Twilight author Stephanie Meyer rewrites vampire romance to make Bella a boy and Edward a girl

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Prepare to feel very old indeed, as Twilight is officially ten years old. In celebration, author Stephanie Meyer has rewritten her vampire romance to make Bella Swan a boy and Edward Cullen a girl.

Sound confusing? The reason for this bizarre birthday gift to fans is that Meyer is fed up of her female protagonist being branded a “damsel in distress” who was “too consumed with her love interest, as if that’s just a girl thing”.

She wanted to prove that Bella, played by Kristen Stewart in the hit movie franchise, is in fact, “a normal human being surrounded on all sides by people who are basically superheroes and supervillains”.

So there you go, 442-page novel Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined features Beaufort and Edythe. Beau is apparently “more OCD” than Bella was, and is “totally missing the chip Bella carries around on her shoulder all the time”.

“I’ve always maintained that it would have made no difference if the human were male and the vampire female - it’s still the same story,” Meyer wrote in the foreword to the book, which she found “fun, really fast and easy” to write.

“Gender and species aside, Twilight has always been a story about the magic and obsession and frenzy of first love.”

Unsuprisingly, fans are loving this news, and “freaking out” on social media.

Meyer is also still working on Midnight Sun, a retelling of Twilight from Edward’s perspective.

Fans eager to read Life and Death can do so from today, in hardcover and e-book editions. The more beady-eyed ones among you will notice that the apple on the front cover has changed colour from red to green.