The hugely successful "Twilight" vampire romance series is marking its 10th anniversary with a twist -- a gender swap.

Best-selling US author Stephenie Meyer said Tuesday that she wrote 400-plus pages of bonus content that now features 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.

"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.

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.

"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."

Meyer said 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."

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.

More than 150 million copies of the four-novel Twilight series have sold worldwide while the five blockbuster movies it inspired took in more than $3.3 billion in box office receipts.
Source: AFP