Stephenie Meyer Talks LIFE AND DEATH: TWILIGHT REIMAGINED

Stephenie Meyer discusses the creation of LIFE AND DEATH: TWILIGHT REIMAGINED and more!

Twilight author Stephenie Meyer recently sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to talk about the new book she wrote for Twilight‘s 10th anniversary called Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined!

In the interview, the author discusses how the idea for the book came about, how the Twilight fanscape has changed in the past ten years, and her next novel coming in 2016, which she describes as “an adult thriller, set sort of in the real world in the same way that, like, any spy movie is set in the real world.”

Check out some of the Q&A below!

THR: There’s been a huge amount of coverage of the tenth anniversary and the new edition. What surprised you most about the past week?

Meyer: What’s been kind of surprising is the people that have been there from the beginning, people who I saw ten years ago at signings and they’re coming back. The worst part is a lot of them were 14 and now they’re graduating from college. I’m so old (gasps)! That’s the message I’m coming away with from this tour: I’m so old. (Laughs.)

So when did you start doing variations [on Twilight]? Have you done others?

Life and Death is the first other variation — that’s a weird sentence. With Midnight Sun [an unreleased early alternate version that told the story from Edward’s perspective], that was something I did while I was writing. I was sort of wrapping my mind around where Edward was in certain scenes and I really enjoyed it. Then the leak happened, which was not a big deal in retrospect, but at the time it made me so paranoid. It was like, “Did this come off my computer? How did this happen?” It was a really rough, early draft. And everyone gets to say, “Oh what a horrible writer she is.” That was hard

Did you ever find out how this happened?

I think I know. I was in a writing group before Twilight was published, and there was an early copy that was handed out that someone must have made a photocopy of and then handed out. I think that’s what it is, but I’m not 100 percent sure.

When did you start planning this?

I think it was March. I knew the publisher wanted something for tenth anniversary. I didn’t want to just write a letter and say, “Thanks.” I talked to my sister, and my mom and a couple of friends, and kind of came around back to this idea. I’d always said “If Bella had been a boy, which would have been the exact same story, this isn’t about, you know, her being a weak female, it’s about her being a human being.” I was talking to Josh Horowitz when I was at New York Comic Con. He told me that Kristen Stewart did an interview a while back and gave a great quote, “People wouldn’t be asking these questions if I were a boy who’d done all the same choices. You’d be talking about what a brave thing it was for him to give it all up for love.” And I thought that was so interesting — I wish I’d known about it, I would’ve put it on the back of the book.