Vampires in Alabama!
I live on the Gulf Coast and love reading stories that take place in the south.
I’m also a huge fan of vampires, so this series is a must read for me.
Check out the fantastic cover art. These guys will hypnotize you with their lovely eyes.
And join me in welcoming Susannah to my blog. She wrote a lovely guest post for us about choosing the locations for her stories.
Omega
Penton Vampire Legacy, Book 3
Susannah Sandlin
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Date of Publication: February 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-1612183596 / ASIN: B0073XV3L2
Number of pages: 328 / Word Count: approx. 88,000
Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Book Depository
Book Description:
The bloody war between the Vampire Tribunal and the defiant scathe of Penton, Alabama, rages on, forcing its residents and their bonded humans to retreat into the underground fortress of last resort: Omega. There, Will Ludlam is charged with the care of Penton’s humans, though he longs to fight alongside his vampire brethren. He knows the risks: as the renegade son of the Tribunal’s vicious leader, Will’s capture could doom the resistance.
Yet he is determined to prove his worth to his adopted scathe, to his vengeful father and to former US Army officer Randa Thomas, his beautiful, reluctant partner. Randa has little faith that a former member of the vampire elite has what it takes to fight a war. But as their enemies descend upon Omega, Will’s polished charm and Randa’s guarded heart finally give way to the warrior within.
Fans of Susannah Sandlin’s Penton Legacy are sure to devour this long-awaited third installment of the steamy paranormal series.
*****
ABSOLUTION
The Penton Legacy, Book 2
By Susannah Sandlin
Release date: October 9, 2012
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Book Description:
With the vampire world on the brink of civil war over the scarcity of untainted human blood, battle lines are being drawn between the once peaceful vampire and human enclave of Penton, Alabama, and the powerful Vampire Tribunal.
A Scottish gallowglass warrior turned vampire in the early 17th century, Mirren Kincaid once served the Tribunal as its most creative and ruthless executioner—a time when he was known as the Slayer. But when assigned a killing he found questionable, Mirren abandoned the Tribunal’s political machinations and disappeared—only to resurface two centuries later as the protector and second-in-command of Penton. Now the Tribunal wants him back on their side—or dead.
To break their rogue agent, they capture Glory Cummings, the descendant of a shaman, and send her to restore Mirren’s bloodthirsty nature. But instead of a monster, Glory sees a man burdened by the weight of his past. Could her magic touch—meant by the tribunal to bring out a violent killer—actually help Mirren break his bonds and discover the love he doesn’t believe he deserves?
It’s a town under siege, a powerful warrior in a battle with his past, and one woman who can make the earth move—literally—as the Penton Legacy continues.
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*****
REDEMPTION
Book One Penton Legacy series
By Susannah Sandlin
Following a worldwide pandemic whose vaccine left human blood deadly to vampires, the vampire community is on the verge of starvation and panic. Some have fanned into rural areas, where the vaccine was less prevalent, and are taking unsuspecting humans as blood slaves. Others are simply starving, which for a vampire is worse than death—a raging hunger in a creature too weak to feed.
Immune to these struggles—at first—is Penton, a tiny community in rural Chambers County, Alabama, an abandoned cotton mill town that has been repopulated by charismatic vampire Aidan Murphy, his scathe of 50 vampires, and their willingly bonded humans. Aidan has recruited his people carefully, believing in a peaceful community where the humans are respected and the vampires retain a bit of their humanity.
But an unresolved family feud and the paranoia of the Vampire Tribunal descend on Penton in the form of Aidan’s brother, Owen Murphy. Owen has been issued a death warrant that can only be commuted if he destroys Penton—and Aidan, against whom he’s held a grudge since both were turned vampire in 17th-century Ireland. Owen begins a systematic attack on the town, first killing its doctor, then attacking one of Aidan’s own human familiars
To protect his people, Aidan is forced to go against his principles and kidnap an unvaccinated human doctor—and finds himself falling in love for the first time since the death of his wife in Ireland centuries ago.
Dr. Krystal Harris, forced into a world she never knew existed, must face up to her own abusive past to learn if the feelings she’s developing for her kidnapper are real—or just a warped, supernatural kind of Stockholm Syndrome in which she’s allowing herself to become a victim yet again.
Susannah Sandlin’s REDEMPTION is the first in the Penton Legacy series. Book two, ABSOLUTION, will be out September 18, and book three, OMEGA, on December 18.
Amazon / Barnes and Noble /Book Depository
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Please welcome Susannah and enjoy her guest post!
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Penton, Alabama: Ghost Towns and Vampires
Susannah Sandlin
In the Penton Legacy series, the vampire scathe of “pacifist warrior” Aidan Murphy, a 400-year-old Irish master vampire, lives in an old Alabama cotton mill town called Penton.
Once the cotton mill shut down, the community became a ghost town until a few years ago when Aidan, looking for a place to settle his vampire family and their willingly bonded human familiars, discovered it. He bought up all the property, moved in his big vampire family, and they settled down to live happily ever after and escape the civil unrest and starvation caused when a human pandemic vaccine changed human blood chemistry enough to make it deadly to a vampire who fed on it.
Of course things don’t turn out to be flowers and unicorns. A war comes to Penton, and it becomes the spoke around which the whole discord within the vampire world turns. (And there are lots of sexy vampires and hot romances along the way!)
When I came up with the idea for this paranormal romance series, I needed a location for my vampire town (which was, in early drafts, called Stockholm because the first book, Redemption, dealt with Stockholm Syndrome). I wanted a town in Alabama so it wouldn’t tread too close to my urban fantasy series that’s set in New Orleans, and I’d moved to Alabama about a year before starting the series.
I didn’t have to look far. When I got a population map of the state and began looking for big, empty swaths of land that had very few people in it, I had only to look one county north of mine: Chambers County. So I hopped in the car for a Sunday afternoon drive, and fell in love.
The real Penton, Alabama, is an unincorporated community of about 200 people whose primary claim to fame is a stock car racetrack, the Penton Raceways, and a couple of churches. It’s not really a town at all.
A few miles south of it lies the Chambers County seat, LaFayette, which is a town of about 3,000 people very hard hit by the decline of the U.S. textile industry. It sits near the Georgia line, and the whole area was built around West Point Pepperell, a textile manufacturer that has moved most of its operations outside the U.S. and decimated the economy of this area.
LaFayette’s a beautiful little town, with a charming main street that I’d guess is at least 50 percent empty now. The surrounding countryside of rolling hills and pine forest is beautiful. The mayor is a 19-year-old student at the university where I work (how cool is that!?). It reminds me a LOT of the small town of about the same size in which I grew up, as did my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.
Neither LaFayette nor Penton are cotton mill towns, but I my hometown of Winfield was, up in northwest Alabama, so I know about those big hulking mills and the “mill villages”—small row houses owned by the mill and rented out to millworkers.
So, in the Penton Legacy books, I used as my setting the real location and name of Penton—out in the wilds of Chambers County—but for the town itself, I used a mashup of LaFayette and my own hometown with its mill and mill village.
And really, when you think about it, an old abandoned mill town, a rural Southern setting only two hours outside Atlanta…what better place to set a vampire war?
Have you read other books in a rural Southern setting? Have you ever lived in or visited a small Southern town? Leave a comment for a choice of signed book from the Penton Legacy series!
PHOTOS:
–Chambers County, Alabama, rural scene
–Downtown LaFayette, Alabama
–Mill Village
–Old mill
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About the Author:
Susannah Sandlin is the author of paranormal romance set in the Deep South, where there are always things that go bump in the night. A journalist by day, Susannah grew up in Alabama reading the gothic novels of Susan Howatch and the horror fantasy of Stephen King. (Um…it is fantasy, right?) The combination of Howatch and King probably explains a lot. Currently a resident of Auburn, Alabama, Susannah has also lived in Illinois, Texas, California, and Louisiana.
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