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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Feb. 11, 2014

Gary Presley, Clarion Review

Black Rose Writing 978-1-61296-257-3

Four Stars (out of Five)

This tense drama harkens back to the glory days of print journalism, when a young reporter with a nose for news could make a difference.

In Nancy Stancill’s fast-moving crime drama, Saving Texas, Annie Price, a newspaper reporter, finds herself ensnared in a Texas secession conspiracy that makes for a tense tale of intrigue and murder.

Thirtysomething Price is a go-to reporter for the struggling Houston Times, doing her best work with profiles of movers and shakers. A phone call from her wannabe boyfriend Jake Satterfield, a state legislator who is separated from his wife, gives Annie a lead on charismatic west Texas rancher, politician, and secessionist Tom Marr, a man intent on “saving Texas from the corruption and stupidity in Washington.” However, Annie soon learns that behind Marr’s intelligent and reasonable facade lies a nest of conspirators willing to kill for a Republic of Texas, and their conspiracy may even reach into her newsroom.

Stancill sketches an intense plot, ratcheting up the tension while relating the pressures of the print-news business, which are aggravated as corporate bean counters arrive to focus on the bottom line rather than breaking news. Annie soldiers on in that gloomy atmosphere as other hard-working veteran reporters and editors are laid off. Though the action is intense when it occurs on computer screens and one-on-one interviews, it becomes rushed during the violent confrontations. Dialogue flows naturally and conversationally, which moves the story forward.

Stancill brings Texas to life, illustrating intimate knowledge of bustling Houston and an appreciation for the endless vistas of west Texas. Authenticity of place is found throughout the narrative, from bars and seedy motels to the halls of power in Austin and the Hispanic culture of San Antonio.

The characters comprise a complex group, and the villains are fully formed. Marr is a naive romantic trapped in his illusions of Texas as the new Camelot – and caught up in the corrupt machinations of two other characters, Dan Riggins and Ed Gonzales.

Riggins is right out of the Book of Villains: a CIA agent on the cusp of retirement who is organizing a military- influenced security corporation; he’s a fascist in all but name. Gonzales, Mexican-national- turned-Texan and president of a community college, has built an off-the-books distance-learning program with Riggins’s help to finance the Marr campaign.

Most interesting among the cast is Alicia, a sociopathic killer who was once a member of Peru’s Shining Path guerrilla movement, and is now Riggins’s lover. While Price evolves into a stronger, more intelligent woman, her initial portrayal as a good reporter who’s a hard-drinking, bed-hopping good girl at heart is dissatisfying. Price seems too smart and sophisticated to be careless and stupid about her personal life. Even as she becomes stronger and more confident, she clings to her romance with self-absorbed Satterfield, a man she seems attracted to solely because of his looks and superficial personality traits.

Fans of crime fiction will enjoy Saving Texas, a tense drama that harkens back to the glory days of print journalism, when a young reporter with a notebook and a nose for news could make a difference.

Looking for the satisfaction of having written

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Feb. 11, 2014

I’ve always considered myself a reluctant writer. As a young reporter, I could always put off writing my story by having a cigarette – or two or three. But a few years later, when good sense prevailed and I stopped smoking, I lost that handy excuse. I always divided reporters into two groups – those who loved the reporting and those who tolerated the reporting to get to the writing. I loved the reporting and could stretch it out – just one more phone call, I’d tell myself, and I’ll get that piece of information that will lift this story to page one. But adhering to that philosophy often meant that I’d skimp on the time to elevate the writing of the story.

So in some ways, I’m surprised that thirty-some years later, I’m a writer of fiction. I still report, but I’m looking for research that will stretch my imagination and make my story more believable. When I started my novel, Saving Texas, in 2010, I wasn’t sure I would have the patience to finish it. But I had a tale that I wanted to tell and I knew that if I finished, I’d get that wonderful feeling I knew as a journalist – not the thrill of writing, but the satisfaction of having written.

I plan to blog every Monday, or more, if the spirit moves me – about writing, reading and other stuff that interests me. I may come to the table reluctantly, but I’ll leave with the satisfaction – even if it’s just a few paragraphs – of having written.

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Nov. 10, 2013, Greg Lacour

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/11/08/4449889/charlotte-journalist-writes-tale.html#.Un-jJJHk_40

By Greg Lacour

Correspondent

Posted: Friday, Nov. 08, 2013

Fiction

Saving Texas

Nancy Stancill

Black Rose Writing, 262 pages

Living in London in 2010, journalist Nancy Stancill decided it was time to devote herself to a project she’d mulled for more than 20 years: a novel about the provincial, slightly psychotic world of Texas politics.

“I thought, ‘You know, I’m just going to not work, have fun, travel, do ladies’ lunches and things like that,’” Stancill said recently in her Charlotte home. “And I did that for about six months … but I had this book on my mind, and I felt it was really something I had to do.”

The result is a thriller, “Saving Texas,” about a reporter for the fictional Houston Times who uncovers – and gets herself snared in – a web of Lone Star State intrigue involving a charismatic Texan separatist; a West Texas community college that’s doing more than granting degrees in HVAC technology; a charming state senator in cowboy boots; and a surprising amount of what one character refers to as “rumpy-pumpy.” (There’s nothing pornographic, just a lot of fades to black.)

Stancill, a former Observer reporter and editor, spent three years off and on writing “Saving Texas,” finishing a draft before she and her husband, retired Bank of America executive Len Norman, moved back to Charlotte in December. Black Rose Writing published the novel in October.

She’ll be reading from “Saving Texas” at 7 p.m. Monday at Park Road Books. “Saving Texas” is available through Black Rose Writing (www.blackrosewriting.com) and Amazon.com. She’s working out distribution agreements.

The novel is her first serious attempt at fiction. “My brain was always fried by journalism,” she said, explaining why she didn’t try sooner. “You hear that old adage, ‘When one door closes, another one opens.’ For sure, it was true for me.”

“Saving Texas” – the first book of a planned trilogy – has received some positive notices, mainly in Texas.

Stancill, 64, the daughter of a Virginia newspaper editor and publisher, framed the story within a subject she knows well: the newspaper industry.

The protagonist, Annie Price, laments the loss of experienced reporters to public relations jobs and has to convince her editors to spend the money to send her across the state on assignment.

Strong, hard-hitting, local investigative reporting is still what Stancill thinks newspapers can and should devote resources to. That’s one reason why she plans to donate the proceeds from the first 1,000 books sold to the Columbia, Mo.-based nonprofit Investigative Reporters and Editors, of which Stancill is a former board member.

“That’s a cause,” she said, “that will always be important to me.”

This article is part of the Charlotte Arts Journalism Alliance.

Park Road Books signing, reading & Q&A

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Nov. 11, 2013

Below are videos of author Nancy Stancill reading from Saving Texas, being introduced by poet and longtime Charlotte Observer book editor Dannye Romine Powell, and then answering questions from the audience. The event was held at Park Road Books in Charlotte.