Today we are very excited to share an interview with Author D.M. Cornish (Monster Blood Tattoo series)!
Meet the Author: D.M. Cornish
D.M. Cornish was born in time to see the first Star Wars movie. He was five. It made him realize that worlds beyond his own were possible, and he failed to eat his popcorn. Experiences with C.S. Lewis, and later J.R.R. Tolkien, completely convinced him that other worlds existed, and that writers had a key to these worlds.
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About the Book: Foundling
Author: D.M. Cornish
Release Date: December 10, 2024 (paperback reprint)
Publisher: Noble Beast Publishing
Genre: Fantasy/Adventure
Age Range: 12+
Welcome to the Half-Continent, a land of tri-corner hats and flintlock pistols—a place brimming with monsters, alchemy, and people surgically altered into living weapons. In the Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy, readers enter a meticulously crafted fantasy realm brought to life through maps, illustrations, detailed appendices, and a specialized glossary of its own lore.
In Foundling, the first book of the Monster Blood Tattoo series, orphan Rossamünd Bookchild’s quiet life is upended when he is recruited into the Empire’s service. What begins as a boy’s simple journey to his place of employment is threatened by encounters with monsters—and with people who might well be worse.
D.M. Cornish has created an entirely original world grounded in his own deft, classically influenced illustrations. Foundling is a magic-laced, Dickensian adventure that will transport the reader.
This edition includes the EXPLICARIUM, a guide to the Half-Continent with over one hundred pages of encyclopedic entries describing characters, locations, culture, and monsters. Also included are appendices and detailed maps of the Half-Continent.
About the Book: Lamplighter
Author: D.M. Cornish
Release Date: December 10, 2024 (paperback reprint)
Publisher: Noble Beast Publishing
Genre: Fantasy/Adventure
Age Range: 12+
Rossamünd Bookchild, a foundling sworn into the Emperor’s Service as a prentice lamplighter, struggles with the hardships of training at Winstermill Fortress. Lonely and out of place, his challenges multiply when a young wit arrives, determined to defy her renowned mother by joining the lamplighters. As Rossamünd navigates this sinister landscape, he forges new friendships but attracts dangerous enemies, each step drawing him closer to a dark and unimaginable fate.
Lamplighter, Book Two of the Monster Blood Tattoo series, delivers twice the action, adventure, and incredible creatures of its predecessor. Enter the richly detailed world of the Half-Continent—a place filled with deadly monsters, daring monster-hunters enhancing their abilities through dangerous surgeries, and a society balancing awe-inspiring wonders with perilous dangers. D.M. Cornish’s exceptional world-building and vivid storytelling invite readers to explore a realm filled with unforgettable characters and gripping conflicts. An epic continuation of Rossamünd’s journey, Lamplighter offers excitement, intrigue, and a deeper glimpse into a world like no other. Adventure awaits—don’t forget your hat!”
This edition expands the EXPLICARIUM, a guide to the Half-Continent, with over one hundred new pages of encyclopedic entries describing characters, locations, culture, and monsters. Also included are appendices and detailed maps of the Half-Continent.
About the Book: Factotum
Author: D.M. Cornish
Release Date: December 10, 2024 (paperback reprint)
Publisher: Noble Beast Publishing
Genre: Fantasy/Adventure
Age Range: 12+
Rossamünd has exchanged Winstermill and the dangerous life of a lamplighter for Brandenbrass and an even more dangerous life as factotum to the aristocratic monster-slayer, Europe. However, fear and self-doubt must wait as he plunges headlong into the fulgar’s day-to-day life of political maneuvering, high-society parties, and well-paid monster-hunting. But whispers and rumors about her new factotum place Europe herself in danger, and now Rossamünd and the Branden Rose will face the ultimate battle against their enemies, the black-hearted schemers who would destroy them both.
This edition expands the EXPLICARIUM again, with over one hundred more pages of encyclopedic entries describing characters, locations, culture, and monsters. Also included are appendices and detailed maps of the Half-Continent.
About the Book: Tales from the Half-Continent
Author: D.M. Cornish
Release Date: December 10, 2024 (paperback reprint)
Publisher: Noble Beast Publishing
Genre: Fantasy/Adventure
Age Range: 12+
Tales from the Half-Continent is a captivating addition to D.M. Cornish’s richly imagined Monster Blood Tattoo series. This collection of two enthralling stories invites readers to journey deeper into the Half-Continent, a world brimming with danger, wonder, and intricate lore. Known for its unique blend of 18th-century fantasy and detailed world-building, the Half-Continent is a place where iron ships sail vinegar seas, monster-hunters enhance themselves through perilous surgeries, and humans coexist uneasily with the monstrous.
This fourth from D.M. Cornish stands apart from the main trilogy, offering standalone tales that expand the reader’s understanding of this fascinating universe. These stories run parallel to the events of the Monster Blood Tattoo series but focus on new characters and conflicts, adding fresh perspectives to the vast tapestry of the Half-Continent.
~Author Chat~
YABC: What research did you do to write this trilogy?
DMC: At the time I was invited to write the first book I had 23 notebooks collated over 10 years filled with ideas, definitions, factoids and pseudo-factoids taken from all manner of periods of history across many cultures. I do not want to appropriate anything but rather get deep into my bones a congruent sense of how real history works/ how real people work so that my ideas have some grounding to them and seem plausible (well, plausible-ish, at least).
YABC: What came first, the concept, landscape, characters, or something else?
DMC: All of them all at once, but most of all it was a vibe, a gloomy kind of seemingly historical drama populated by people with weird names doing weird things. Then little by little it grew over years to something solid enough to write stories about.
YABC: What can readers expect to find in your books?
DMC: A land known as the Half-Continent, monsters, monster-hunters enhanced through recondite surgeries, tri-corner hats, flintlock muskets, lights made using bioluminescent plants, ships propelled by engines made from muscles, combat chemistry, oceans made from vinegar, and people being very polite to each other even when they are being rude.
YABC: How do you strike a balance between facts and storytelling to keep readers interested?
DMC: Since what I write is all pretend, my concern for facts is not so much in scientific or historical accuracy but making sure the Half-Continent is consistent within itself, that the characters react and interact with it fully and properly, that the characters are true to themselves.
YABC: What is your favorite snack when writing?
DMC: Milk and pistachios – I think shelling those little packets of green yum helps get out some of the nervous energy that I find can build up in me when writing. Anyone else have that? Sitting working on something intensely and there’s a kind of restless tightness that grows in your soul… Anyone? Just me… drat. Thank goodness for pistachios!
YABC: If you could time-travel what would you want to see?
DMC: So many times(!): formation of the universe, dinosaurs, the triremes at Salamis, Jesus walking the earth, Nelson at the Nile, the night Van Gogh was having a hard time to be there for him and help him make a better choice, Armistice Day, the first mission to the moon, my parents’ childhood that I might understand them better.
YABC: What other age group would you consider writing for?
DMC: Adult fiction – which is what I think I do any way; I speak up to my reader, presume their intelligence and wit. Frankly, I think my natural inclination is to write for adults, yet I also write for 12 year-old me who only understood half of Lord of the Rings when he first read it and loved EVERY word of it; the not understanding was part of the mystery, the wonder, the effect.
YABC: What daily thing do you see that brings you joy?
DMC: My son (he’s 10), exceeding the dreaded daily word count, people being good to each other.
YABC: What do you do when you procrastinate?
DMC: Computer games are my kryptonite *sigh* But also, my most useful form of procrastination from writing is drawing instead – which is good and healthy and professionally productive, but it’s still not getting the writing done.
YABC: What’s a book you’ve recently read and loved?
DMC: making my way through Dracula for the first time (upon the hearty recommendation of my publisher; I think I have avoided it until now because I am an edgelord who doesn’t do the popular stuff…). The way it is told is a happy surprise – through notes, journal entries, diary pages, reports – which was not what I was expecting but adds so much to the effect of the tale.
YABC: What is your favorite writing space or routine?
DMC: My favourite routine is rise at 6:30(ish) of a morn and get a chunk of the day’s words done before heading out to a café to draw for a few hours more, then returning home to finish the remaining words. This is my favourite, whether I actually achieve it regularly is a whole other packet of sea-borne life forms.
Title: Monster Blood Tattoo series
Author: D.M. Cornish
Release Date: December 10, 2024 (paperback reprint)
Publisher: Noble Beast Publishing
Genre: Fantasy/Adventure
Age Range: 12+
