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Alabama author Suzanne Johnson publishes The Penton Legacy books under the pen name Susannah Sandlin. (Courtesy photo)
The unincorporated community of Penton, Ala., located eight miles north of LaFayette in Chambers County, has a population of 201.
"It's just a blip on the radar to be perfectly honest with you," says Ashley Crane, Executive Director of the Greater Valley Area chamber of commerce. "The only thing Penton is really known for is that they have a dirt track."
Crane (and every other Chambers County resident she could think to ask) was unaware that Penton also has the distinction of serving as the setting for a best-selling series of vampire novels that has tens of thousands of people -- most of them women -- clinging to their Kindles.
Sales for the four (but soon to be five) books in The Penton Legacy (released in print, ebook, and audiobook editions via Amazon publishing imprint Montlake Romance) are, according to Penton Legacy author Suzanne Johnson, between 50,000-100,000 copies apiece.
Alabama author Suzanne Johnson publishes The Penton Legacy books under the pen name Susannah Sandlin. (Courtesy photo)
"Yeah, that series has sold very well," says Johnson, a 1978 University of Alabama graduate who recently retired as editor of Auburn University's alumni magazine to devote more time to her career as an award-winning writer of urban fantasy, paranormal romance, and adult suspense.
Johnson still resides in Auburn, and she's still technically writing about Auburn, at least a little (and under a pen name -- Susannah Sandlin). She occasionally references Auburn University in the Penton Legacy books. Ditto Fort Benning and even the Kia plant in West Point, Ga. Because though Johnson's Penton is somewhat fictionalized -- "I sort of mashed up Penton, LaFayette and my home town of Winfield, Ala." -- she thinks one secret to successful urban fantasy is to "try to get the world as real as it can be."
How real?
"They go to Lowes at Tiger Town in Opelika."
By "they" she means the handsome, blood-sucking alpha males dining on the denizens of Penton as they wage vampiric civil war.
And do other things.
Though Johnson's other popular urban fantasy novels aren't exactly PG, she admits that the five comprising The Penton Legacy (Redemption, Absolution, Omega, Allegiance, and soon-to-be-published Illumination) are "a little raunchy."
"There's a little bit of sex," Johnson says. "There are four-letter words. If you're offended by the F-Bomb, you don't want read the Penton books."
Johnson says the idea for the series came to her while suffering through the 2010 swine flu pandemic.
"I had the H1N1 virus, and they didn't have the vaccine ready when people started getting it," Johnson says. "And about the same time I had driven up to Chambers County, just exploring, and had discovered Lafayette and Penton. I thought, you know, what if people got a pandemic vaccine and it changed their blood chemistry, and vampires couldn't feed from them anymore? The vampires would starve."
Their only hope would be to locate an untainted, isolated rural feeding ground, right?
Crane laughs. If that's what the vampires are looking for, she thinks Johnson "picked a great place."
"There's one gas station and a restaurant," Crane says. "That's about all you get in Penton, Alabama.
"If there's ever going to be any vampires, maybe they'll set up shop there."