http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/gray-matters/article/Shivering-and-homesick-I-wrote-about-Houston-8313719.php?t=45908b415b438d9cbb

Homesick, I wrote about Houston

I’ve never lived anywhere where people were more themselves

By Nancy Stancill, for the Houston Chronicle

June 21, 2016 Updated: June 21, 2016 10:58am

 

Make me love Houston.

That was the pungent advice my writing mentor gave me after reading the latest chapters in the book I was writing. I was in graduate school at the University of Tampa, and as I struggled with the draft that was to become my second novel, Winning Texas, his prescription became my guiding principle.

I quickly realized the truth of his gentle criticism. I was so busy juggling a plot where reporters, politicians, strippers, gamblers, and secessionists were competing for the spotlight that I’d mostly neglected to set the stage. I was shortchanging the wondrous place that inspired my book.

Treat Houston as your most compelling character, my mentor said. As a writer, you’re lucky. Think of the overload of books set in Los Angeles, New York, Paris and London. Houston is still an exotic mystery to many readers.

So I thought back to the city I loved, the city I missed.

IN THE summer of 1978, my husband and I left California for Houston. He’d accepted a job with a Houston bank, and I was trying for a job with one of the two big-city newspapers. We’d loved living in Palo Alto, but even after two years, it didn’t feel like home. We’d grown up in Virginia and North Carolina, and though the people we met in California were usually charming, it was daunting to get past their friendly, facile surfaces.

Our relationship with Houston was hardly love at first sight. We arrived in a July heat wave, with smoggy skies and traffic far worse than the Bay area’s. Our Toyota Corolla wasn’t air-conditioned. We used the last of our savings to install A/C in it, and to put money down on an apartment off Richmond Avenue.

I remember calling my mother one night from a phone booth nearby where the biggest roach I’d ever seen skittered too close to my sandaled feet. The apartment complex sheltered a rowdy bunch whose loud comings and goings beneath our windows mingled with sirens that disrupted our sleep. On alcohol-fueled nights, pickup trucks regularly mowed down slender trees planted in the road’s median.

Life improved substantially after I got a job with the Houston Chronicle and began to see the city through the eyes of a reporter. I drank it all in — the high life, the lowlifes and the lives in between. I went to rodeos, country clubs, barge christenings, dance halls, rooftop bars, and ice-house dives.

Fast-forward through the birth of our son, the buying and selling of two houses, and many wonderful trips across Texas. A few years had stretched into fifteen, and it was time to leave. Jobs and family exigencies beckoned, and we moved to North Carolina. But Houston had wound its tendrils around our hearts forever.

WHEN I started my first book, Saving Texas, I was shivering in London in 2010, writing at the kitchen table dressed in layers and listening to the windows rattle. I thought about Houston’s sultry summer evenings, feeling the warmth of the sidewalks on my bare feet.

So in Winning Texas, set mostly in Houston, I channeled my memories to write how Houston sounded, tasted and smelled. I described neighborhoods I loved (Montrose, the Heights), restaurants I enjoyed (Ninfa’s on Navigation, Treebeards, Pappadeaux), and roads I traveled (you know them).

But I didn’t shy away from the city’s underside. I described a seedy strip club off Richmond Ave., the industrial areas around the Houston Ship Channel, and hardscrabble areas on the east side. (I enjoyed describing the east side’s particular odor: “acrid and earthy at the same time, the corky burnt smell of the refineries in nearby Pasadena and the funk of heat and humidity with the faint aroma of overripe bananas.”) The Houston I remembered had both glitter and grime.

That’s one thing I value most about Houston, during the years I lived there and on many trips back. Houston feels genuine. Though it has wonderful cultural offerings and many other amenities, no one who lives there pretends that it’s a perfect place or the world’s greatest garden spot. Its denizens accept it for what it is. They don’t seem to care what the world thinks about the city.

Which brings me to the other thing I cherish about the city: its people. I’ve never lived anywhere where people were more themselves — for good or ill.  In Houston, I’ve experienced heaping helpings of friendliness, kindness and clear-eyed intelligence. I’ve also run across a few people who were as mean as snakes. Houstonians mostly don’t hide their personalities or temperaments. It’s all there, on parade.

Now that I write books instead of working as a journalist, my husband and I have often thought of moving back. But maybe we’ll just treasure the memories.

Nancy Stancill, a former investigative reporter at the Houston Chronicle, now lives in Charlotte, N.C.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/nancy-stancill/winning-texas/

KIRKUS REVIEW

Texas reporter-turned-editor Annie Price once again finds herself immersed in deceit, political conflict, and murder in Stancill’s (Saving Texas, 2013) thriller.

Annie misses her time as an investigative journalist, a gig the Houston Times eliminated a few years ago before promoting her to assistant metro editor. She may soon return to the field, though, when a reporter quits and leaves the newspaper short-staffed. And there’s a lot of story material in her area.

State Sen. Sam Wurzbach, for starters, pushes a German-Texas agenda, which would see designated counties emphasize German language and culture. The senator has support from some who see tourism potential, but, sadly that includes seedy strip-club owner Kyle Krause.

Adamantly opposing German-Texas are secessionists, who believe it will obliterate their chances of converting the state into an independent republic. Annie’s dealt with the secessionists before, like two particularly dangerous ones on the lam, either hiding out in South America or sneaking back into Texas.

Meanwhile, a possibly Eastern European body floating in the Houston Ship Channel may be tied to human trafficking, and Betsy, the 16-year-old daughter of ex-politician (and Annie’s “almost-boyfriend”) Tom Marr, has run away. Things take a momentous turn when someone Annie knows turns up bludgeoned to death, followed shortly thereafter by another murder. So Annie and her colleagues do what journalists do best—investigate.

The author loads her narrative with seemingly unrelated subplots that gradually and sufficiently come together. There’s little mystery since Stancill, once a reporter herself, focuses much of the plot on Annie’s time at a slowly dying newspaper. While the murderer (or murderers) isn’t hard to pin down, the sudden shakeup at the office, likely resulting in fewer jobs, becomes a fascinating storyline.

Annie, too, is a sterling protagonist, surprisingly humble considering she’s a guy magnet, from old flame/fiance Jake Satterfield to smitten co-worker Travis Dunbar. As a pseudo-gumshoe, Annie doesn’t do much, especially when people merely show up at her door with pertinent information. But she willingly puts herself in peril to expose villains, while a significant character’s death near the end (that’s not a murder) is unquestionably shocking.

Even if she’s not a crime-solver, the beguiling protagonist should attract readers just as much as she attracts trouble and men.

Pub Date: April 26th, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-61296-683-0

Page count: 230pp

Publisher: Black Rose Writing

Program: Kirkus Indie

Review Posted Online: June 15th, 2016

http://pilotonline.com/news/local/former-suffolk-resident-and-local-reporter-writes-her-second-novel/article_68455fdf-90b9-5729-bbab-a6b19362eec6.html

Former Suffolk resident and local reporter writes her second novel

By James Thomas Jr.

Correspondent

Jun 13, 2016

Former Suffolk resident and Hampton Roads journalist Nancy Stancill has woven another tale of murder, suspense and enough bizarre politics that in light of today’s political climate might leave readers pondering, “What if?”

Stancill, an investigative reporter turned novelist has penned “Winning Texas,” a sequel to her debut tale, “Saving Texas” and includes several of the same characters, settings and locations.

In the new plot, fictional Houston Times investigative reporter Annie Price is now an editor and gets a chance to get back on the street when one of her reporters is murdered. Probing the whodunit leads Annie away from the familiar themes of Texas oil, wealthy families and sprawling city metropolis and into the underworld of illegal gambling, strip joints and a human smuggling ring.

Additional plot twists include a political tug-of-war to turn the Texas Hill Country into an enclave for German-Texans and a growing secessionist movement, a true-to-life recurrent theme in Texas politics.

Secession has been a part of Texas politics for years, Stancill said, an idea she decided to include in her books following comments she heard from former governor Rick Perry several years ago.

“He said, in effect, if Texas didn’t like how the federal government treated the state it could leave,” Stancill said. “Texas has always had a secessionist movement, of sorts, primarily because it was a republic for about 10 years after winning its freedom from Mexico.”

More reality is woven into Stancill’s “Winning Texas” in her portrayal of the financial challenges facing the fictional daily but also mirrors what many newspapers are experiencing today. Staff cuts and job insecurities contribute to Annie’s worsening drinking problems and unstable romantic relationships.

Stancill uses the day-by-day dedication and frustration of staffers on a big city daily as a backdrop for her novels. There is joy, angst and also risk, she said. As an investigative reporter in Houston for 15 years, she was a target of threats both real and implied.

“One time I was looking into the financial dealings of a community college, and they put out wanted posters for me,” she said. “They wanted to know when I was on campus and be notified about it.

“When you’re writing about things that people don’t want you to write about, there’s always an element of danger.”

Stancill’s parents moved to Suffolk from Radford when she was about 20 years old and attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she said. She got her first newspaper job in Suffolk and later moved on to a daily in Newport News.

She moved to California with her husband, Len Norman, while he attended Stanford University and later to Houston when he took a job for a major bank. Stancill’s mother is still a Suffolk resident. She also has a sister living in Smithfield.

Stancill has lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, since 1993. After publication of her first novel, she was guest at a joint meeting of Suffolk’s Sans Souci Literary Club and the Tuesday Afternoon Book Club.

She’s been invited to return in 2016, she said and, perhaps, with completion of another novel, she will.

“I’ve set up another to have a trilogy,” she said. “Ideally, it’ll be the third book about Annie. There’s room for a third book.”

James Thomas Jr., [email protected]

http://www.newsobserver.com/entertainment/books/article81577132.html

JUNE 4, 2016 2:16 PM

‘Winning Texas’ a fast-paced thriller

BY MARY CORNATZER

[email protected]

“Winning Texas” is the second thriller from former Charlotte Observer reporter Nancy Stancill featuring fictional Houston Times journalist Annie Price.

It picks up a few years after the events in “Saving Texas,” Stancill’s debut, but you needn’t have read one to enjoy the other.

Price is an editor now, working with an understaffed investigative team at the money-troubled Houston Times and missing reporting. Her chance to get out of the office comes when one of her reporters is murdered.

But who’s behind it? Could it be the strip club owner he was looking into? Or the man’s mysterious Brazilian girlfriend? Or maybe it has something to do with a group pushing to turn Texas Hill Country into a German Texas enclave?

The senator behind the effort says it’s about cultural identity and economic development, but Annie isn’t so sure.

Into the plot, Stancill mixes a missing teenager (daughter of a former gubernatorial candidate), smuggled Albanian strippers, illegal gambling and the growing remnants of the Texas secessionist movement, which caused so much trouble in her first book.

Full disclosure time: Stancill is the sister of N&O higher education reporter Jane Stancill. I’ve never met Nancy Stancill, but I’d say her years in journalism, including a stint at the Houston Chronicle, serve her well.

She captures a newsroom’s camaraderie and angst (though mercifully leaving out much of the drudgery), while her descriptions of Houston and the whole of Texas make you feel the heat and see its beauty.

She takes some journalistic license by having Annie sleep with a cop who’s her source (that would be an ethical no-no), but I like that Annie has a messy life (she drinks a bit too much, falls for the wrong men) and two cats.

Oh, and another quibble: She wraps up that investigative story before most newsrooms would have had their first meeting about it.

Stancill keeps the pace fast and the characters coming – at first I thought I was going to need to jot down notes to keep up with them. But she expertly weaves reporters, strippers, smugglers and gamblers in and out of the story so you never have to remind yourself who’s who. And then she pulls the threads together for a satisfying ending.

But instead of tying everything up, that ending promises more on the way — which is something to look forward to.