Uh-oh, I'm broken!

Raise your hand if you’ve ever accidentally pinched your finger while closing something or stumped your toe. There’s acute pain, followed by low-level throbbing unless you bang it again. When you have a physical injury, it’s hard to focus.

The same can be said for experiences that impact your senses, such as colds, fluid in your ears, and pink eye. These minor ailments heal in time, but nothing hurries that healing along. All the while, you’re expected to go about your ordinary routine as if you have no impairment.

Some people take to their beds when they have a malfunction. Some don’t miss a beat; they keep going like Energizer Bunnies. Whenever these “outages” happen to me, I mostly keep up with the basics and put the extras on hold. In general, I need more rest, and I tend to be more irritable when something’s wrong.

But Baxley Powell, the amateur sleuth in my Dreamwalker paranormal mystery series? How does she respond to losing her extra senses in Doggone It?

For most of her life, Baxley wanted to be normal and fit in with the other kids in her classes. It didn’t work out that way. Because of her surname, people (and their kids) knew she was “one of those Nesbitts.” Guys in her high school joked that if a guy went out on a date with Baxley, he also ask his dead grandpop for fishing advice.

In Doggone It, Baxley gets trapped in the drift between the realms of the living and the dead during a dreamwalk. After her rescue, she realizes her extra gears don’t work. All the things that made her different from everyone else are gone. That loss would’ve made the old Baxley ecstatic. Her lifelong goal of being like everyone else had been achieved.

But, her police consultant work depends on her extra gears, and she can’t afford to lose her job. According to her father, a former dreamwalker who endured this problem many times, she burned too much energy finding her way home from the dreamwalk. The good news is she will recharge. The bad news is not knowing how long that will take since this never happened to her before.


She tries to come to grips with her malfunction, but she just doesn’t feel like herself. Instead, she feels broken, like she’s limping along. In this midst of this trouble, a double homicide is reported. The sheriff collects her to go with him to the scene, the location of which is a veritable hot zone for sensitives. Baxley faces a horrible quandary. Does she dare tell the sheriff that she can’t do her usual extrasensory analysis of the scene?

Again, she turns to her father for advice. He loans her a pocket full of crystals, and the edginess she feels diminishes. She’s still not at full power, but she feels poised enough to view the murder scene tonight. She’ll have time to examine (and read) the evidence later.

Part of Baxley’s character arc in this story is accepting her new role and its pitfalls, with grace, fortitude, and courage. Being a dreamwalker and crossing between worlds comes with unusual occupational hazards. Fortunately, Baxley is developing experience with unusual everything.

For more about Doggone It, please visit my website at http://www.maggietoussaint.com

Doggone It buy links:
Amazon Kindle
Amazon hardcover
Barnes and Noble hardcover

This post is a re-blog from Doggone It's Great Escapes Blog Tour. It originally appeared at Brooke Blogs on Oct. 17, 2106 http://www.brookeblogs.com/doggone-it-maggie-toussaint/

To visit the haunted house or not?

In Doggone It, amateur sleuth Baxley Powell reluctantly agrees to visit June’s Folly, a haunted house, with her reporter friend, Charlotte. I say reluctantly because Baxley has a bad history with the place. The last time she went there, the energy of the place shorted her circuits, she passed out, and her father had to rescue her.

That was over ten years ago and she’s learned tons about shielding herself since then. Besides, Charlotte will go out there whether Baxley accompanies her or not. Baxley doesn’t think it’s safe for her friend to be out there alone, so they head out there together at dusk. Charlotte’s sure her feature on haunted houses will land on the front page and further advance her rise to fame and fortune.

When Baxley says her expertise is in spirits from beyond, Charlotte tells her “tough” and suggests her dreamwalker friend change her frequency so she could talk to earthbound spirits. Baxley has no intention of tapping into any spirit frequency in the swamp. She’s along for moral support.

It should have been so easy. Drive out there. Snap a few pictures, peek in the windows of the abandoned mansion, and scoot back home. Baxley does her part, shielding herself from the bad juju at June’s Folly. Even walking up to the house, she still feels strong and in command of her senses.

Not so, Charlotte. She sinks down on the steps and can’t manage to move at all. When Baxley touches her friend’s hand, she discovers Charlotte is ghostly cold. Somehow, non-sensitive Charlotte has found the ghost at the haunted house. Charlotte is none too happy about the occurrence and demands her friend’s help.

Baxley is in a jam. If she doesn’t help her friend by sussing out the ghost, she’ll be a wimp forever. But for her to access the ghost, she has to lower her paranormal protection. She’ll be vulnerable to a psychic attack, just like she was as a teenager. At 28, she’s too old to call her dad to come get her.

The longer she deliberates, the more anxious her friend becomes, and the guiltier Baxley feels. Why does this haunted house have to be smack dab in the middle of a swamp?

Charlotte wants the real story of June’s Folly, but Baxley never planned to do more than chaperone this adventure. Getting involved in the ghost assessment was not on her to-do list. It topped the list of items not to do.

You’ve met and overcome all manner of baddies on the spirit side of the veil, the logical side of her brain insists. But this place is like kryptonite to you – you should be scared, whines her inner child.

Usually Baxley relies on her intuition to guide her, but her senses are locked down so tight that she can’t tell if her fear is warranted or a remnant of a childhood mishap. There’s no way she would ever consider abandoning her best friend, and it’s tearing her up to see her friend out of commission.

What to do? Save her friend? Risk a similar or worse fate for herself?

Share your advice for Baxley.

Now available at: https://www.amazon.com/Doggone-Dreamwalker-Mystery-Maggie-Toussaint-ebook/dp/B01M4HICXJ/

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BIO. Southern author Maggie Toussaint writes mystery, suspense, and dystopian fiction. Her work won the Silver Falchion Award for best mystery, the Readers’ Choice Award, and the EPIC Award. She’s published fifteen novels as well as several short stories and novellas. The next book in her paranormal mystery series, Doggone It, releases October 2016. Maggie serves on the board for Southeast Mystery Writers of America and Low Country Sisters In Crime. Visit her at www.maggietoussaint.com.

All images except the bookcover were purchased from Dreamstime.

This post was first aired at http://communitybookstop.blogspot.com/2016/10/guest-post-daggone-it-author-maggie.html