Author CR Hiatt has stopped by today with a guest post for the Gone at Zero Hundred blog tour!
"McSwain & Beck kick
ass" says @Fyrinstructor04
"Their lives are in the hands of two 18 year-olds..."
Sydney Marie McSwain - a tomboy who yearned for a father.
Cody Beck - a wannabe filmmaker, wisenheimer and flirt.
Jaden White - the star who led the high school hockey team to two championships, and was now on the A-list for NHL scouts.
Sydney Marie McSwain loves her mom, Anna - a private investigator in the coastal city where they live - but they had a major issue between them. Anna refused to give Sydney the identity of her father. On the day of her high school graduation, they were battling it out, once again. An hour later, Sydney, Cody and Jaden were at the local café, and watched as Anna was gunned down.
Faced with immediate responsibility, Sydney and Cody agreed to take over the agency, only they changed the name to McSwain & Beck. At the same time, Sydney convinced Sutter Beach Detective, Ace Carter, to help her track down her father.
Then out of the blue, a model walked in and hired them to follow her step-brother. While Cody was busy editing a trailer to solicit new clients, Sydney settled into her lemon-yellow pickup to do surveillance, and wound up staking out a secret club called The Devil’s Door whose suspicious members wore the tattoo of a devil.
That same night, Sydney received a call from one of her mom’s former clients, but the client was gunned down at the location where they agreed to meet. The mysterious discovery of a DVD revealed the possibility that teenagers were being abducted, only nobody reported them missing.
On the hunt for the victims, McSwain & Beck were chased by men in ski masks, nearly gunned down by a members of a drug cartel called the outlaws, Sydney’s precious pickup was broken into; then the step-brother they were hired to follow, was found dead and Sydney was the number one suspect.
If things weren’t bad enough already, they had to figure out how to crash a red-carpet Mardi Gras bash being held on a private cruise ship, before it sailed off into the sunset, where they just might meet the devil, himself.
Now, the clock was ticking…
And time was running out…
How was she ever going to find her father, now?
"Their lives are in the hands of two 18 year-olds..."
Sydney Marie McSwain - a tomboy who yearned for a father.
Cody Beck - a wannabe filmmaker, wisenheimer and flirt.
Jaden White - the star who led the high school hockey team to two championships, and was now on the A-list for NHL scouts.
Sydney Marie McSwain loves her mom, Anna - a private investigator in the coastal city where they live - but they had a major issue between them. Anna refused to give Sydney the identity of her father. On the day of her high school graduation, they were battling it out, once again. An hour later, Sydney, Cody and Jaden were at the local café, and watched as Anna was gunned down.
Faced with immediate responsibility, Sydney and Cody agreed to take over the agency, only they changed the name to McSwain & Beck. At the same time, Sydney convinced Sutter Beach Detective, Ace Carter, to help her track down her father.
Then out of the blue, a model walked in and hired them to follow her step-brother. While Cody was busy editing a trailer to solicit new clients, Sydney settled into her lemon-yellow pickup to do surveillance, and wound up staking out a secret club called The Devil’s Door whose suspicious members wore the tattoo of a devil.
That same night, Sydney received a call from one of her mom’s former clients, but the client was gunned down at the location where they agreed to meet. The mysterious discovery of a DVD revealed the possibility that teenagers were being abducted, only nobody reported them missing.
On the hunt for the victims, McSwain & Beck were chased by men in ski masks, nearly gunned down by a members of a drug cartel called the outlaws, Sydney’s precious pickup was broken into; then the step-brother they were hired to follow, was found dead and Sydney was the number one suspect.
If things weren’t bad enough already, they had to figure out how to crash a red-carpet Mardi Gras bash being held on a private cruise ship, before it sailed off into the sunset, where they just might meet the devil, himself.
Now, the clock was ticking…
And time was running out…
How was she ever going to find her father, now?
HOW I CAME UP WITH THE FICTIONAL LOCATION OF SUTTER BEACH
When I started to write the YA action-mystery, Gone at Zero Hundred 00:00, featuring the 18-year-old duo, McSwain & Beck, I knew my story was based on real-life crimes, but I wanted my plot to be set in a fictional location. Even though horrific crimes occur in big cities and towns across the USA, and any one of them could work for the story, I wanted to add a little fun, and protect the innocent, so to speak.
Before even writing the first paragraph of Gone at Zero Hundred 00:00, I had my plot ideas outlined in the form of a screenplay for the first three books in the series of McSwain & Beck. That made it easier to create the fictional locations needed to make my stories ring true. There were a few key points I had to keep in mind when creating my town/city. My main character, Sydney McSwain was sure the father that was missing in her life was a career military man. She didn’t know it with 100% certainty, but it was the only logical conclusion, in her mind, for why he hadn’t been around. For that reason, I wanted a fictional town, or city that had military bases and housing nearby. It was also a critical component for the plot in the third book of the series, Lethal Hostages.
Author Links: Website Blog Twitter Facebook Purchase for Kindle Purchase in Paperback
