Stephenie Meyer Releases Gender Switched Version of Twilight

Posted on October 6, 2015

Stephenie Meyer is celebrating the tenth anniversary of the publication of Twilight in a special way. Stephenie announced today on Good Morning America that she is releasing a new book in the series. She has taken Twilight and reversed the genders of the leads.

The new book is called Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined. Bella Swan is now Beau Swan. Edward Cullen is now Edythe Cullen. Stephenie said that it has always bothered her that people thought of Bella as a damsel in distress. This book is her answer to that characterization. She explained that she never thought of Bella as a damsel in distress saying, "a question had come up at a lot of signings about Bella being a damsel in distress and bothered me because anyone surrounded by superheroes is going to be in distress, they are a mere human. We don't have the powers, right? I thought, 'What if we switched it around a bit and see how a boy does?' And, you know, it's about the same... It doesn't matter who's the boy and who's the girl, it still works out."

Stephenie says the story is the same, but as things move forward there are changes because of the personality differences. The story is a one-off, she's not planning on rewriting the rest of the books from Beau and Edythe Cullen's perspective.

Amy Robach asked her about Fifty Shades of Grey which began as Twilight fan ficton. Stephenie said that she had never even heard of fan fiction before and that she wished it had been around when she was a child as she would have loved to have written something in the universe of her favorite books. She tactfully refrained from offering an opinion on the merits of E.L. James' racy version of her story.

This new book from Stephenie Meyer came as a surprise. She had an unedited manuscript called Midnight Sun leak online in 2010. This may explain why she kept the news about Life and Death quiet until today's announcement.