The fall from
superstar to worker bee in a matter of seconds
felt meteoric, but
truthfully it was another day at the office.
I was the sheriff’s
new app. Instead of point
and click, I’d become
point and sniff.
Maggie Toussaint, Dreamed It, (Kindle Loc. 1266)
Justice for the dead and
solace for the living is Baxley Powell’s creed, but she faces uncharted
territory in this sixth book of the Dreamwalker Mystery Series. The Suitcase
Killer has struck again, only this big city menace is now a problem for Baxley’s
hometown. As that investigation heats up, a local woman is reported missing.
The sheriff orders Baxley to work the missing person’s case. Listening to the
dead is familiar ground for Baxley but finding a missing young lady isn’t in
her skill set. Besides, her dreams rarely follow a timeline. With the clock
ticking, can this crime consultant discover a way to reach the living? Her main
source of help in the afterlife, a mentor named Rose, is unavailable. Instead,
Baxley must rely on her wits and her Native American boyfriend, Deputy Sam
Mayes, to find leads. Each shared dreamwalk and energy transfer binds them
closer together, creating another issue. Mayes wants to marry Baxley but it
isn’t that easy. They’re hampered by their community roles in opposite ends of
the state. Baxley juggles the pressure of two high-profile cases, a determined
suitor, and expanding her limits. One thing is certain. Without her
extrasensory sleuthing, the missing woman will die.
If
you’ve followed Maggie Toussaint’s Dreamwalker series, this cover shows changes
the new sixth novel Dreamed It
introduce. While previous covers had color, few had a human figure on them let
alone full face. It’s not Baxley Powell, Maggie’s dreamwalker main character,
because she doesn’t have white hair.
Baxley
has solved the riddles of her past and made peace with them. She still has
ongoing issues with her mentor, Rose, who is curiously absent in this book. I
can’t say I missed her. Although Baxley’s dreamwalks help solve the mystery,
most of the action takes place in reality—real world dilemmas that are life
threatening.
Dreamed It is one of the best reads in this series. I loved the
others, but this one realigned the series. It’s powerful. It’s a balance
between Baxley and Sam Mayes, her boyfriend, between Mayes and Sheriff Wayne,
and hopefully will become a balance between the dreamwalkers and Rose. We’ll see what Maggie brings us next!
Please
welcome back Maggie Toussaint back to WWK. E. B. Davis
Thank you, E.B. Davis, for the
opportunity to visit Writers Who Kill. I always love coming here and your
interviews are so much fun.
At
the start, Baxley and Sam wake up from a dreamwalk they don’t remember, but
they also find that they are in a different place. Although they eventually
figure out what happened, they don’t know who is responsible. If it had been
Rose, wouldn’t one of Baxley’s tattoos Rose seared on Baxley’s arm disappear or
change in some way indicating she owed Rose less time?
Based on the rules of
this story world, one assumes that would happen. However, as you’ve mentioned
some key elements are shifting in this saga. There’s still that dichotomy of
“is Rose really what she says she is” playing out, i.e., is she really an angel
masquerading as a demon? Baxley doesn’t exactly trust her Other World mentor,
but she relies on Rose for help in the afterlife so she is allied with her.
When
a body of a woman is found inside a suitcase near a closed stripper bar, Sam
Mayes calls his boss, a sheriff from a northern Georgia county, to get
reassigned so he can stay near to Baxley and also get involved in the
high-profile case. How can another sheriff reassign personnel to another county
without a request?
In this fictional world where
Mayes’ boss is running for governor, anything is possible. Baxley’s boss,
Sheriff Wayne Thomson, is savvy enough to realize he doesn’t want to be on the
wrong side of the future governor of Georgia. Though Wayne is all-about-Wayne,
he agrees to have Mayes temporarily reassigned to his unit. After all, he
requested Maye’s help in a previous case (Confound It), so there is already a
precedent set wherein all the players have established a cooperation basis.
Mayes
contacts an agent in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) without getting
Wayne’s permission. He knows the agent has been collecting data about the
Suitcase Killer. Was it an inadvertent gaff or was it done “accidently on
purpose?”
Those new to the series might not
know that Mayes is being groomed for Sheriff Blair’s job in North Georgia. He’s
used to running his own investigations and working without close supervision.
However, Sheriff Wayne Thompson keeps all of his staff on a short leash. To
Mayes, contacting the GBI agent was the next step, and since they were
acquainted, it was expedient for Mayes to initiate contact. Wayne did not take
that well, and overreacted, which put Baxley in a near-death situation.
A
missing-person’s report is filed on a young woman in Baxley’s county. After
Baxley is over stimulated and passes out from exposure to the stripper bar,
Sheriff Wayne assigns her to the missing-person case. How does Baxley contact
the living?
As an author, this was a fun
problem to have! In each book of the series, Baxley has been opening herself to
accepting all of her psychic powers. She’s gone from only dreaming in her
sleep, to dreaming in a meditative state, to touch readings, and more. In this
book, she struggles to access the missing woman. What she is able to first
detect through touch readings is the woman’s despair and loneliness. Her ghost
dog also helps track the missing woman, so she doesn’t have to do this by
herself.
Is
Mayes’s Native American name for Baxley, Walks with Ghosts, a misnomer? She
seems to be able to walk with the living as well.
Mayes gave her that nickname
because he knew that Oliver, an earthbound dog spirit, was attached to her. In
language and religion, there are times when the words ghost and spirit are used
interchangeably. I favor this usage, and by extension, have Baxley contacting
the spirit portion of a living person in addition to her communion with spirits
of the dead. However, as with learning any new skill, there are speedbumps and
errors along the way.
What
does u ge-yu-di mean? Why won’t Mayes tell Baxley what it means?
It means lovely. And he does tell
her. He’s also sneaky about using her ignorance of his cultural traditions to
get them engaged Native American style before he asks her parents for her hand
in marriage. Mayes knows a good thing when he sees it, and he’s made no secret
of the fact that Baxley is the life mate he wants by his side.
You
made up the embarrassing tale involving the embezzlement of public funds and
the mayor of Tampa, FL, right?
Absolutely! One hundred percent
fiction. In the first book of the series, Rose had Baxley contact a woman in
Tampa as a test. When I needed someplace for Baxley to go in Dreamed It, Tampa was the logical
alternative. As for mayor scandals, there are a good many reported online from
other cities.
Why
doesn’t Baxley like surprise gifts?
A long time ago, she got the
terrible surprise of sitting in an uncle’s chair and getting trapped in the
rift. Not knowing how to traverse the area between the living and the dead, she
tumbled out of control until someone noticed her plight. Ever since then, she’s
very guarded and prefers to have order in her already chaotic life.
Baxley
asks good questions. Mayes makes good deductions. Is that why they are a good
team?
It’s part of the dynamic. Mayes
is also a dreamwalker so they can work together in this world or the next. His
skillset is slightly different, and one of the things he can do is generate
energy to recharge Baxley when she overdoes it. Basically, he speaks her
language on every plane of existence.
Baxley
and Mayes get into an awkward situation at the morgue. Because the ME bleached
the victim’s bones, they must team up to dreamwalk because the connection is
too weak. To do so, Baxley lays down on top of Mayes while each of them holds a
bone of the victim to tap into her memories. But they are caught by the morgue
staff, who thinks they are doing something kinky. Why is Baxley so adamant to
rectify their perception and Mayes doesn’t seem to care?
As a local crime consultant,
Baxley can’t afford to have avenues of investigation closed to her. Plus she’s
mortified that the M.E. thought she would do anything unprofessional in the
morgue. Mayes is more pragmatic. The M.E. has a closed mind and nothing Mayes
says or does will change that. It’s cultural. Baxley dreams of universal
acceptance while Mayes feels that some people’s prejudice’s run too deep for
acceptance.
Does
Cherokee custom mandate the prospective groom ask for the bride’s mother’s
permission to marry?
Yes. Cherokee have a matriarchal
society.
When
Wayne gets into trouble with the FBI, Mayes seems eager to take over the
sheriff’s position, and yet, when Wayne covers for them, Mayes is fine with
Wayne taking credit for finding the serial killer. I find that a bit hard to
believe. Doesn’t Mayes want credit?
Mayes is quite comfortable in the
role of acting sheriff due to being groomed to take over as sheriff in his home
county in north Georgia. One thing to remember about Mayes. He isn’t a lawman
for the glory of it. It’s one more tool in his skillset to fight the evil in
this world. Like Baxley, he’d prefer to stay out of the limelight. In Dreamed It, Mayes and Baxley grapple
with their careers being in opposite ends of the state. Mayes would give up
being a deputy if it meant he got Baxley.
Will
Baxley learn much from her dreamwalker grandmother’s journals?
Baxley struggles with her unusual
skill set, wanting a normal life for her daughter, and community acceptance.
The journals represent a way for her to see how an ancestress dealt with
similar issues. There is a bond that occurs when people share the same journey
and the net effect is to give Baxley a clearer view of who and what she is.
“Perception
versus truth” is a big element of Dreamed
It. Why and how does it apply?
Authors rarely write in a vacuum,
and I have found that larger scale events in reality can sneak into my work. I
don’t have a degree in sociology, so apologies if I misstate this principle.
“Like attracts like” is a real thing. If a room was filled with orange people
and there were two blue people at opposite ends of the room, more than likely
the blue people would seek each other out. The reason for this is that people
in general are comfortable with people who look like us, act like us, and think
like us. People with different customs, manners, behaviors, and more take us
out of our comfort zone. Further, some people value perception over truth. In
our nation and the world, we see that playing out over and over again. In Dreamed It (and other Dreamwalker novels),
Baxley and Mayes face people willing to believe perception and unwilling to
hear uncomfortable truths. Sound familiar?
What’s
next for Baxley?
In fall of 2020, book seven of
this series, All Done With It, will
release. Writing this book challenged me in ways I couldn’t imagine before I
started on it. My goal for this book is for everyone to have a sense of closure
as various elements of the series come together and reprise in a new way. I
don’t want to say too much and give away the plot but I think it’s pretty darn
awesome.