A Monster Blood Tattoo Return! The Ultimate High-Fantasy Middle Grade Series Comes Back to the States and I Interview Creator D.M. Cornish

I’m so excited. So very very excited.

It’s not often that I fangirl out completely over an author or illustrator. I like loads of them, but only a very select few are elevated enough in my esteem to make me legitimately nervous when I encounter them. And for today’s guest, I really have never met him in person before but, oh, I wish that I could. This has less to do with my own shyness and more to the fact that he’s sort of Australian-based and all.

I’ve been writing about children’s literature since 2003 or so, which is a fair amount of time. Back in 2008 I discovered this incredible new middle grade fantasy series. Called the Monster Blood Tattoo series, they were like nothing I’d ever encountered before. There was this whole enticing, engaging world, full of complicated heroes, the strongest female characters I’d seen in ages, and details so intricate that it was like the author had thought of absolutely everything. But one of the most incredible parts was the art. Author D.M. Cornish created illustrations of the characters far more sophisticated and interesting than those of most fantasy artists I’d seen. His maps! Detailed and incredible and so good that Tolkien himself would weep upon seeing them. And you want backmatter? The Glossary alone of this series was jaw-dropping. Practically 50% of the first book!

Speaking of which, I reviewed the first book The Foundling and the second, Lamplighter, in 2008, with the third book, Factotum, in 2010. Seven years later I kept pounding the drum for the series, worried that it would be forgotten. In spite of its hugely cinematic qualities, no movies occurred, and in America it was just a small cadre of hugely dedicated folks like myself who kept talking about it.

Fast forward to 2025. Things are afoot! And it’s all thanks to the magic of Kickstarter.

First and foremost, thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign, the books in this series are now back in print here in the States! Incredible news, right? But even better is something I’ve been hoping for for literal decades: A new book in the series. Tales of the Half-Continent is a collection of two stories set in the same world as the previous books. And even better, there’s a pre-launch page set up for audiobooks as well. Mind you, they’re holding off for now until they get a certain number of followers, but with plans to launch in May, that’ll hopefully happen soon.

And now the reason I’m fangirling. I have here, D.M. Cornish himself. Imagine getting the chance to interview one of your favorite authors after 17 years of waiting. That’s the position I find myself in today.

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Betsy Bird: Thank you so much for joining us! I’ve been a Half-Continent fan since the moment the books were released in the U.S. and have worked as hard as I could to introduce folks to what I can honestly call my favorite fantasy series for kids. Now the books are coming back to America and with several perks, but before we get to all that, could you just give us a rundown on where this series originated for you in the first place? Where did Monster Blood Tattoo and all that followed come from?

D.M. Cornish: Thank you for having me! I have always been happy/surprised/relieved/grateful for your attention and support back in the day and even more happy/surprised/relieved/grateful to have it still.

The answer to where MBT came from is both simple and complex – as I suppose such things usually are. The simple – and somewhat facetious one too, I suppose – is that the publisher I was working with as an illustrator found out I was also a (reluctant) writer and asked me to try my hand at a novel.

Deeper, MBT comes from WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, any book on dinosaurs, CAPTAIN PUGWASH, STAR WARS, ASTERIX, THE BOLAND LIGHT RAILWAY, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, THE LORD OF THE RINGS, the GORMENGHAST series, DUNE, anything by H.P.LOVECRAFT, THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS film, CANARY ROW, THE LOVE OF SEVEN DOLLS, FRANKENSTEIN, VAMPIRE THE MASQUERADE, a trip to Kansas, and army maneuvers in the remote sheep country in the mid-north of my state here in Australia.

Deeper still, MBT comes from my desire to create something as rich and as thorough and as supporting and as forget-yourself-able as the works that moved me and protected me during a not especially fun childhood and adolescence.

BB: Initially the trilogy was all that there was, but thanks to a Kickstarter you also created TALES FROM THE HALF-CONTINENT, an anthology of two novellas. It’s coming out in the States for the very first time. It’s been a day or two since the original trilogy. What inspired you to return to this world yet again?

D.M. Cornish: So so happy to have a proper North American release of TALES; it’s been available in my neck of the world for a while now but has been notoriously hard to get hold of a copy. Honestly, I never intended to stop, life and inner struggle just imposed themselves, I guess. In fact, if it were not for my new publisher, Noble Beast, pressing me to keep going I might not have done anything else. I am not sure why, still trying to get head and soul around it: autism? ADHD? Crippling self-doubt? – all the usual ailments of the modern age.

BB: Currently I’m reading MONSTER BLOOD TATTOO to my son for the first time and getting to enjoy the series all over again. We’re halfway through the first book and like a lot of fans I keep yearning to know what Rossamund got up to after the end of the last book. Will TALES FROM THE HALF-CONTINENT tease any of that or are the stories simply set in the same world and involve all new characters?

D.M. Cornish: After such a beautiful preamble to the question it pains me to answer that TALES is as you say, simply set in the same world and involves new characters. The events are somewhat contemporaneous with MBT and there is a cameo or two from MBT 3: FACTOTUM in one of the stories.

Perhaps I ought not admit this… but I am going to anyway: I am a bit done with telling Rossamünd’s story alone; 340,000 + words from one character’s point of view can get a bit much. It has been suggested that there are so many other criminally underused characters throughout MBT that I reckon it is a good time to have a play with them too.

BB: *sigh* We’ll take what we can get, and that’s not untrue about the other characters, though I’m still going to hope for a cameo from him in the future. Kickstarter has been a real boon for the fans of the series too. Currently, I believe there’s a Kickstarter for audiobooks as well. This is a new concept for me. How does an audiobook Kickstarter work? And what’s the ultimate goal you’re trying to reach?

D.M. Cornish: Ooh, a technical question. Frankly, I do not know how an audiobook Kickstarter works either, will tell you once this one is done – here is hoping it is a success (!)

The ultimate goal is, really, simply to get what works currently exist but have not been available to North American readers available to them, and beyond this to expand the readership in your part of the world. That’s the commercial intent at least.

Underneath that is the hope to afford me the opportunity to really throw myself completely into making more stories. Seems awfully banal putting it down in a sentence…

BB: The art that accompanies the books, everything from the detailed maps to the illustrations of the characters, creatures, and people, has always been one of my favorite elements of the books. When authors tend to illustrate their own novels you get something like Tolkien. Your books are a far cry from amateurism. What’s your artistic background?

D.M. Cornish: I am actually a trained illustrator and have freelanced as such for most of my working life, with a five year stint as fulltime cartoonist for a gameshow, and also teaching character design and life drawing for a local university for a decade or so. Writing has always been there somewhere, yet while the opportunity to be an author was/is a shock and surprise it is also very welcome.

BB: With the success of the publication of TALES FROM THE HALF-CONTINENT, can fans hope for more returns to the world from you in the future, or are you done with the lot from here on in? On a related note, what’s next for you these days?

D.M. Cornish: For fear of admitting I am just a one trick pony, I am sticking with the Half-Continent, I have two half-finished novels Noble Beast is pressing me to complete along with (and after) my current work, THE BRANDEN ROSE, where we pick up events about 8 Half-Continent months after MBT with Europe, the deuteragonist of MBT, now in the lead.

I also hope to finally put together the INCOMPLETE BOOK of BOGLES – a faux technical manual/guidebook to the known monsters of the Half-Continent. Along with this is a graphic novel adaption of one of the stories from TALES, called VIRTUE BLAND, issue 1 slated for release later this year, 2025.

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For those of you like me, I bet that you too are doing a happy dance hearing about THE BRANDEN ROSE (squeeee!!). HUGE thanks to Mr. Cornish for answering all my questions today and to Julie Brannon and the team at Noble Beast (where you can find all things related to the series, including info on the upcoming Kickstarter). Follow the series on its Facebook fan page Monster Blood Cult, TikTok, Instagram, Bluesky, Linktree, and more. And, of course, check out these incredible books!!

Filed under: Interviews