Stephenie Meyer releases gender-swapped rewrite of the original Twilight
Meet the new Twilight — the same, more or less, as the old Twilight.
To mark the 10th anniversary of her smash-hit YA novel, author Stephenie Meyer has released a new novel, on shelves today. Love and Death: Twilight Reimagined is a total rewrite of the first Twilight novel — with the genders of the two lead characters swapped. Bella Swan, the sullen teen girl at the heart of the original series, has become Beaufort Swan, a sullen teen boy; Edward Cullen, the immortal vampire who stole Bella's heart, is now Edythe Cullen. Writing Love and Death was "really fast and easy," says Meyer. I wonder why!
Love and Death is part of an ongoing trend in which authors find some way to regurgitate their old successes, which spares them the trouble of coming up with something new. Earlier this year, E.L. James scored a hit with Grey, a rewrite of 50 Shades of Grey from Christian Grey's perspective. J.K. Rowling continues to flesh out the minutiae of the Harry Potter universe on her website Pottermore. Even Stephenie Meyer has pulled this trick before, working on Midnight Sun — a rewrite of the first Twilight from Edward Cullen's perspective — before shelving it after the manuscript leaked online.
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With any luck, publishers will come to recognize that they're just one Find+Replace search away from a literary goldmine. Why not To Mock a Killingbird, in which Scott Finch learns valuable life lessons from his mother, Attica? Or The Stupendous Gatsby, in which Nicole Carraway chronicles the doomed affair between her neighbor, Jess Gatsby, and her long-lost love Duke Buchanan? Yes, the future of sub-literary fan-fiction has never been brighter.
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