Éric has had an eclectic career which ranges from casino dealer to canal boat captain to radio station DJ. Since 2009, he’s worked as a desktop publisher for the federal government. During his off time, he works as a freelance typesetter for various Canadian-based authors and publishers, roasts gourmet flavoured coffee, runs several pen-and-paper role-playing games, writes, and helps run JenEric-Designs.ca (Home of the TravellingTARDIS.com).
He lives in Ottawa, Ontario with his author wife, daughter, and son.
Hello Friends, Family, and Fans;
Come hang out tomorrow at Pincrest Indigo between 1-3pm and get some books signed by Jen and Éric. They’ll have Monsters! Incidental Wedding Guests, Assassins! Accidental Matchmakers, and we’ll have some other surprises.
We will be at Pincrest Indigo tomorrow (Saturday the 17th of August) from 1pm-3pm.
Hope to see you there!
Éric
The tropes we use in Monsters! Incidental Wedding Guests
Monsters! Incidental Wedding Guests by Jen and Éric Desmarais is available now!
How This Works – Read Other Reviews
Hello Cinephiles,
Today we’re talking about the 2003 film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
The story is a nice reversal of the kidnapped princess trope. It has a lot of back and forth travelling but never feels slow, despite being almost two and half hours long.
That being said, it’s not original and a lot of the plot relies on intelligent characters being idiots.
Score: 0.5
The characters feel jarringly cartoonish but they fit perfectly in the world. It’s impressive how much depth and understanding the audience gets from the character’s quips and actions.
Score: 1
The movie isn’t historically accurate and no one wanted it to be. The dialogue is quippy, irreverent, and funny.
Score: 1
The visuals are all absolutely stunning but suffer from the early 2000’s obsessions with quick-cuts and shaky-cam.
The music is spectacular and makes the movie worth it on it’s own.
Score: 0.5
Everyone seemed to enjoy the movie. I was worried because we’d watched it with a 2yo Dragon and she’d been bored. Not this time; she was riveted and loved it. Pegasus seemed indifferent. The rest of the family loved it.
I’ll be honest, I don’t like Johnny Depp. He normally has little charisma and plays only two characters. Cpt. Jack however is one of the characters he does extremely well.
Score: 1
A wonderful historical fantasy with amazing dialogue, music, and scenery.
Final Score: 4 Stars out of 5
Whether we like it or not, MS Word documents are the current default for submission to publishers and typesetters. Other programs promise that they can convert a file to .Docx cleanly but unfortunately that is rarely the case.
Before you start typesetting or submitting the book, I recommend you do a cleanup to avoid future issues and make everyone’s jobs easier.
This is something you need to think about and double check before applying to your document.
A search and replace can be a powerful tool to clean the document but could also add errors. Always scan the document first.
Before each Search and Replace, save your document. They can crash word.
Open the Search and Replace dialogue box (CTRL+H)
Double Spaces: Enter two spaces in “Find what” and one space in “Replace with”
Double spaces are not necessary with standard fonts. Certain magazines and publications will request them so make sure before running this search.
Double Paragraph Breaks: In “Find what” enter ^p^p and in “Replace with” enter ^p
The goal of this search is to remove the extra paragraphs that are often used instead of line spacing.
Sometimes an author will use a blank line as a divider. Make sure the search doesn’t remove these.
Space at the beginning of a paragraph: In “Find what” enter ^p and space and in “Replace with” enter ^p
This removes empty spaces that mess with the formatting of the text.
Tabs at the beginning of a paragraph: In “Find what” enter ^t and in “Replace with” make sure it’s blank.
This removes tabs that mess with the formatting of the text.
Soft paragraph breaks: In“Find what” enter ^l and search for them. These can show up as forced line breaks or sometimes two of them are used instead of a paragraph break. Double check and replace those that aren’t needed.
Soft returns are useful with titles, poems, or songs but cause mischief with justification.
The search and replace codes in Word are the same as those in InDesign but not the same as Google Docs or other programs.
As tedious as it can be to scroll through a document several times, it’s important to look through the document before you send it for submission or send it to typesetting.
Errors like losing dividers, losing Italics, or odd spacing can crop up despite the previous steps.
Give it another look and fix any further issues.
Whether we like it or not, MS Word documents are the current default for submission to publishers and typesetters. Other programs promise that they can convert a file to .Docx cleanly but unfortunately that is rarely the case.
Before you start typesetting or submitting the book, I recommend you do a cleanup to avoid future issues and make everyone’s jobs easier.
Headings are the most important accessibility and technological feature of any document. They separate the file, inform the reader, and are used to generate a table of contents.
Use Heading 1 as the title of the book. This is best practice and will make converting it easier.
Ensure that the rest of the headings flow in a numerical order. Eg Part = Heading 2, Chapter = Heading 3 OR Chapter = Heading 2.
Never skip a number and always ensure they are properly nested.
W3 Schools has more information on the proper way of using Headings.
Often files will not have headings but will have text that looks like a heading. In this case, make sure to turn them into headings.
A chapter should start on a new page. Add a page break before the chapter.
Avoid these common heading errors:
Tip: Using the Navigation Pane will allow you to see all the headings and their levels at the same time.
A lot of conversion programs (looking at you Apple) will create and add all sorts of styles. In a regular book, there should be only Normal or Body, and Headings. Poetry, songs, and other non-standard text may require their own Styles. Anything else should be removed.
In Word, under the Home tab, there’s a section called Styles. If you click on the arrow that points down and to the right, you’ll open the Styles panel.
In the Styles panel, click options and a dialogue box will appear. Under “Select styles to show:” choose “in use” and under “Select how list is sorted” choose “Alphabetical”.
This will show you all the styles that are currently in use.
You can right click to delete styles and they’ll default to Normal or Body. Be aware however, that this sometimes removes Italic or Bold. Be careful.
In a standard fiction book, there shouldn’t be any tables. For accessibility reasons, tables should only be used for showing data. If for some reason there must be a table, ensure that there is only one row of headings, and if needed, a column of headings.
If the book must have images, ensure you have a description of the image in your text or a proper alt text for the image.
This is only if the image is important to the text, like an illustration. If the image is purely decorative then it’s not necessary.
Bulleted or numbered lists are rarely needed in fiction but if they are used, always ensure you use the list function in word.
Monsters! Incidental Wedding Guests is…gasp… a book with a wedding in it. At one point, they need to write thank you cards. Here is a sampling of them.
Monsters! Incidental Wedding Guests by Jen and Éric Desmarais is available now!
How This Works – Read Other Reviews
Hello Cinephiles,
Today we’re talking about the 2011 film The Muppets.
It’s a complete rehash of other Muppet stories, and the attempt to insert family and romantic drama comes off as both distraction and annoyance.
Score: 0
The human characters are only there to give the audience a proxy and their main character traits are meh. I loved Amy Adams and she managed to pull of the ridiculous character and make it believable.
The Muppets themselves felt like caricatures of the original movie. It felt like they were ignoring everything except the first show and movie.
The cameos were fantastic however and the villain was fun.
Score: 0.5
There were some great moments and gags but the dialogue was burdened by over explaining. It’s like the film makers thought people would get confused.
Score: 0.5
The camera work was good and the dance routines were fun.
The music was great and definitely one of my favourite parts.
Score: 1
I love the Muppets and although this wasn’t them at their best, it was fun. The kids didn’t laugh much but they were glued to the screen.
Score: 0.5
An interesting attempt at writing the Muppets that relies too much on nostalgia and doesn’t offer much new for the audience.
Final Score: 2.5 Stars out of 5
Hello Readers,
There are many ways to go about designing a Hidden World. In the case of the Aetherverse, it almost designed itself by accident.
It started with me reusing names and then purposely doing mini-crossovers. Soon (okay five books in) I realized the whole thing was connected. The Aetherverse currently spans ten published books and has a little of everything in it.
The Elizabeth Series introduced hidden magic, wizards, and a society of magical people called Aetherborn.
Parasomnia introduced the concept of Elmsley the paramilitary organization who hunt down monsters and all things weird.
Everdome introduces the other Realms, worlds that are parallel to our own and connected by magic (Aether).
Finally Assassins! Accidental Matchmakers and Crushing it expanded on the concept of Aetherborn and how they stay hidden. These two and their sequels also add another dimension that is rarely explored in Fantasy, that of space aliens.
The city is the home to one of the largest populations of magical and mythological people in the world. It’s a city where aliens, Aetherborn, and superheroes co-exist and often come into conflict.
The veil of secrecy in Westmeath is kept up in part because of the technological companies that call it home. When a military tech contractor is working on projections and mechs, it’s easy to dismiss a few monsters. Even then, monsters makes sense with superheroes in residence.
As an author, and a reader, you want big adventures. Those don’t always end up being subtle and it can be difficult to make sure the veil of secrecy isn’t destroyed. There’s only so much suspension of disbelief a reader is willing to do.
Giant monsters are not subtle. When they disappear after being fought by a superhero, it gets easier for people to believe there’s something else going on. The normal citizens of Westmeath are used to gangs, superheroes, and weird things happening, so to them, this is more like a hazard to avoid.
For the outside world, it’s significantly easier for them to assume a marketing ploy or some sort of advanced tech gone wrong. It might seem hard to dismiss and move on, but how many of us remember the mysterious monoliths of 2020?
One of the bigger story points in the Gates of Westmeath series is secrecy and protecting the Aetherborn Community.
It’s not always easy keeping the secrets of magic when you have a wedding to plan and monsters to stop.
Monsters! Incidental Wedding Guests by Jen and Éric Desmarais is available now!
A fairty tale, by Dragon Desmarais
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Suzy who was six years old and loved cats.
One day at recess, Suzy found a hole in the ground and fell in. When she got to the end, she was in another world! She knew it was another world because she could see the sky, and it was black, so she thought it was nighttime.
She walked over to a big glowing pink thing that looked like a tree. She sat down and started to think about how to get home.
Suddenly, a unicorn appeared. “Good morning,” they said. “What are you doing?”
Suzy was surprised that it was morning, considering it was dark. She replied, “I came from another world, and I don’t know how to get back.”
“Hmm,” said the unicorn. “How about you talk to the queen? She’s the most likely person to be able to help you.”
“Where can I find the queen?” Suzy asked.
“She’s normally in her garden. You just need to go straight until you see a fountain, and then turn left.”
“Thank you!”
The unicorn galloped off.
Suzy started in the direction the unicorn had pointed out. She walked for a long time before she saw the fountain. The garden was just beyond a hill to the left.
She was surprised that the garden was just like one on Earth, except for the pink trees. There was a figure that looked like a bee and had a crown on her head.
The unicorn was right that the queen would be in her garden! she thought.
Suzy greeted the queen with a curtsy. “Hello. Can you help me get back home? I’m from another world.”
The queen said, “Yes, I can help you, but first you must complete my three trials to show that you are worthy.”
“Anything to get back home.”
The garden seemed to shift, until it didn’t look like a garden anymore. It looked more like a training ground.
“For the first trial, you have to run around this bush until you catch yourself.”
Suzy wasn’t afraid, because she was really fast. But she was a little worried about out-running herself. She ran around for a while, and she couldn’t catch herself, but then she realized that she could outsmart it. She walked until the hologram of herself was right behind her, and then quickly turned around to touch it.
As that part of the training ground turned back into the garden, the queen said, “Good job. You completed the trial of cleverness. Next, you must cross a field of lava.” She gestured at a pit.
Suzy crept to the edge and saw the lava below. There were pillars of stone creating a path across the field, and they were slowly shrinking.
She had no time to lose!
Quickly but carefully, she anxiously jumped from pillar to pillar, until she suddenly remembered her age. She was only six! It was unlikely that the queen would put her in mortal danger, especially when holograms were available. The lava was fake. Hopefully.
This gave her confidence and courage to finish the trial.
As soon as she finished, the field of lava reverted to the garden.
“You have now completed the trial of courage,” the queen told her. “For your last trial, you must lift four weights: one on each shoulder and in each hand. This is the trial of strength.”
Suzy walked over to the weights that the queen had indicated. She had just shouldered two of the weights when she spotted a kitten in one of the pink trees. She couldn’t resist a cute kitten. Dropping the weights, she climbed the tree to rescue the animal.
When she got to the ground with the kitten, she heard the voice of the queen from behind her.
“Good job. You have completed the trial of kindness. I can now send you home. Close your eyes and turn in a circle three times.”
Suzy did what she was told, and when she opened her eyes, she was back in the playground at school. When she looked for the hole, it had disappeared!
After school, she told her parents all about the magical world she had discovered. Of course they didn’t believe her, but it was nice to tell them.
The End?
Monsters! Incidental Wedding Guests was sent out for reviews. Here’s the first batch!
Monsters! Incidental Wedding Guests by Jen and Éric Desmarais is available now!
