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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The call of the novel can’t compete with May

By

May 5, 2015

I got up Sunday thinking that I’d work on my novel before our niece’s late afternoon wedding. But we were in a nice hotel in downtown Orlando and the day seemed ripe for exploring.

We walked a few blocks to Lake Eola on a glorious sunny day, the kind you treasure before the heat descends. A soft breeze blew over the column of young men walking in step for charity. My sister-in-law’s jeweled sandals clack-clacked over the path as we circled the lake.

Dogs and their humans massed in one patch of grass, enjoying a tail-wagging gabfest. A white swan guarded her nest of five large eggs, her sharp eyes daring anyone to step closer. A black cormorant flapped its wings, drying and posing ironically on a silver sculpture of birds. A claque of turtles gathered on a rock at water’s edge, piling on top of each other in a reptilian conclave. Humans, all sizes, shapes and ages, lingered in a Sunday kind of slowness, seeming as happy as we were.

Bliss. After a long, cold winter, the symphony of nature was tuning up for its best performance of the season – the critically acclaimed month of May. To waste a day like Sunday inside, hunched over a computer, would be wasting life itself. For what is life without taking time to savor its beautiful moments?

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