you recall, she was not one of the characters included in the slogan contest held by Stephenie. Stephenie has not yet commissioned the creation of a Rosalie shirt. We expect that this will happen at some point in the future, but we just do not know when.
We look forward to your comments.
-Brian
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18 Feb |
They’re On Their Way! Shirts and stuff, Stephenie Meyer, The Store
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Many of you have been asking for them. You have been wondering when they’ll be here. And now, we can finally tell you, they are on their way!
We are talking, of course, about the latest recordings from Barry Manilow!
Ha Ha! I love a good joke. Okay, seriously, we’re talking about the new character slogan t-shirts. Remember the slogan contest held by Stephenie back in October? The winners were announced in the early part of November, and now we can finally say we are nearly ready to make them available for sale to you. We have three of the five designs in production right now, and the other two are in line to get made just as soon as we can finalize the character shirt colors. However, all graphics have been approved, and we are very close to putting them on the site. We are so excited about this that we can barely contain ourselves. Excuse me while I go use the bathroom.
Okay, so you have some questions about these shirts, right? And I’m going to attempt to answer some of those questions right now, using the popular "Q and A" format. What makes me think this is a popular format to use? The fact that I’m too lazy to write in any other way comes to mind.
Q. For which characters are you making shirts and what are their slogans/images/colors?
A. We are making shirts for all five slogans that were featured in the contest. The characters and their slogans are as follows:
- Bella Swan – "Danger Magnet" – This is a blue shirt (dark for guys, light blue for girls) with a magnet.
- Carlisle Cullen – "Smooth Operator"
- Emmett Cullen – "Teddy Bear"
- Esme Cullen – "Play Nice" – A white shirt with a referee’s whistle.
- Jasper Cullen – "Feel Better?" – A grey-ish shirt with a bandage.
Q. What? Where is the shirt for Rosalie?
A. We are only making the character slogan shirts for characters in the contest. Rosalie was not included in that set. We know many of you have a huge crush on Rosalie, especially the guys, because, let’s face it, she’s hot. Efforts to make a Rosalie shirt or shirts for other characters from the first Twilight book may be slowed because of the contract for the movie, but we will see what can be arranged.
Q. The contest was held in October 2007, and it’s now February 2008; why did it take so long to get the shirts made?
A. Despite the fact that we sell internationally, and the fact that we have a fairly professional site with a lot of cool graphics and stuff, one must remember that we are only a two-person operation. On the best days, we have four or five people total, including our CEO/MIC Sharon and myself. This is a lot of work for such a small company.
First, the contest was held right before the biggest holiday season of the year. For four weeks, we did more business than we had done in the entire 11 months previous. It took everything we had, and then some, to maintain our sanity and get orders fulfilled in time for Christmas. We were dealing with 200 orders a day. Needless to say, new projects had to be put on the back burner for a bit.
Second, we introduced a product that turned out to be far more popular than we had expected. Bella’s Bracelet was put on a pre-order status in late November. In the first 6 weeks alone, we had over 1,500 orders for just the bracelet. When the bracelets finally came in from manufacturing in early January, all efforts were put into fulfilling orders. Again, all other projects had to be put on hold.
By the end of January, we were finally able to devote our time to new projects. It took about two weeks to get the new slogans matched up with graphics and get them approved by Stephenie. So it’s with a great excitement that we can now say three of the five designs are in for manufacturing, with the other two following very shortly.
Q. When will they be up for sale?
A. We hope to have the first three designs available for sale sometime during the week beginning February 25th. Don’t read that to mean that you will see the shirts on that very day! What I mean by that is sometime during that week, we expect to have the shirts up. It might be that day, it might be sooner. I don’t want to get e-mails on the 25th saying "How come the shirts aren’t up you said they’d be up by now." I am not saying they will be up on February 25th. I am saying we HOPE to have them available sometime during that week.
Q. Speaking of e-mails that are poorly written, what do you think of messages that are written with no merit given to punctuation or spelling?
A. I hate them, but that’s a topic for my personal blog.
Q. How much will the new shirts cost?
A. The prices for the shirts will remain in line with all of our other products. The price will range between $18.00 and $21.00 depending on the size.
Q. Do you have any other information about the new shirts?
A. Only that if there are any other questions, please use our contact us form or the comments section for this post. If the questions are frequent or relevent enough, I will add them to this Q and A.
-Brian
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About
Twilight Teezers is the official blog for Twilight Teez. This is where news and information relating to our web store will be posted. Twilight Teezers, while not necessarily a fan site for the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, will likely include commentary or other articles relating to those books. We will also include content relating to other book series and authors. If you want to discuss more about Twilight, you may visit our forums or the many Twilight fan sites around the Internet (see our links section below).
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NieNie
Links
- More Twilight Fan Sites - So many fan sites, so little space to list them all…
- SchadeBlog - Brian’s personal blog
- Stephenie Meyer - Stephenie Meyer’s official web site
- Twilight Lexicon - The Twilight Lexicon
- Twilight Teez Forums - The Discussion Forums for Twilight Teez
- Twilight Teez, LLC - Order Stephenie Meyer Twilight Shirts Here!
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