How to Accidentally Invent a Pictish Vampire

When you imagine an author inventing a character for a story, do you imagine them thinking, “Hmm. I need someone to fill this niche…”?

Followed by the author rolling dice and throwing darts to select gender, personality, culture, name, etc.?

I used to think that's how it worked.

Sometimes it does.

But usually, for me, it’s considerably more complicated.

And considerably more ridiculous.

And that’s where Pia started. Long before she even was Pia.

She was just a ridiculous collection of ideas trapped in a bad joke.

It all started during the pandemic in 2020.

My sister and I were watching some crime show - a fictional one. The show’s characters called in a specialist to help with the case: a blood spatter analyst.

Now, I don’t know if you know this, but bloodstain pattern analysis isn’t quite what they make it out to be on TV. It’s real enough, but there are serious questions about the reliability of some of the methods and conclusions drawn from it.

At least, that’s what I’ve come to understand.

But it is fascinating to think about being able to “read” what happened at the scene of a murder just by examining the blood evidence.

Now, I have to stress, we were very bored.

I was scrolling on my phone and only half-watching the show.

My sister made an offhand comment. “You know who’d be great at reading blood splatter? A vampire.”

I laughed. It was silly.

And yet… it stuck.

So I’m thinking about that and a meme comes up on my phone. Yes. A meme. I kid you not.

The meme claimed that coconut water could be used as an emergency replacement for blood plasma if nothing else is at hand, and that was an idea that intrigued me, too.

Of course, when I looked into it, I confirmed it was utterly untrue: coconut water can restore electrolytes, like a sports drink, but it’s no more suitable a replacement for blood plasma than Gatorade.

Still… that idea stuck too.

The two of them orbited around each other in my head. I didn’t know what to do with them, so for a long time, they were just… there.

Then, some months afterwards (maybe years, I don’t remember clearly), we were watching some vampire movie based on a book. Maybe Twilight. Maybe The Interview with the Vampire.

Whatever.

The point was, in the movie there was a vampire who claimed to be better than other vampires because they didn’t drink human blood, but lived on the blood of animals. My sister and I were discussing the idea and the concept of so-called “vegetarian vampires”.

Now, I happen to be a vegetarian. Just a choice I made; I’m not about to lecture anyone about it.

But as a vegetarian, one thing that sticks in my craw is people who only eat white meat, or pescatarians claiming to be “just like vegetarians”. And, I’m sorry to say, my objection is purely semantic. If you eat meat of any kind, you cannot, by definition, call yourself a vegetarian.

That idea leaked into the discussion I was having about “vegetarian vampires”.

My position was that just because the lives they took weren’t human did not qualify those vampires as “vegetarian” by any definition.
My sister argued that, for a vampire, what other choice was there?

Which, naturally, made me wonder what a true vegetarian vampire might look like. How could they survive without blood? What measures would they have to take? What would happen if they did drink blood after years of not drinking it? And, possibly most importantly, how would they even get that way?

How hard is it to kick The Thirst?

These questions, dear reader, kept me up at night.

It also made me wonder: why are vampires always kind of Goth? I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s a great look - but what would happen if a vampire wore bright colours instead of black, with the occasional pop of colour?

And then - because this is just how my brain works - I wondered how becoming a vampire might affect your brain.

I don’t know about you guys, but I sometimes forget why I walked into a room.

It’s not uncommon for me to forget the specifics of something that happened a few weeks ago, let alone what happened decades ago (yes, I’m that old).

Just try remembering your childhood. I’ll bet you can recall a few events with perfect clarity, but most of them will either be gone entirely or a fuzzy blur.

What happens to a body, then, when it becomes a vampire, to allow it to retain all that memory? To recall in vivid detail everything that has happened to them from the day they became what they are to the present?

…And what if it didn’t?

And then came the day I decided to write Blood in the Dust.

Before it had a title. Before it had plot, even.

Back when it was still just… vibes.

That’s when I started putting a team together. Because I knew one thing: I wanted the stories to be about a group of crime fighters who travelled the world looking into terrible crimes and solving them. All the crimes were to have a paranormal angle to them, but - unlike most paranormal crime stories - this wasn’t going to make the monsters the bad guys.

Not always.

And when I did, I wanted them to have very human motives, at the very least.

I kind of had an idea about the Slipworld; I had a pretty decent idea about Yip - she even had a name, pretty early on.

And the team?

They were just jobs, at this stage.

The leader.

The tough 2IC.

A tracker.

An IT guy.

A pathologist.

A scientist.

A folklorist.

A blood splatter analyst - because, cool, right?

The very first role filled?

The blood splatter analyst. Because the moment I wrote those words on a page, all those pieces came crashing into my mind again.

The vampire blood splatter analyst.

The vegetarian vampire - (Oh, my God! What if they used coconut water to satiate the Thirst and vitamins to fill in the rest!!)

And if the vampire was very old… what if they couldn’t remember their history?

Ooh, and what if they were super colourful! Bright sundresses instead of all the black?

OOOOOOOH, and what if they had tattoos!!

But not a guy. Boring.

A woman.

And… if she’s old, and tattooed… what historical people were known for being colourful and kickarse and didn’t appear to discriminate?

I can’t tell you why, but my brain went straight to the Picts.

Did you know that no one is entirely sure if the Picts tattooed themselves, or just painted the patterns on before battle? That’s a secret that’s been lost to time - which fits perfectly with a vampire who can’t quite remember her past.

She’s covered in Pictish tattoos, but she can’t remember how they got there. Maybe she always had them. Maybe the patterns didn’t come as easily to her mind after a while, so she had them tattooed on her body so she wouldn’t forget where she came from. Or maybe she was inspired by something she read in a book once.

She doesn’t know.

Neither do I.

But that’s why Pia is Scottish. Maybe she was a Pict. Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was a historian who studied them at some point and became fascinated by the culture. Who knows?

“Oh, but Pia isn’t a Scottish name!”

No. It isn’t.

But Alpia is. 🤫