Nancy Stancill

    Nancy Stancill spent 38 years as a newspaper reporter and editor before she began writing fiction full-time. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, she earned an M.A. in creative writing from the University of Tampa in 2015.

   Her works include Saving Texas (2013), Winning Texas (2016), Tall (nonfiction, 2020), and Deadly Secrets ( 2024).

  More on Nancy is here.

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http://www.charlotteobserver.com/entertainment/books/reading-matters-blog/article78814787.html

MAY 20, 2016 7:00 AM

Nancy Stancill’s latest a twisty Texas thriller

Author to talk at Park Road Books on Wednesday

 

BY DANNYE ROMINE POWELL

You hold your breath when a friend writes a book.

Will I like it? What if I don’t? What can I say that’s supportive but non-committal?

The Pulitzer-winning novelist Peter Taylor once said he couldn’t be friends with someone whose work he didn’t like. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but there are risks.

Well, whew! I happen to really like Nancy Stancill’s latest novel, “Winning Texas.” Stancill is a good friend and former Observer colleague, and she’s given us a taut thriller with a rabbit warren of twists. It’s a newspaper novel, set in Houston, where Stancill once worked as an investigative reporter.

Oh, sure, there are a couple of dead bodies. But Stancill goes beyond the whodonit to a world of frenzied intrigue. Hers is a Texas where one group plots to secede and form an independent nation, and another group longs to turn the Hill Country into German Texas. Add to that, a group of Albanian strippers herded off to an isolated ranch, where they are to produce babies for the wealthy.

Stancill’s tireless hero, investigative reporter/editor Annie Price, makes you wish you were 40 again.

Stancill will talk about “Winning Texas” at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Park Road Books. It’s free, and you’re invited.

Winning Texas available at Kindle store

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May 10, 2016

The Kindle version of Winning Texas is available for pre-order at Amazon, with delivery May 19. Soon, it will be on Smashwords and Nook and over the next few weeks should show up at Sony, Apple, Kobo, Diesel, and more.

Winning Texas is published

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May 5, 2016

160505Front400A“Sex traffickers and guns-for-hire meet in a nefarious plot to see Texas secede and America shaken to its core. Witty, gritty and filled with brilliantly realized characters, this book is a pure delight for lovers of suspense as the ever-dogged Annie Price risks life and limb to uncover the truth.”

– Tony D’Souza,
author of Mule

“When a female body is found floating in the Houston Ship Channel, Annie Price, an investigative journalist for a struggling Houston newspaper, is propelled into a dangerous web of intrigue. She must solve a complex mystery that includes a corrupt strip club empire, a ruthless human trafficking scheme, and deadly competition between two separatist groups seeking to impose their twisted visions on the Lone Star State. As two murders hit close to home, Annie and a fellow reporter risk death to expose the hidden secrets of a Texas ranch.”

– Black Rose Writing

“Winning Texas is a moody thriller, an ode to people with outsized dreams and the ones they prey on; to those who populate the city by day, and those who rule the night. In the wake of L.A.-noir and Florida glare, Nancy Stancill gives us Bayou City grime. In her pages, Houston seduces and leaves us breathless, begging for more.”

– Stefan Kiesbye, author of The Staked Plains

Buy the book here.

You write alone, but it’s grand not to feel alone

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May 5, 2016

Writing my first book was a lonely struggle, but I got lucky the second time around.

I started writing Winning Texas, my second suspense novel, as I entered the University of Tampa’s master’s program in creative writing in June 2013. When I graduated last summer, I ended up with a working draft of my second book – and so much more.

BlogSig100For two years, I had the privilege and pleasure of being part of a creative community of writers who nurtured my work in a tender, caring way. My mentors were experienced novelists who helped me see the flaws in my writing without crushing my spirit. My fellow students read my chapters carefully, finding plenty to praise in the small critique groups that can quickly turn negative in academia. Or so I’ve heard. My groups never did. I hope that I was as gentle and helpful with my fellow students’ work as they were with my writing.

Today, as Winning Texas, my journalism-and-politics thriller is released by Black Rose Writing, I am grateful to the writers who helped me get there. It doesn’t quite take a village to produce a book, but a few dozen kindred spirits can make a novel so much better.

When I wrote Saving Texas, my first book, I was living in London as an expat while my husband worked for a Charlotte-based bank. Especially at first, when I knew no one, it could get horribly lonely. The weather was cold and dreary and I needed distraction and hope. Starting a novel based on a lifetime of reporter’s adventures was my answer. I’d sit at my kitchen table dressed in layers and write while the wind rattled the windows in our third-floor flat. Eventually I got the job done, but it was pretty much like solitary confinement with a thesaurus.

Grad school was gloriously different. I was still writing alone, but I knew that my fellow students were sweating through first drafts in steamy Miami, or snowy New York or cold Connecticut. Then we’d all come together and talk about our work in Tampa.

I will read from and sign copies of Winning Texas on Wednesday, May 25 at 7 p.m. at Park Road Books, 4139 Park Rd., in Charlotte.