Nick Bland always told family and friends he was going to be a cartoonist and a writer. It wasn't until 1996, when he stumbled into a bookshop job, that he finally found the medium that would bring those two loves together. Untrained, he spent the next couple of years reading every picture book that hit the shelves and began honing his style as a storyteller and illustrator. He illustrated several readers before sending 'A Monster Wrote Me a Letter' to Scholastic Australia in 2001.