Four years ago, I was looking for the perfect gift for my fiancée — something personal, creative, the sort of thing that would plain wow her and “win Christmas.”
And over the last four years, I’ve done exactly that by writing her a book using Mimeo, a book-creation software in my MacBook’s Photos app. (And below, I explain how you can do the same.)
These are no ordinary books, mind you! The first was a batshit collection of PACIFIC RIM FAN FICTION — eight weirdo stories that pulled from a cinematic universe she loved, and I knew pretty much nothing about.
There’s this great monologue from the film where Idris Elba shouts out, “Today we are CANCELING THE APOCALYPSE!” A line she and I would say to one another when we canceled plans or changed our minds, or just felt like shouting. So I titled her first Xmas collection CANCELING THE APOCALYPSE, as you can see below. And below that, a spread from the book.
IN YEAR TWO, I tried to out-do myself by doing an ambitious mash-up of two of my fiancée’s favorite things: Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice and the Discovery Channel’s “Battlebots.”
It’s important to know that she had a copy of Pride & Prejudice she read a startling number of times when she was young. Also, she didn’t like the look of the Mr. Darcy on the cover of that book, because he didn’t live up to the one portrayed by Colin Firth on the show’s six-part miniseries. So she COVERED HER BOOK IN BROWN PAPER like a total weirdo.
Also worth noting, before every Battlebots fight the announcer asks, “Blue team ready?” then the blue team hits a button. “Red team ready?” then the red team hits the button. They they fight. Which lead to, Blue Team Ready…To Fall in Love, a ridiculous re-telling of Austen’s classic in which every character appears as a floating head attached to a real-life Battlebot.
