Well, I thought the ebooks would be ready for pre-order September 8th but APPARENTLY Amazon is deciding to be extremely difficult… so now I’m not sure. I will do everything I can to make the books available on October 1st if I can’t do the ebook pre-orders! Stay posted on the social medias!

First of all, calm down.

Second of all, no.

We’re just trying to have a good ol’ time here. Contrary Classics at its core is a line of novelty products (see what I did there?). Making things political for no reason is not in my definition of fun. Contrary Classics is kinda one of those things where if you get it, you get it. If you don’t, you don’t… and that’s okay.

You can read the books genuinely for fun, or use them to prank the avid reader in your life!

What’s the point? Idk, what’s the point of anything?

Yeah, the world of Contrary Classics can be a bit confusing with the new language and customs, especially when it comes to words you probably didn’t even know HAD gendered roots to them. See the Lore page for a more detailed explanation on the Contrary Literary Universe (the CLU, if you will). The added context will do wonders for your reading comprehension. As a third party observer to this world, I did my very best to explain the biggest and most important differences from our world so you’re not completely lost.

Yup! All of the original books in the Contrary Classics Library are in the public domain. That’s why so many publishing companies have their own line of the exact same classic novels. At least with Contrary Classics there’s something DIFFERENT about it. You could buy TEN different copies of the same version of Wuthering Heights, but there’s only ONE Contrary Classics version!

However, because of America’s weird copyright laws, some books in the Contrary Classics Library are not available to be sold in the U.S. Sorry!

Here’s a list of books not available in the U.S.:

• Jane Bond

• The Old Woman and the Sea

• Their Eyes Were Watching Goddess

• Brave New World

• 1984

• Animal Farm

• The Lioness, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

• Of Rabbits and Women & East of Eden

• The Chrysalids

My sincerest apologies, from your Canadian neighbour

Jokes on you, I actually love the OG classics! Theres just something about reading a story that was written 200+ years ago and being able to recognize people you know in the characters. To laugh at the same jokes people were laughing at centuries ago just makes me feel connected to people in a way I don’t feel when watching period pieces written by people who never lived it. In fact, there are even a few Contrary Classics where I personally like the originals better. Don’t get me wrong though, the majority of Contrary Classics I do enjoy more than the originals. Lets be honest, there are SOME classics (they know who they are) that are very dry. Something about the added novelty of the genders being reversed makes what would otherwise be a very long boring read 10x more interesting. (THAT’S MY OPINIOOOON!)

I’m so glad you asked!
All the character art for Contrary Classics was done by the amazing, wonderful, and talented Rose a.k.a. weirdpinkpawz!

https://linktr.ee/weirdpinkpawz

You got meeee. I guess for legal reasons I should admit that I didn’t ACTUALLY fall into a parallel universe. I thought it would be fun to make “Contrary Classics” kind of like stories within a story. What actually happened was many years ago I was reading the iconic first line from Pride & Prejudice-You know the one. On a whim, I decided to role reverse it in my head. It then read “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a husband.” and it made me smile and blow a little air out of my nose. Next thing I knew I was going through my personal collection of classics and reading their famous quotes and role reversing them in my head. I was having so much fun, giggling up a storm, and I was even in a reading slump at the time! It brought me out of it! I thought to myself that I would love to read an entire version of Pride & Prejudice with the gender roles reversed and looked it up, but alas, it did not exist. That was a bummer, and I wished that someone would do that… then a lightbulb ignited in my head when I realized that… I could do that.
And the rest is history!

To be honest, growing up I never really related to the characters I was supposed to be able to see myself in. I didn’t aspire to be like the people that were modeled to me to be my ideal self. I was never attracted to the kind of people I was supposed to be into. I wasn’t trying to be rebellious or gender nonconforming, I just so happened to relate so much more to people who looked nothing like me. Years in the future, now all grown up, things still haven’t changed very much.

When I read The Adventures of Tommie Sawyer for the first time, there was something about it that just hit different. It’s hard to explain, but I related more to those little girls that were originally written to be little boys than I have ever related to a little girl in media in our world EVER.
When I read the Contrary version of The Blue Castle, something about reading about a WOMAN giving a MAN her jacket when he’s cold just… It was simply beautiful.

And I know I’m definitely not alone here. Right? …Right???

In our world, ‘a lady’ who you may know by the name of Jane Austen wrote a book called “Northanger Abbey”. This book played around with many gender stereotypes of the time and the gothic genre in general. The biggest switch being that the female lead fell head over heels in love FIRST. Typically, it’s supposed to be the man who falls first before the woman can. Austen points out this piece of role reversal, and how it’s a very uncommon idea to write such a heroine for a gothic novel. Even so, she can give herself props for having a strong imagination to create a story like this, even though it goes against the grain of societal expectations.

And I thought that quote suited Contrary Classics very well.

-Well, I would like to hire some more artists to design beautiful covers one day! I did my best with the tools I had available, but I know they could be way better. That’s why they are only available in eBook and paperback as of now, but if/when prettier editions come out they’ll also be available in hardback!

-I don’t want these books to be exclusively available on Amazon forever. I’d like to expand to more platforms and shops if I can.

-Ideally, if Contrary Classics were to pop off, there’s SO MUCH I’d want to do. For example: Animated (specifically 2D) and live action movies/ shorts based on role reversed classics. I’d like to raise money for charities that revolve around teaching literacy (goodness knows we’re in serious need of that nowadays), providing teachers with much needed supplies, helping survivors of D.V., etc etc. There’s way more charities and causes I care about that I’d want to support, but those are the ones off the top of my head that specifically fit the theme of Contrary Classics.

-And this may be ironic, considering I’ve built this business off of the backs of real celebrated authors, but there are actually quite a few original novel ideas I have that I would love to write and publish someday. I just felt very strongly that I had to put Contrary Classics out first before I could start on those……. And no, it’s not because I’ve been procrastinating!!! They say YOU should be and create the kind of representation you want to see in the world. That’s what I hope to achieve with the novels I write myself one day. Stay tuned!