If Shawna had access to Google during Faymous, these might be some of her search terms.
Cover art by Pinkpiggy93
Shawna’s Google Search in Faymous
Cover art by Pinkpiggy93
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.
Cover art by Pinkpiggy93
Hockey Stick Make-over
Have you seen the McDonald’s hockey sticks? They’re super cute, but I’m not a fan of hockey IRL, so I decided to give mine a little revamp!
Just print out the PDF on sticker paper, cut it out, and stick it to your box. If you REALLY want to get fancy, you can paint the sticks to match the player’s. Note that Shane’s stick has his mom’s name at the top!
Update: McDonald’s Canada on Instagram commented “hi yes so this is everything” and now my year is complete.
I’m not overly thrilled about the colour of yellow on Ilya’s stick, but highlighter didn’t work and I didn’t have a brighter nail polish. I used black, white, and yellow nail polish to redesign the sticks, and black fine sharpie to write Yuna’s name. The font for the character’s last name is grabbed from the jerseys up in the Heated Rivalry gift shop, as are the numbers. The logos for the teams are from the enamel pins in the same place. The MLH logo is from the video game (with Ilya’s “face on the cover of the fu€king game”). I removed the backgrounds in Photopea. The pictures are screen grabs. The signature is a font that I felt embodied the character, and I made the decision of how they would sign their names. Everything was dropped into Canva, and then I downloaded images that I made into a PDF to keep the size right.
No AI was used at any point of the process.
Note that I used nail polish for my painting because I don’t have paint and it didn’t occur to me to ask my sister if she had the colours I needed.
Randal’s Google Search in Faymous
If Randal had access to Google during Faymous, these might be some of his search terms.
Cover art by Pinkpiggy93
Faymous Google Search
If you were to search “Faymous” in Google, this is what might show up…
Not really, but these are related to the book!
Cover art by Pinkpiggy93
Aurora Awards 2026
Dear Readers,
The Aurora Awards, which are for Canadian science fiction and fantasy writers and artists, are open for nominations for the 2025 works! (Nominations are open until April 5) This means the LONG lists of eligible works are being narrowed down to 5-6 per category.
Once they have a list of nominated works, every single person who signed up and paid the $10 membership fee gets ALL the nominated works as downloads. That’s all the adult novels, YA novels, novellas, short stories, graphic novels, and related works (usually anthologies), so about 36 works, for just $10 CAD, which is a great deal.
Getting nominated for an Aurora Award is a BIG DEAL in the speculative fiction writing community. You get a nomination pin (only once, so I’m terrified I’ll lose mine!), and you’re part of an elite group of people.
Nomination forms are not ranked.
How do you nominate?
- Go to this website: https://www.csffa.ca/members-home/
- Join, pay membership fee
- Nominate up to 5 works per category https://www.csffa.ca/members-home/nomination/
It would mean a lot to all of us if you’re willing to nominate us! (Categories are in alphabetical order by work)
- Eligibility Category 2 – Best Young Adult Novel
- The Copper Tarnish by Éric Desmarais
- Winging It by Jen Desmarais
- Eligibility Category 3 – Best Novelette/Novella
- The Scarlet Thread Irregulars by Éric Desmarais
- Eligibility Category 4 – Best Short Story
- Harvest Special by Jen Desmarais
- I am Snowman by Éric Desmarais
- Plants, Fungus, and Zombies! by Éric Desmarais
- Snow Day by Jen Desmarais
- The Puzzles of Everdome by Éric Desmarais
- The Summer of ’99 and How I Died by Éric Desmarais
- Eligibility Category 6 – Best Poem/Song
- The Ballad of the Phantom and the Wraith by Jen Desmarais, found in Winging It by Jen Desmarais
- Eligibility Category 7 – Best Related Work
- Connections! The Unexpected First Collection by Jen and Éric Desmarais
- Eligibility Category 9 – Best Fan Writing/Publication
- JenEric Movie Reviews by Éric Desmarais
- The Travelling TARDIS by Jen Desmarais
In case you’re wondering why Winging It is not included in the best cover art category, it’s because our cover artist is Vietnamese! Only Canadian creators are eligible, unfortunately. We forgot to include The Copper Tarnish in this category because we’re not used to having art made by us! Éric did the cover for it.
Thank you so much for your time, attention, and support. If any of the above does make it through the nomination round, which ends April 5, we’ll write another post for the voting round, which will be taking place starting in June 2026.
Read safe!
Éric
Shadowbox: Faymous
I got the idea to make shadowbox out of the cover image of our books, and I thought it would be fun for you to have access as well.
Materials:
Paper (or cardstock)
Colour printer
Scissors
Exacto knife
Cutting board
Tape (or glue)
Patience
Instructions:
- Print the template provided (PDF download above)
- Cut out the pieces using scissors
- Cut out the greyed out background with the Exacto knife
- Tape (or glue) the parts together.
Note: I left some of the empty space on the ‘people’ level to help stabilize it. You can’t actually see it though, because it’s behind the bushes.
Cover art by Pinkpiggy93
Going to game
Hello Friends, Family, and Fans;
I promised my kids we’d do some TTRPG gaming this week. With everyone getting sick, we’ve had to push it back, but today is the day. (I still feel like crap but I’ll have lots of coffee.)
We’ll be playing FADDS (Four Attribute Dual Dodecahedron System) It’s my homemade system that is based off opposing rolls. I’ve slowly been retrofitting it to our books. I’m hoping to release the first version for Westmeath next year.
I sat down with the kids and built their characters, they seemed to follow fairly well. We even used Hero Forge to make them character portraits.
The game will be set in the future of Everdome and have the characters exploring a lost temple from before the Cataclysm.
I hope they have fun. I feel a lot of pressure to make sure they enjoy themselves.
Wish me luck!
Éric
Bookflix series: “Faymous”
A parody of Netflix, Bookflix is where you can find our books and more like them.
Cover art by Pinkpiggy93
Romance Author Event (This Sunday)
Hello Readers,
Come see us and get some signed books this weekend at the CardelRec Complex 1500 Shea Rd. This Sunday (March 15th) from 2-5!
Hope to see you there!
Éric and Jen
Faymous Style Comps
Faymous is a YA portal fantasy roadtrip romance. There are several other books that have a similar style, in one way or another, to our book. Here is the image made with all the covers of the style comparisons.
Cover art by Pinkpiggy93