Bookwild - On the Surface by Rachel McGuire: Boating YouTubers, A Missing Woman and Internet Sleuths

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

This week I talk with Rachel Graham and Lee-Ann McGuire Whitlock, who as a writing duo make up pen name Rachel McGuire, about their super-bingeable destination thriller On the Surface.On the Surface SynopsisSawyer Stone III and Dani Fox, a young couple who spend their time circumnavigating the globe aboard their 42-foot sailboat and documenting it for their fledgling YouTube channel Sailing with the Foxes, have anchored in Exuma, in the Bahamas. As they wait for the price of crypto to rebound so they can provision and continue their journey, they’re partying and exploring with their fellow cruisers offshore. On the surface, everything looks perfect. But one night, Dani vanishes after a boat party, and Sawyer has no memory of her disappearance.The search for Dani is initially fueled by concerns that she drowned during one of her daily ocean swims, but Dani's prescheduled video posts, recorded before she went missing, soon reveal a darker side to her relationship with Sawyer. Meanwhile, Royal Bahamas Police Force Inspector Veronique Knowles has her hands full trying to keep the investigation on course as the story of the American woman missing in the Bahamas goes viral and the internet sleuths unearth secrets from Sawyer’s past. Sawyer Stone is far from perfect, but is he a murderer?   Get Bookwild MerchCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackCheck Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck out the Imposter Hour Podcast with Liz and GregFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrian 

This week I am super excited to be talking with Rachel McGuire, which is the pin name for writing duo, Rachel Graham and Leanne McGuire Whitlock. And we are going to be talking about their debut thriller on the surface, which had so many of my favorite things in it. I love thrillers that deal with and touch on social media. I think it's really interesting when thrillers take a look at true crime and the way that we get attached to it online. So I was super excited to read this. and once I started it, I could not put it down. But here's the synopsis.

Sawyerstone III and Danny Fox, a young couple who spends their time circumnavigating the globe aboard their 42-foot sailboat and documenting it for their fledgling YouTube channel sailing with the foxes have anchored an exuma in the Bahamas. As they wait for the price of crypto to rebound so they can provision and continue their journey, they're partying and exploring with their fellow cruisers offshore.

On the surface, everything looks perfect, but one night, Danny vanishes after a boat party, and Sawyer has no memory of her disappearance. The search for Danny is initially fueled by concerns that she drowned during one of her daily ocean swims. But Danny's pre-scheduled video posts recorded before she went missing soon reveal a darker side to her relationship with Sawyer. Meanwhile, Royal Bahamas police force investigator, Veronica Veronica Konnkels, has her hands full trying to keep the investigation on course as the story of the American woman missing in the Bahamas goes viral in the internet sluice unearthed secrets from Sawyer's past. Sawyerstone is far from perfect, but is he a murderer? I flew through this book. Like, could not put it down. I was so hooked. It has multiple points

of view. So if you love that, you're going to love this. I thought it was really cool having like the perspective of the people involved and then zooming out and having the police's perspective sometimes as well. And the ending is just wild. You absolutely not guess it. So that being said, let's get into it. The first thing that I wanted to know was when did you guys both realize you wanted to like write a book or that you wanted to be an author? So maybe we, we actually met through a book club in the South when we both lived there. I live there for less than a year and Leanne lived there for a number of years. And we, of course, we met through a book club, right? So we've always been interested. And Liam was a lit major, right, before she went to law school. So. But it never gave

me the desire to be an author. Like, I think having, you know, having a background that was like more working class, like my career aspirations were. always like to get that bag, you know, it's like to be a lawyer or like something where, you know, I never really entertained ideas of like a financially precarious career path such as like writing. Yeah. So it's like has definitely like the luxury of being able to take the time to do it has come to me later in life. And which, but I'm super appreciative of it now. And like Rachel and I both have teenagers and we think like oh it's wonderful for them that they could like you know i'm i'm always saying to to my teen like oh you can be a filmmaker or be something really cool and she just

wants to be a computer programmer and it's like oh it's so pointing to me it's like so you know i like those the pie in the sky career aspirations but yeah never had them myself as a as a kid And it's a hard road. It's a harder road than I think you could imagine as a kid, you know, the rejection. So much. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like it sounds like a hobby sometimes once you're an adult more than anything, even though it's not. It can definitely be more. Right. Yeah. Right. And a lot of people make freelance careers and right in addition to doing a million other things until they actually have enough success. Kate McKeehan has a great substack on agenting, and she has a great piece about the dog catching the car of riding full-time and how much pressure there is and no benefits

and no holidays. It's really an interesting piece. Yeah. So. Yeah, I'm going to have to look that up for sure. So did you guys write it all before you guys, you guys, wrote together, basically did you have separate processes or did you develop your writing process together? So I have done some writing. I've been published in romance years ago and then had just discoverability so hard. I had stopped and life got crazy and a couple more moves. We're in California now, but we moved a fair amount.

My husband's a software engineer, but he's also a helicopter pilot. So we're a family that follows our dreams. That's awesome. Even if they don't pay that well. So, yeah. So I had done a little bit. And so this story, I think, was an outgrowth of the pandemic and watching a lot of YouTube channels on people going places and traveling.

Leanne is a huge traveler. So much more well-traveled than I am. I'm so envious of all the traveling. She's done. And unfortunately, I think. I think the majority of mine in the last, you know, at least 15 years since having kids has been virtually watching other people travel, like on sailing channels. Yeah.

Nice. So how did you guys approach writing it together? Did you guys like pick certain chapters to write? Did you go back and forth? It's so organic for us. We had an outline we worked from and then that grew into a draft. And then we shared it like, I think it started in Scribner, right, Leanne, and then we moved it into Google Docs. And we would just pop in and out.

That doesn't sound very, I mean, it was all very logical until the characters take on their own will. And then it becomes, right, Leanne, it becomes like just following what they tell us to do. Right. Yeah. because we don't live close to one another like we have made it a point at the beginning of the project to like get together and do a sort of intensive few days boot camp of plotting so we had really knew where this plot was going to go

and there were some like minor changes but like we had the the plot mapped out before we started filling in the scenes and developing characters and that sort of came more organically after afterwards, but that way we could just sort of go and write on our own and then just to do that. Those like revisions to each others writing so much so that it's like just kind of blends together. And I think it's not really noticeable of like it's, you know, we're not doing separate parts of the book. We're both doing kind of everything. although sometimes spoke more for different characters.

But yeah, it's a really interesting process to the point where like, now I can't remember, you know, who came up with whatever aspects of it. I'm like, was that me or Rachel? Who long was that? Yeah. To take the credit or the blame. But that's the beauty of having a co-author is that anything,

like, oh, for the, like, a little bit of racy bit, I can, I can blame that on, on Rachel for my, oh, it was a lot, it was a lot racist. There's only one questionable theme that has any degree of, I wouldn't even call it spice, because it's essentially an assault, really. But I had added a bunch of adjectives in there because that's, I've read probably more in romance than any other genre, although I read throughout the genres. And that scene ended up coming out much spicier. And it didn't quite fit. And the beauty of our working together is like, if I think that Leanne wrote something that doesn't quite fit, I'll sit on that and think about it.

And then, but we leave it in. And then if our beta readers bring it up or our editor will discuss the change. And this is for stuff I write as well as Leighan. Yeah. And that's that's kind of, we don't sort of police each other throughout the process, which is really helpful, I think. And we don't have, we have pretty small egos, I'd say. And so we're not super, like, we're not trying to kill each other's darlings, you know? That's really cool. You have to tell the story, though, the story that I love so much of you and the and the mugger. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I worked in years and years ago in my 20s. I worked in a doctor's office and someone came in from the street, went through the office manager's desk, stole her purse, and I see her fighting with him in the hallway. And I don't know why, but maybe because I was a firefighter, paramedic, my first instinct was like to get myself involved in this situation. So I, she gets knocked to the ground.

He runs through the waiting room. I run after him. I yell to the security guard, you know, stop him. he's a thief he's carrying a woman's handbag and a woman at the end just watches him run by watches me run by and then he turns around and looks at me because I was a pretty good runner at the time I was running like 20 miles week and he turns over his shoulder he looks at me and he says you're a dumb B word and I stopped in my tracks I was like he's right I mean I should not be running after this person He could have weapons.

So that adrenaline that had me going just like I stopped in my tracks. And I was like, that was important feedback. I needed to take that feedback. It's like the perfect example of like what makes a great co-author, though. It's like, you know, it's not being able to like hear stuff and not go like, stay committed to what you're doing. It's like, oh, I can intake. I can intake this information and revise and move on.

And we don't always. 100% agree with each other's feedback, but, like, you know, it's, I think those having the small egos definitely helps. It's, like, much more collaborative and we're not, you know, fighting for, for whatever little real estate or something like a little idea or seen like we just don't get invested in it in the same way of, like, feeling like you need to defend it as a great idea. That's really cool. That's a great. story. I'm going to use that story. I'm going to remind myself of that story when I'm struggling to take feedback. Yeah. Yeah. Wherever it comes from. You kind of said that some of the inspiration might have

been from being trapped in your house during COVID and watching different traveling shows. But what was like the inspiration for the like plot line of the book? blocks for Leanne and I in this book, it was sort of what if. Okay, so what if they're on this vote? And then what if she goes missing? And then what if like it goes viral? And what if all these other people start getting involved that really have no business injecting themselves into the problem? Yeah.

And how do the police handle that? And I actually, one of my college friends became a detective. and her voice is in the book a little bit where she talks about the Inspector Knowles that comes through that way when she says, you know, Rachel, my friend told me, we catch so many criminals because of social media because they have their geotags were on and there's outstanding warrants. You know, they just like pose with the proceeds of their robbery or whatever. Like it's, you know, and so we wanted to make them, you know, we wanted to write something.

like we like to read, which is not too dark. Fast-paced. Fast-paced. Not women victimized on every page kind of thing. That's really hard for me to read, and I think hard for Leanne to read. So we wanted something that kicked along and that maybe spoke to some of these different elements that we're all living. with the advent of social media and and how it impacts how people you know become influencers because our main characters are having this this sailing channel yeah so yeah you just kind of

what-if until you had a whole story exactly that's right that's awesome lots of phone calls lots of a couple boot camps like leanne said so yeah um so it takes they they're living on a sailboat have either of you guys lived on a boat before or how did you research it if you haven't so being poor in college and live with a lot of people in a very small small space like yeah I definitely did I had not had boat experience but I've certainly had experience like sharing accommodations with messy roommates and being the messy roommate. And so I, those frictions of living on a boat,

that claustrophobia of it come by naturally. Yeah. Danny's room is straight out of my son's room, I think. You were like, I was getting my frustration out with Danny. Yeah. I lived on a boat for 10 days. In 2001, my college friend and my mom and some of her family, we all went on this sailing boat trip.

We flew into Tahiti and sailed around a couple of islands. And back then, it was actually, it was like 100 bucks a day to stay on the boat and all the food was on the boat. So you had to make your own food. I mean, you could get a chef as an additional expense, which we didn't do. We did get a captain for the boat because he was French, because there's so many corals. heads and things in in those off borobora and these islands that you if you're in experience you're going to be running amok yeah so or a ground I guess and so it was I had to share a bed with my mom

this little tiny birth and I would go to bed before her and every night getting into the bed my mom's not super flexible she would like kick me in the head getting into the birth I was like and it was just you could hear everyone talking. You could hear every, not just on our boat, but if we were anchored in a place where there were a bunch of other boats, the water just travel, or the sound travels right across the water. And it really felt like you could hear what was going on on the other boat. So it was, it was gorgeous. It was an incredible trip. It was a lot cheaper back then. And, but it really does give you sort of that sense of like how hard it is to live on a boat, how hot it is. There's not, you know, water.

things like that. I would not survive is what I took away from it. I'm fine on land. So you do also, there's like a decent amount of social media commentary that we've kind of talked about. But how did you guys approach, like, which parts of that you wanted to include in it? That's an interesting, interesting question. I guess like we're so immersed in it that we talk about it all the time. And I think like for both of us, we have this kind of like profound ambivalence about it. And you know, did you hear about that story this week? It's like such a little microcosm of social media of the of the guy, the married guy who was flying from Houston to New York. And he met some woman in the hotel, in the airport bar.

and they were having drinks and then gets on the plane and he convinces her to sit beside him. And so a woman across the aisle is listening to their drunken conversation as this married guy tells this woman he's trying to seduce about his family and his kids and like all this. So she starts like going on TikTok and outing this guy for like, you know, hey, Katie in Houston, your husband's trying to cheat on you. or anyway like of course

within an hour like TikTok had found the wife and I'm like I'm just sitting with this and going like I do not know what to feel about that because like it's amazing and so powerful and like like what a like what powerful cool and like how terrible at the same time

it's like you know and I feel like everything that Every interaction that we have with social media has these, like, it's, like, different parts where it's, it's simultaneously, like, amazing and terrible. And I feel like we sort of explored, like, a lot of the more terrible side in our book. And, like, but we both have, I think, you know, I can say, like, a really deep-seated ambivalent. and story where it's like, I love this and I love, I find some aspects of it's super entertaining and engaging and like really have some great communities like in my own lives that are like social media based. But at the same time, I kind of wonder what it's doing to us. Like,

is it, you know, is that a moral panic? Is it, you know, I think about those things a lot. And I think there's no real answers to those questions. And especially if you have teens, we both have teenagers. And it's disturbing, you know, the time spent online, the controls you try to put in place to prevent, like, their entire lives being lived online. If they're so inclined, it's, you know, it's sobering. And then the surgeon general in the U.S. comes out and says, you know, we need limits. then. So to research the book, I did spend a fair amount of time and landed to some of these forums

where I don't want to name the website, but some of these forums where they're actively trying to investigate. And, you know, there are lots of downsides to that. I mean, there have been some isolated cases where they have been helpful to the police, right, with Gabby Petito and a handful of other cases. but I think the net effect may be more negative with the doxing and the wild theories and things like that. Yeah, it can get out of control so fast. Right.

And no deep cross. Like there's no no rights, no presumption of innocence or no kind of, you can be quickly. tried in the court of public opinion. That's exactly what I was about to say. Yeah. Like it all happens online and it's like people can just like make up their mind about it before like anything factual has been verified. Yeah. No time for facts.

Right. Right. And the other thing you guys touch on is kind of like how true crime people can become fanatics about it. or also like really feel like detectives themselves. So it sounds like you guys spent times in some of those forums for the research. Was there anything about it that like stood out to you that was like kind of common with people like that? Well, it's sort of in bialtruism. I think people genuinely want to help and think they're helping.

And, you know, I think we all feel a little bit of that. someone goes missing in our community. I don't know if you want to talk about that part of how we met Leanne, but it used to be, you know, you handed out flyers, you did searches. You did actually get involved in real life when someone in your community went missing. But now the community, of course, is just, you know, sprawled out into a different form. Yeah. Right.

It's, yeah, it's kind of that same thing as social media in terms of like, it's just like really unwieldy. And I think of like the Adon-Syadd case that was in the podcast serial. Like it was such a huge galvanizing thing where it ended up bringing so much attention to this. one case where there may have been an unjust conviction. And there were so many dramatic elements. And it was really just like one random murder case. And I find that it's just such an interesting dynamic because like I'm 100% I love true crime. I really enjoy that.

And I find it fascinating. and I also find the idea like that you know that you can crowdsource criminal investigations like incredibly empowering like I love the idea of like people at home being able to like contribute to this like criminals being caught like that to me is like so effective it's just super exciting and I love it when it happens and but somehow it seems like that you you wish that with this crowdsourcing that it would more often bring attention to cases that haven't received a lot of attention where it seems like in practice it's the opposite like with Gabby Petito and you know where it's like so much a billion tweets about one person when there's so many other worthy people that have have suffered similar similar faith in the same time frame and get zero attention. So it's like that's the unwieldiness of it. You can't control it. And you can't make it super effective. But yeah. Yeah, it's kind of it's it's the way I have

talked about internet in general is that like it's made up of humans. So in some ways it's not it's not like the internet that's good or bad. It's just, it's like who's controlling certain spaces of it and how are certain humans acting in certain areas. So it is, there's like, what was that Netflix Doc? Was that don't fuck with cats or whatever? We're like, that story is super fun and like gets you super excited about like the fact that like everyone could come together and like figure something out. Catching cannibal. Yeah, right. Right.

Yeah. But then on the flip side sometimes, which you guys kind of touched on this. But there's also a book called Missing White Woman by Kelly Garrett. And I had just read that before I read your guys. And she kind of touches in that book on how like sometimes though people are completely sure they figured out who the problem is. And they're like posting it all over the place. And someone's life gets ruined. and they weren't even the person that did anything.

So there's like that negative side. Oh, yeah. I mean, the Ramsey case, the end of the list is long of suspects whose lives have been kind of ruined by the court of public opinion coming down on six different people that are peripherally related or may be, you know, the killer. It's, I mean, there's, there's an American woman missing in the Bahamas right now, actually. Oh, wow. Yeah, it has been headline news for the last day or two.

She disappeared from Eyo retreat, I think, in Nassau or somewhere. And but because in our book, there's a woman goes missing in the Bahamas. It's not, I mean, I think that I did see the State Department had like a level two travel warning for the Bahamas. But really those two islands where, you know, the more. populated areas where there is some crime. And there is a part in our book where the inspector talks to her boss and he says, you know, we have all these missing people. And this one gets more attention than any of them have gotten. And she's been missing like a few days. And, you know, she's, she's pretty. She looks good in a bikini. Like she's, she's, you know, people repost her picture everywhere,

you know. And it really tells you a lot about, um, what gets attention and resources in our society. Yeah. Yeah, it is unfortunate that in that direction. Yeah. I mean, obviously, we want everyone's cases to get attention, but it's just they don't. Right.

Yeah. So what draws you guys to writing in the thriller genre? This is a great question. It's, I don't know. there's so many possibilities. There's so many different types of stories in that genre. Yeah, there are tropes, but as someone who has read a lot of romance, the tropes can be sort of mixed up and turned on their heads.

And I think you can play more with an ending, obviously, than a romance. I mean, if you're billing it as romance, it has to have an H-E-A or an A-G-E-A or an HFN, right? But with thrillers, I think you have like so much leeway of what you can write about and what kinds of people you can bring into the mix and what you can sort of make them do to each other, you know, manson humanity to man, grudges, and it's pretty fascinating. It's definitely the darker side of human nature, whereas romance is sort of the lighter side, I guess. Yeah. That makes sense. That's what I like reading them. Right. That's what we set out to like write the book that is the kind of book that we enjoy reading, which is like, you know, not too dark like we talked about before, but like entertaining.

And, you know, we also like, you know, like the sort of true crime aspect of it in the sense of like we're trying to convey. something that would like realistically happen in the world which is like uh sort of like like half the thrillers are like in that camp and and others have a more fantastical bent of like things that are like you know did not see that coming um it's like uh because it's something super unlikely what what rachel always refers to is it's facial blindness like when that's what the what the plot twist is like oh suffering from facial blindness so yeah we we both like things where it's like a bit more true to life and and maybe a bit like grittier but not super dark but still fun and like in the popcorn thriller genre of like escapism and enjoyable and just kind of like kind of fun yes

Yeah, when Crooked Lane gave us our, sorry, when Crooked Lane gave us our pub date of July 9th, I'm like, yes, this is beach read territory. I mean, it is, I think, sort of a quintessential beach read. Yes. Take it to the pool, to the beach, to the lake, you know, it's an entertaining, fun day with the book. I think. Yeah, that's what I was about to say. It is like perfect summer. reading like even the like on location or not on location what am i thinking of uh or a destination yeah that's the way i was looking for yeah like even that part just makes it fun and it is it just has so many fun twists it's like i feel like i read it so fast it might have been two days but it was because i had work on one of them yeah like to hear yeah so i hope i know the answer to this

but do you guys plan to write together again? Yeah, definitely. Nice. We're working on it right now. So that's awesome. You can be through the pipeline, yeah. Yeah. I am very excited to see what else you guys come out with.

Where can people follow you to stay up to date with everything? On social media. Yeah, right. Ironically, on Instagram. We're probably most active on Instagram. We do have Facebook. We are on TikTok, but, and we post videos on TikTok, so TikTok. Nice.

Yeah. And the book comes out July 9th. So that's like next, it's like 10 days or something. Yeah. And then the audio book is on Neck Alley right now. So I wanted to do a plug for that. DreamScape has the rights to that. And it's already getting.

getting a lot of downloads on NetGalley and it has a cast of five voice actors who are amazing, amazing. I don't know if you do much audio book, but it's, it's, the characters are so well cast. It's just incredible. That is what's so cool is right before we got on, one of my friends who knew that I had read the book, texted me and she was like, I just saw that on the surface is on an audio on NetGalley. And she was like, do you think it's one that like I could follow via audiobook. And I was like, I definitely think so. And I was like, I was like, I don't know yet, but there's a chance there are multiple narrators too. So that's super exciting to hear because I like, I like, go request it. Oh, yeah, five narrators. We got

Frankie Corso and Ethan, Evan Sibley and, and Chante and Savvy and David. And they are, they do such an incredible job. It's, um, and, you know, it is easy to follow because it's not, it is many multi-POV, but it's not dual timelines or anything that would make it complicated to follow. And it's, it's run out in days. So every chapter starts with what day she's missing. Um, so that I think, because I get lost sometimes in books, if it's, you know, and certainly with audio books, you know, when you can't flip back as easily. But yeah, no, we, we, I'm so impressed with what they did with it. It's incredible. I mean, and they really voiced. Yeah. Yeah. So that is awesome. Well, hopefully everyone either reads or if they are an

audiobook, audio book listening is reading too, by the way. I wasn't trying to make that delineation. Hopefully everybody gets a physical copy or if you love audio, they go get the audio copy as well. But thank you so much for being on the podcast. This is great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah.