Edythe the female vampire: Stephenie Meyer reimagines gender-swapped Twilight for 10th anniversary

Imagine Edward Cullen, the glistening vampire, as a young woman called Edythe. Picture mitten human Bella Swan as Beau, a teenage boy. Think about the husky werewolf Jacob as Julie.

No, we are not hallucinating, that is the actual plot of a story that bestselling author of the Twilight series Stephenie Meyer has written. The unusual gender-swap story was written to mark the 10th anniversary of the teen vampire romance series. (Yes, it is a decade-old.)

Meyer wrote the 400-plus pages of bonus content featuring a teen boy falling for a female vampire, not the other way around as in the original.

“Now Bella is Beau and Edward is Edythe,” Meyer told ABC’s Good Morning America show.

Titled Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined, the anniversary material, described by online retailer Amazon as “a bold and surprising reimagining”, can be purchased alongside the first Twilight novel in a so-called flip book.

With a few exceptions, most of the characters in the anniversary take have swapped sexes, Meyer said. Even Jacob, the werewolf, is now a Julie.

So why would she create a female vampire falling for a teenage boy?

“I wanted to do something fun for the 10th anniversary and the publisher wanted like a foreword and I thought ‘well, maybe something more interesting,’” she added.

She was also inspired by comments made at book signings about Bella being a “damsel in distress.”

“It’s always bothered me a little bit because anyone surrounded by superheroes is going to be … in distress. We don’t have the powers,” Meyer said.

“I thought, ‘What if we switched it around a bit and see how a boy does,’ and, you know, it’s about the same.”

“The further you get in, the more it changes because the personalities get a little bit different,” Meyer told ABC.

“But it starts out very similar and really, it really is the same story because it’s just a love story and it doesn’t matter who’s the boy and who’s the girl, it still works out.”

Still, Meyer said she didn’t think the twist was the beginning of something bigger. And although she acknowledged she has given some thought to who could play the roles on-screen, she added that she didn’t really see a film version happening.

The four-novel Twilight series has sold more than 150 million copies worldwide while the five movies it inspired took in more than $3.3 billion in box office receipts. As of late Tuesday morning, the new book was in the top 500 on Amazon.com’s best-seller list as well.

However, despite the success, the books are infamous for its weak portrayal of women and relationship and we aren’t too sure if a gender swap will balance things or invite more infamy.

(With agency inputs)