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!
Jen
Jen Desmarais is the creator of the sex education game Blush and co-author of “Assassins! Accidental Matchmakers” and “Monsters! Incidental Wedding Guests.” “Crushing It” was her first solo novel.
Find her on Instagram @JenDesmaraisAuthor
You can also find a short story by Jen in “Nothing Without Us Too”, and a novella in “The Mystery of the Dancing Lights”.
Co-founder of JenEric Designs, she creates unique geeky crocheted items. Her blogs The Travelling TARDIS and How I Taught My Dragon have been nominated for the Prix Aurora Awards over 2018-2024.
She lives in Ottawa with her author husband, daughter, son, and their library of over 3000 books.
The Hidden Worlds
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.
Westmeath 2004
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.
The Balance
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.
Monsters! Incidental Wedding Guests
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!
“The Hole in the Playground” by Dragon
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! Reviews 1-3
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!
Favourite Things: Jason
post on Instagram a while back detailing the author’s favourite things, and I thought it would be fun to do that, not only for ourselves, but for our characters too! Here’s Jason’s:
Read Jason’s latest story here:
Monsters! Incidental Wedding Guests by Jen and Éric Desmarais is available now!
Favourite Things: Kennedy
I saw a post on Instagram a while back detailing the author’s favourite things, and I thought it would be fun to do that, not only for ourselves, but for our characters too! Here’s Kennedy’s:
Read Kennedy’s latest story here:
Monsters! Incidental Wedding Guests by Jen and Éric Desmarais is available now!
Favourite Things: Éric
post on Instagram a while back detailing the author’s favourite things, and I thought it would be fun to do that, not only for ourselves, but for our characters too! Here’s Éric’s:
Read Éric’s latest book here:
Monsters! Incidental Wedding Guests by Jen and Éric Desmarais is available now!
Missed the launch?
Hello Readers,
Did you miss the fantastic launch of Monsters! Incidental Wedding Guests? You’re in luck; Renaissance Press recorded it.
Enjoy, and remember that it’s available wherever you buy books.
Favourite Things: Jen
post on Instagram a while back detailing the author’s favourite things, and I thought it would be fun to do that, not only for ourselves, but for our characters too! Here’s Jen’s:
Read Jen’s latest book here:
Monsters! Incidental Wedding Guests by Jen and Éric Desmarais is available now!
The Process of Writing a Book 2
There were a few major differences when writing a second book versus writing the first one. If you’d like to read about the first book’s writing process, we wrote about it in 2021.
By the time we sat down to plot and write Monsters! Incidental Wedding Guests, we’d gotten a contract for the first one, done several editing passes with beta-readers, wrote a dozen or more short stories, and talked about the second book the entire summer.
Jen had written Crushing It and I’d written the fourth Elizabeth book, both of which altered the shared world of the Aetherverse to a point where we now had nine books, and a dozen short stories worth of lore.
As much as consistency in story was important, Jen realized we needed to keep track of how we wrote things. Was it Aethercreature, Aether-Creature, or Aether Creature? Not to mention the impressively hard to find rules of Canadian English (looking at you, ‘practise’!). She created a spreadsheet with a list of things we needed to keep consistent. Something I wish I’d thought of after my first book.
The other major hurdle was the sheer quantity of content. Every time one of us took a shower, we’d have new ideas. (Yeah, boohoo. I know.) We had a couple pages of random ideas, scenes, and plotlines. We even had a list of fun quotes we wanted to integrate.
Take all that and having to use everything to start building the overall arc of the series.
We weren’t really thinking about this as a series while we were writing, which means we had to go back into Assassins! Accidental Matchmakers a few times to add foreshadowing and little plot details. (One which won’t come up until book 4!)
This book had the same excitement of the first but felt a lot more like a giant puzzle where every piece was a square.
We managed to corral all the information and looking at the outline now it looks really clean and easy to follow. (Thanks to Jen for updating it as we deviated.)
It’s impressive how every book has a different feel and despite doing it almost the same as last time, it feels like a different process.
It keeps us on our toes and honestly I love it.
Éric
Monsters! Incidental Wedding Guests by Jen and Éric Desmarais is available now!