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!
I only recently found out about this pokemon (thank you, Tumblr!) and I just love the creepy vibe of it! I was thrilled to see this cosplayer walking around, and even more when I “captured” them!
It has been a year (40 weeks) of teaching my Pegasus. It has been rewarding, exhilarating, and exhausting. I have nothing but the utmost respect for the teachers who do this every year with 20+ students.
Things I learned this year:
Things my Pegasus learned this year:
Overall, I would call this year of Junior Kindergarten/Maternelle successful, even though the hard part, the learning French part, didn’t go as well as I had hoped. He is very much resisting learning it, which will hopefully change at in-person school next year.
The important thing was that he had fun, and he tells me that he did. He also wants to make another mini zine and write another fairy tale during the summer, so we’ll see how that goes.
I’m so very proud of how well my Pegasus did this year.
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.
How This Works – Read Other Reviews
Hello Cinephiles,
Today we’re talking about the 1983 film Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.
This cleans up the loose threads of the other two movies and concludes the story in a satisfying way. It’s a little meandering and at times the philosophy is laughable.
Score: 0.5
The main characters are consistant and likeable. The secondary characters are good and the emperor is deliciously evil.
Score: 1
Cheesy and a little over the top but lot of fun with quips galore.
The emperor is wonderfully evil but his manipulations of Luke aren’t as clever as it’s made out to be.
Score: 0.5
The special effects from the original movie hold up well but like the other movies, the effects added digitally in the 2000’s don’t look as good. I’m also not a big fan of replacing Sebastian Shaw as the Anakin force ghost. I get the whole Anakin died when he became Vader but I don’t like it.
The music is amazing and I was particularly happy with the major-chord version of Vader’s theme that played when he died.
Score: 1
This movie remembers the hope of the first and gives us the happy ending needed. It’s only sad because of what we know about the sequel movies and how the characters never truly find happiness.
I love how all three movies are excellent at building a universe with so much depth without being overly confusing to the casual viewer.
The kids loved this one although they were a little confused about Vader’s motivations.
Score: 1
A wonderful way to end the series, filled with hope and fun. The movie is satisfying on it’s own and as a closing chapter to the trilogy.
Final Score: 4 Stars out of 5
Hello,
After a year off of resolutions, I made a whole bunch. Let’s see how I did.
This year I’m writing the final chapter of Speakers of the Rebel Sun, as the serial story. It’s quite epic. I haven’t missed an update and all is going well, I think.
Go read: Red Day, Ere the Sun Rises
I’ve done some editing and I’m using the serial story to finish this up and it’s looking good. I have 2 other stories inside to write and then I’ll be done. So far it’s on track.
As for submission, I’m not sure. I’m going through some stuff due to a rejection and it’s got me rethinking what I want to do.
We are at Chapter 17 of 24 and moving along. It’s a little slower than before because we’re busier and I’m having a terrible year health wise.
We’ve been playing a game in Everdome and it’s going well. I’ve expanded and cleaned a whole bunch of things and even created a Great Beast for my players to meet.
I’ve had multiple colds and infections which means I haven’t had motivation or a voice. I would like to get back to it. I’ve played maybe a few times a week at most.
I did super well in January on this and then it fell off. So many tiny things, sigh. I’ll try to get back to it.
I’ve managed 19 books so far and only about half of those are audiobooks. I’m still struggling to let myself read for pleasure but I’m getting there.
There have been some major hurdles with health and with rejections and I’m having a hard time. I’m trying hard to see myself as worthy but I’ve spent so long thinking of myself as barely average that it’s hard.
Gardening is helping but I constantly feel like I’m letting everyone down if I’m not doing something. I need to learn to relax and let things go. It might be time to start thinking about what I prioritize and how to rearrange my life.
I started posting again January 13th and have managed a weekly review since. Now I just have to keep it up. Thankfully it’s something fairly quick to write up.
So far so good with 5 Succeeding, 1 Succeeded, and only 4 Failing. I’m definitely seeing a trend of me prioritizing doing something for others over something for myself. I need to work on that.
Be kind and stay safe,
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 Jen’s:
Read Jen’s latest book here:
Monsters! Incidental Wedding Guests by Jen and Éric Desmarais is available now!
If Daisy, Rosalina, and Peach got together for a girl’s day, I think they’d go shopping together. They look like they’d have fun with that.
I love the cozy sweaters!
An image of all the art that Pegasus created this year (that we could find). He learned a lot and had a lot of fun. I’m very proud of him and how hard he tried this year.
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!
