A Cajun-style fantasy

Suzanne Johnson is the author of the Sentinels series, urban fantasy novels featuring Drusilla Jaco, the junior wizard sentinel of New Orleans. The series kicked off with Royal Street, published earlier this year, and continues with River Road, just released in November. Johnson worked at Tulane for 15 years and now lives in Auburn, Ala.

What was the inspiration for the Sentinels series and DJ herself?

In New Orleans, Katrina’s aftermath was still a present, tangible thing we lived with daily, and when I moved away for family reasons in 2008, it was a shock to realize everyone thought of it as old news. Writing Royal Street was my way of working out my homesickness and leftover Katrina angst, and my own love letter to the city I still consider my hometown.

As for DJ … I wanted her to be someone who really gets the rug pulled out from under her by the post-Katrina flooding. That was something every single New Orleanian went through to some degree—who and what to rely on when the things and people and jobs and homes and culture we’ve taken for granted suddenly disappear.

DJ’s name is a mashup of my great grandmothers Drusilla Jane Harris and Ida Jaco, although I can’t imagine what either one of them would think about having a wizard named after her!

Why the long gap in time between Royal Street and River Road?

River Road was written before the BP oil spill occurred, although we hadn’t yet started the revision process. My editor and I talked about whether to move the timeline up even further to acknowledge the spill. But we didn’t want the series to be completely defined by disasters.

I wanted DJ and the gang to be able to start dealing with the preternaturals without also wondering when they might get their trash picked up again or have mail delivery or get the land-line telephones working.

Where in the world did you get the idea for Cajun merpeople?

I knew I wanted the story in River Road to revolve around a problem that arises with the Mississippi River, and I wanted to spread the story from New Orleans down into Plaquemines Parish, all the way to the mouth of the river. When I started looking at water species that might live in South Louisiana—merpeople, in particular—I also began to think of ways in which they might have lived here for a long time and been mainstreamed with humans without us knowing it.

Can you drop some hints about Elysian Fields?

On the surface, we have a story about a necromancer who begins controlling a member of the historical undead—not Jean Lafitte, but the serial killer from 1918-19 known as the Axeman of New Orleans. And DJ’s personal relationships take an interesting and unexpected twist.

What’s next for you?

I am working on some digital shorts centering on the adventures … make that misadventures … of the historical undead pirate Jean Lafitte, who was originally planned to appear only in the first scene of Royal Street, but he just wouldn’t go away. He plays a much bigger role in River Road and will continue to be a major series character.

I also have an unrelated holiday paranormal short that’s just come out, Christmas in Dogtown, which is set in St. James Parish around the time of the bonfires.

Some of the digital shorts are available for free on Johnson’s website, suzanne-johnson.com, and others can be purchased at online book retailers.