Novel Magic: Why Be Normal When You Can Be PARAnormal? by Debra Doggett
It will be a sub-zero diurnal passage in the infernal pit of Abaddon when any miscreant soul dares call Sorchia’s Universe NORMAL. We totally and unequivocally agree with our guest, Debra Doggett. Normal is for wimps!!
Tell us what you think and check out her new book while you’re at it!
Why Be Normal When You Can Be PARAnormal?
By Debra Doggett
It’s possible that I’m the most mundane person you’d ever meet. I can’t predict the future, read auras, uncover psychic secrets, or reveal your past incarnations. Also, I don’t suck blood, howl at the moon, or transform into another, far more exotic shape. Probably I could make you smile, but that isn’t as hard as it sounds with most people. None of those gifts were part of my inheritance from my very nice, but mundane parents. Life, from this beginning, should have been quite normal.
The gift I was born with, however, is imagination. Lots and lots of imagination. Never one to waste a gift, I found that my imagination preferred people, places and things that were far from normal. Be a cheerleader? Nope, who settles for that? I wanted to be a time traveler instead. Trapped at home with small children? Minions, where do you think the idea of minions came from? Trust me, children really go with the flow when it involves imagination.
Imagination puts me anywhere I want to be, offers me any skill that intrigues me and places some of the most interesting people right in front of me. When I first began writing, I listened to as much information on the craft as I could find. Some folks will tell writers to write what they know. This piece of advice stuck out in my mind. I did take that one to heart, though I doubt it was in the way they meant. I do know what the bloodlust of a vampire feels like. My imagination tells me (along with the imagination of some other wonderful writers). I know how breathless it can be hurtling through space, or how the moonlit howl of a werewolf mid-transformation can speed up your heart.
Someone once asked me how hard it was to come up with my ideas. I didn’t know how to explain to them that there was never a time, day, or night, when ideas weren’t whizzing through my brain. My mind, my imagination, operates at warp speed with no notice of time. Not a good pace for sleeping, but one that means I must only grab a thought and go with it and bam! it’s another story. Thanks to my imagination, I can take that thought far beyond what’s normal.
A little About Debra Doggett
I’ve been many things in my life: actor, filmmaker, historian, writer, but putting words to paper
is the most satisfying. After years of moving around the US, I’ve settled in the desert of New Mexico, a far cry from my birthplace in Louisiana. You never know where life will go.
Bone of My Bones excerpt
“How old are you?”
“Excuse me?” The man finally decides to talk and that’s what he asks me?
“On the phone you said Alexis was mentoring you in the Craft.”
“Wouldn’t it have been easier to ask how long I’d been studying with her?”
He shrugged. “You want to know something, you need to ask specific questions.”
So he wanted to know how old I was? Now that was a loaded question if ever I heard one. The kind a smart man would steer clear of. And Matthias Romero struck me as a smart man. It made me wonder what he really wanted to know, if he had some ulterior motive for asking. I pondered the answer for a minute. Did I lie and tell him I was older, and therefore wiser? Or did I knock off a couple of years so he didn’t wonder why the hell I wasn’t better at this at my age? Did I go for the hot factor? Was it hotter to be 25 than 30? How old was he? I compromised and went with the truth, something I wouldn’t have to try and remember later.
“I turned twenty-eight last month.”
He just nodded. I couldn’t tell from the look on his face if he’d gotten what he wanted or not from my answer. Maybe all he wanted was to see if I’d lie to him. Then I felt it, not strong but subtle, a bare ripple around the edges of my thoughts. In a reflex action, I pushed back and the ripple broke.
“You’re reading me!”
I stopped and let go of his hand, both angry and astonished. No one had ever put the moves on me in that way before.
“Not anymore. You stopped me. Nice to know you noticed, though.”
“Nice to know I noticed? You do something that, that…”
“Rude.”
“Yeah, that rude and all you can say is nice to know you noticed?”
“Nice to know you noticed and knew what I was doing.” He started walking again. “And that you’re capable of doing something about it. That helps.”
“Helps?” I tried not to screech. “It helps?”
He started walking, careful not to touch my hand this time.
“Most women get flustered when you ask them their age. It throws them off, makes it a good time to check how sensitive they are.”
Was he kidding? He had been rude, but I passed the test. I had a hard time deciding whether to be furious or flattered as I reevaluated my infatuation with Mr. Tall, Dark and Strange.
You’re gonna want your own copy now, aren’t ya?
Connect With Debra Doggett
That’s why I write mystery, romantic suspense, time slips, and mystical urban fantasy––all sprinkled with a dash of magic or dusting of supernatural. My Lake Lanier Mysteries is time slip romantic suspense revolving around strange disappearances, eerie lore, ghost sightings and unusual occurrences attached to Atlanta’s man-made Lake, Sidney Lanier…a lake with the mysterious reputation for never giving up its dead.
rural area. Families who had lived in the basin for generations fought the decision. And understandably so. The lake would swallow homes, gas stations, banks, churches, cemeteries and Looper Speedway, one of the original racetracks to birth NASCAR, now sleeps beneath the surface.
detonations caused a seismic shift creating a portal connecting past to future? What a perfect setting for a time slip series… A town time forgot––Lake Lanier Mysteries was born.
lures victims to a watery grave. But when Lacey Montgomery’s car spins out of control and hurtles into the depths of the icy water, she awakens in the arms of a stranger, in a town she’s never heard of–34 years before she was born.
the arms of the handsome Nick Cramer. Unrelenting remorse over a past relationship haunts Nick, but he can’t deny the mysterious connection and hot desire Piper evokes.
Some Whisper, Some Shout, with you. Here’s an excerpt from the book. To give it a little context, my narrator, Jolie, is a woman whose family has struggled with mental illness. She’s afraid it will be passed to her and as a result, she tries to maintain a very routine, grounded life. But when she meets a mysterious stranger, she can’t help being taken in by him, even if it means letting go of some of her routines.
many of her stories. Weil, who attended SUNY Albany as an undergrad and NYU as a graduate student, is also a teacher. She enjoys writing her own dramas and lives near the beach in New Jersey, where she is at work on her next novel.