Nina Smith | Updates

Character Spotlight: Emerald

Nina Smith — Sat, 13 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Emerald of the Green Dragon Dancer Tribe. Yeah, you've seen her. She's that girl lurking in the forest, all blonde curls and curves and big shiny axe, mercilessly hunting down any vampire foolhardy enough to set foot under one of her trees…

Wait, what's that? You haven't seen her? You weren't looking? You'd never presume? Darn right! She's deadly.

Born twenty seven years ago under a red moon in the crack of summer, Emerald became a problem the moment she could walk, run, and throw rocks at outsiders. At the age of five, she found a fetch eating her favourite doll. Within five minutes she'd turned it into a cloud of methane smoke; and within five years she'd waged such a vendetta that no fetch dared fly within a mile of Green Dragon Forest.

Emerald and her playmate Pan went on to wreak so much havoc during their teenage years that a general warrant was issued for their arrest - and never acted on, even when they broke into the Shadow City Theatre at age 16, disrupting a Guild production of The King Must Never Die Long Live The King by swinging from the chandeliers into the audience.

Of course the Chief then confined them to the forest, and a few years after that, a very bored Emerald decided it was time to get married. Or else.

For someone already quite dexterous at making bad decisions, it was, perhaps, not one of her finer moments...

Emerald bursts onto the scene about halfway through Shadow Book 3: Shiny Things, and stays in the action until...well, no spoilers.

Shiny Things is available here!

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How to make a monster

Nina Smith — Sat, 13 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Let's talk about monsters. Because like, Halloween is the perfect time to talk about those, right?

There are a few monsters in the Shadow series. Some nicer than others - but the ultimate monster (at least for now) is Pierus, King of the Muses. I mean, he's old, he's grumpy, he talks (at least in my head) in a ridiculously inappropriate posh English accent, sure. But it's more than that: he single-minded and driven by a purpose that nobody even Shadow could even guess at, because nobody else is old enough to remember things that happened at the beginning of Shadow time. (And given that muses are immortal unless they get killed, you think about why that might be.)

So let me tell you a secret about Pierus, and why he is the way he is.

I'll set the scene for you: It's about 3,000 years ago, in a place called Thebes, Greece. He's a doctor, living in a dark and closed up room with his brother, who is so ill he cannot even look at the sun. It's a miserable and hopeless time, until two things happen: One, Pierus meets a woman and falls in love. Pity she's already married, sister to a demigod, and totally out of his league. Two - and this is the critical moment - he goes to see an oracle who is famed for her 100% accurate predictions, but not so much for her integrity when she's busy.

That little interview went something like this:

Pierus strode through the curtains. His short, belted tunic was crisp and clean, but his hair was awry and his face turbulent. He knelt before the table and fixed his eyes on the oracle. “Great Melissa, tell my future.”

She raised her eyebrows. His manner was definitely not normal. There was no trace of his usual disdain, but neither did he plead like she might have expected from a man looking like he did right now. It was a demand. She couldn’t even be bothered with him. She laid a hand on the gourd and said the first thing that came into her head. “Your future, son? You’ll be a king, and gain immortality. Now bog off.”

Pierus stared at her, open-mouthed. He rose slowly to his feet, backed away and disappeared through the curtain without a word.

A long moment of silence followed, then a burst of high pitched giggling in the outer room from both Ianthe and Oinone.

“Melissae!” Melissa spoke the word sharply enough for them both to hurry in, still giggling.

“What’s so funny?”

“We heard what you told him,” Ianthe said.

“And he believed you,” Oinone added.

“You should have seen his face! You know you’re awful sometimes.”

Melissa snickered. “That ought to keep him occupied for a while. Now if anybody else wants me, they can bog off too."

What kind of a person could Pierus have been, if that had not happened? Well to be honest, probably still of a sour old grape. But perhaps he might have lived and died like anyone else, instead of spending millennia raising havoc in a world created to be his prison...a world where he called himself king, and nobody knew how to argue.

So how does a monster convince a fairy to help him obtain a ridiculously powerful chaos weapon? Check out Shadow Book 1: Bloody Fairies >>

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Mapping Shadow (aka the mushroom curse)

Nina Smith — Sat, 13 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Here's a map of Shadow. You might notice, if you look closely, that the coastal regions appear to have been named by a somewhat fearful cartographer - which leads us to today's Shadow Fact.

Shadow Fact 356:
In the year 1986 (approximately 1884 in human time), a group of muses set out from Shadow City to map the whole of Shadow. Several Freakin Fairies, intensely interested in this process and hoping to open up some trade routes, applied to join the expedition. However, the muses refused on the grounds they didn't want to be poisoned or cursed hairless halfway into the wilds of Shadow.

Naturally, this didn't go down that well with the fairies, who promptly cursed the chief cartographer to be unable to resist any mushroom he ever saw. The muses didn't think this was so bad, until the chief got into a patch the Bloomin Fairies had nicknamed Moonie Soonie you'll be Seein a Rocket. Say no more.

The cartography was duly completed, and the Chief eventually confined to a mushroomless part of Shadow City, but the damage was done: no muse ever did go to find out if there really were fire-breathing sharks at the Impasse, or what was so terrifying at the Big Bay of Terrifying Tidal Surge.

So, job done: Fairies one, muses zero.

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Ethical Vampirism: A Manifesto

Nina Smith — Sat, 13 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Hi, my name is Vlad!

Hey, man. How are you? No, I mean really? Everything okay? If not, you want to talk about it? Seriously, I'm here to listen, because your feelings are valid.

Let me tell you a little about myself. My name's Vlad, and I'm an Ethical Vampire.

Please stop laughing, it's really very hurtful. I'm totally serious.

Look, I won't go into how it happened, because that story is being told in the Shadow series. You'll see me pop in from Shadow Book 3: Shiny Things, which is a totally factual account of the birth of Ethical Vampirism.

What I will tell you is why - and how you can join the movement too. Well, if you're a vampire. If you're not, I'd like to invite you into my office for a counselling session, and perhaps we can talk about you voluntarily donating some blood to this very important cause.

Follow Vlad on Facebook to find out more!

Fairies are our friends

Why ethical vampirism? Well, to put it quite simply, food has feelings too, and we vampires have got to respect that. There's a karmic price to every fairy, or dwarf, or fire elf, or even human you feed from, you know? That's why they fight. They totally don't like it when you drink their blood. And yet, we vampires must drink blood to survive.

That's where Ethical Vampirism comes in. It's a second way: A better way. A cruelty free, karmically neutral path that not only gets you blood without a fight, but makes friends with your food as well!

Follow Vlad on Facebook if you'd like to be friends!

A better way

I first conceived the idea of Ethical Vampirism while reading my favourite book, Psychiatry for Dummies. It's a great book. I learned everything I know about counselling from it, and I've even founded a practice on the strength of it. You see, for far too long, the evil and despotic muse king kept us under his sway by feeding us all the blood we could consume - but it was poisoned blood, tainted with chemicals that made us easy to manipulate. I won't go further into the whole terrible situation, it's really quite traumatic, except to tell you that we - my brother Dave, myself, and a few trusted friends - broke free by refusing to drink the blood.

And that was when it became clear: there is a better way forward for the Vampire Nation. Using the awesome powers of psychology, we can build bridges with all the tribes, and exchange dealing with everyone's deep-seated issues for a bit of their blood.

Especially the fairies. We like the fairies best.

So hey, if you're a vampire and you want to know more about Ethical Vampirism, come and talk to me, any time of the night!

If you're not a vampire, you can talk to me about anything. Anything at all. Just look for @VladfromShadow on Facebook :)

Peace man,

Vlad

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