Jan. 9, 2025
Friends and booklovers gathered tonight at Park Road Books for the formal launch of “Deadly Secrets,”
“The Park Road Books event went well, with about 55 there… It’s been a good week.”
In her fiction, Stancill writes about some bar-hopping, crowd-haranguing, cutthroat types. After the book event, Stancill wrote, “Though I enjoyed having friends there, it was a bit too much of a crowd scene (for me) to be comfortable.” Proof that fiction is not autobiography.
January 9, 2025
https://qcnerve.com/nancy-stancill-deadly-secrets/
Pat Moran
In Nancy Stancill’s more than 30-year career as an investigative reporter, she’s exposed wealthy men delaying divorces to punish their ex-wives, unveiled credit card companies luring consumers into crippling debt, documented shockingly high tobacco use among high school and middle school students, and profiled a strip club owner who later bribed former Charlotte mayor Patrick Cannon.
Over a decade into her second career as a crime novelist, the now-retired local journalist published her latest thriller, Deadly Secrets, on Dec. 12. The Charlotte-based writer will take part in a Q&A and sign copies of her new novel, one of three featuring reporter/sleuth Annie Price, at Park Road Books on Jan. 9 at 7 p.m.
The conversation will be facilitated by a colleague of Stancill’s, former Charlotte Observer reporter and Money Rock author Pam Kelley.
Stancill’s latest fictional tale is just as compelling as the stories she covered as a reporter. In Deadly Secrets, the dogged and indomitable Price solves a string of murders involving a charismatic pastor who has established a right-wing Christian state in the western North Carolina mountains.
After writing for the Houston Chronicle and other papers in Texas, Stancill worked 10 years for the Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2009. She says the Price series, which launched in 2013 with Stancill’s debut novel Saving Texas and continued with Winning Texas in 2016, is the result of the author staying in her lane.
“We write what we know, and I know newsrooms and reporters,” says Stancill, who published her memoir, Tall: Love and Journalism in a Six-Foot World, in 2020. She adds that she’s not above embellishing the documentary-style realism of her crime fiction with a few touches of glamour.
“I wanted a heroine who was 6 feet tall like me,” says Stancill. “But who was cuter, had better clothes, and a more exciting love life.”
The plot of Deadly Secrets is not exactly ripped from today’s headlines, but the story holds up a recognizable mirror to America’s political landscape in which religious zealots are working to steadily deconstruct the wall separating church and state.
In the novel, minister King Avery persuades state and federal authorities to establish the 51st state of Westcarolina. Avery becomes its first governor, determined to impose his evangelical beliefs on what he calls “the first Christian state.” Aided by ruthless secessionist Rob Ryland as lieutenant governor, Avery grabs every opportunity to curtail his constituents’ civil liberties while lining his pockets.
Meanwhile, The Charlotte Press hires Texas reporter Price to expose Avery and his God’s Gift Church. This explosive situation soon becomes a backdrop to murder.
Nancy Stancill’s ‘Deadly Secrets’
With her mystery novels, Nancy Stancill says she tries not to be too partisan with her own political views but adds that she staunchly supports the separation of church and state: “No ‘godly state’ for me.”
She notes that the novel’s first chapter describes the bombing on an abortion pill factory and that readers might infer from the sequence that she is pro-choice.
For those seeking a message, Stancill directs readers to the book’s front cover blurb from BestThrillers.com: “Crackling with immediacy and suspense, ‘Deadly Secrets’ is an unforgettable political thriller about murder, corruption and personal freedom.”
“I think this country is deeply divided,” Stancill says. “That’s probably why this novel seems believable.”
To those who know her, it’s no mystery that Stancill loves western North Carolina, where her third novel is set. She grew up in the nearby mountains of eastern Tennessee, plus some time in Virginia.
In the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene and the long recovery process it has engendered, Stancill is devoting half her proceeds from Deadly Secrets to Asheville-based charity Hearts with Hands.
In a passage from her novel that describes the region and the tourists drawn to its scenery, Stancill writes of Price, “She knew she was looking at the Blue Ridge Mountains. Their blue haze, a reflection of the blue-green fir and balsam forests that grew there, was distinctive. Leisurely drivers flocked to the gorgeous Blue Ridge Parkway in autumn to see red, yellow and orange fall colors. In the spring and summer, tourists could look forward to the healthy foliage sprinkled with wildflowers.”
The tourists that flocked to the mountains each autumn were not able to do so in the fall and might not return at the same levels for a long time, she pointed out in a blog post on her website titled “My heart and book belong to the mountains.”
“Roads are badly damaged, and many restaurants and hotels won’t be open … How will the region’s fragile economy recover without tourism?” she continued.
Despite the corruption and murders that thread through her mountain mystery, Stancill says she hopes that residents of the region won’t be offended by the plot, instead seeing Deadly Secrets as a tale well told, albeit a cautionary one.
“I love that area,” she says. “I certainly don’t wish for it to have an evangelical minister at the helm.”
Highlights from a reporter’s notebook
Nancy Stancill’s approach to journalism was inspired by her late father Godfrey Wells Stancill, who worked as editor and publisher of the Radford News Journal and the Suffolk News-Herald in Virginia.
“I’ve never seen anybody work harder than he did to put out the truth in a good paper,” Stancill says.
Godfrey Stancill could do everything, she recalls — write stories and editorials, sell ads, and take pictures at children’ s ballgames.
“If somebody didn’t get their paper, he would get up from dinner and go deliver it,” Stancill says.
After graduating from the UNC Chapel Hill with a journalism degree, Nancy worked for newspapers in Texas for 15 years, much like her fictitious alter ego Annie Price. In 1993, she moved to Charlotte and started her stint at the Observer.
A 1994 story titled “Desperate Wives Settle for Less” reported on wealthy, powerful men delaying divorce settlements, in one case nine years, through unscrupulous lawyers.
“One of these poor [ex-wives] was living out of her car,” Stancill says, pointing to the results of her investigation. “Essentially, the judges were ashamed that they did not notice [the long delays, and] the legislature was appalled.”
Stancill’s reporting inspired new legislation that punished unreasonable delays while judges began sending most divorce cases to a more streamlined dispute resolution process
Another one of Stancill’s stories involved a Gastonia couple that owed more than $180,000 in credit card debt.
“The husband was making $20,000 a year and his wife was disabled,” she recalls. The couple lived on credit cards, and the credit card companies just kept signing them up for new cards.
“That was a dramatic example of how credit card companies were just savaging the consumers,” Stancill says.
The town of Robbinsville in western North Carolina came to Stancill’s attention when a survey conducted in the municipality revealed that 70 % of its high school kids smoked – and that the percentage of smoking among middle school kids was almost as high.
“It was tragic,” Stancill says. “I interviewed a 12-year-old boy that said he had been dipping snuff since he was 5 — and his parents bought it for him.”
The story took Stancill to an international smoking conference in Beijing, where the Chinese government admitted that it was selling cigarettes to children.
In retrospect, Stancill says reporters in her generation didn’t know they were living in a golden age of journalism.
“I remember 1994 and 1995 as the years of big raises,” Stancill says. “[But] you could see things slowly going downhill.”
Falling circulation was a warning bell, followed by diminishing ad sales with Craigslist beating out local classifieds for advertising dollars.
“When I came in 1993, there were 250 people in the newsroom,” Stancill says. “They created the investigative team, and they had all these bureaus.”
Now the Observer’s newsroom staff listing totals less than 50 people.
Stancill left the Observer in 2009 and moved to London. While living there in 2010, she wrote Price’s first adventure, Saving Texas. The plot was inspired by reporting Stancill did about a corrupt community college in Texas, and on the state’s longstanding secessionist movement, which also informed Price’s follow-up mystery Winning Texas.
Annie gets shot at the end of the second book and is recovering as Deadly Secrets opens, and while Nancy Stancill has never found herself under literal fire for her reporting, she is certainly no stranger to second chances, as the journalist turned novelist has found a groove in the world of fiction.
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By Mark I. West
Storied Charlotte
Since retiring from her career as an investigative reporter for The Charlotte Observer in 2009, Nancy Stancill has focused much of her attention on writing her Annie Price mystery series. The third book in this series, Deadly Secrets, will officially launch on December 12, 2024.
This book has many connections to Nancy’s life in Charlotte. Like Nancy, Annie Price is an investigative reporter. Also like Nancy, Annie Price lives in Charlotte but has a deep interest in the Blowing Rock area. In one important way, however, the setting for Deadly Secrets is different from the place that Nancy now calls home, for in Nancy’s novel North Carolina has been divided into two states. The mountain area is now called Westcarolina, and it is the location of a series of secret and deadly plots. For this reason, Deadly Secrets is both a political thriller and a work of alternate history.
I recently contacted Nancy and asked her how she came to write Deadly Secrets. Here is what she sent to me:
Deadly Secrets, my first novel set in Charlotte, launches Thursday, Dec. 12. The first two books of the mystery series take place in Texas, where I worked as a reporter for 15 years. Why did it take so long to bring my protagonist, Annie Price, investigative reporter, to North Carolina? It’s a question I’ve asked myself since I began creating Deadly Secrets about three years ago.
Fourteen years ago, I was living in London when I began writing Saving Texas, inspired by some fairly dangerous reporting I did for the Houston Chronicle. The stories involved a corrupt community college. The resulting book morphed into a secession theme. Texas is one of several states where support for seceding from the United States is unusually popular.
In my second book, Winning Texas, my reporter Annie investigates a variation on secession. I knew I wanted to write a third book set in North Carolina and waited for inspiration. In the meantime, I wrote a memoir called Tall, which focused on my experiences as a six-foot-tall woman.
National conservative politics gave me a hook for setting my third book in North Carolina. What if a mega-minister of a huge evangelical church got state and national support to split North Carolina into two states? The minister, Kingston Avery, would become governor of the renamed Westcarolina and begin to remake it as “the first Christian state.”
Politicians would be thrilled to have two new conservative senators and a few more Congressional representatives in the conservative-oriented new state. King, the new minister-governor, would begin taking away personal freedoms with strange new policies. Soon, Annie, newly hired by the fictional Charlotte Press, is investigating King, his church and state and its secret plots and murders. King’s major headquarters are in his 12-bedroom mansion in Blowing Rock, a favorite town of mine.
Hurricane Helene blew through the mountains as I was preparing to launch the book. Since I have loved the N.C. mountains since childhood, I decided to devote half my book proceeds to a charity, Asheville-based Hearts With Hands.
As usual, I called upon my own experiences being recruited by the Charlotte Observer to describe Charlotte as I saw it as a stranger in 1993. In her job interview, Annie sees the busy airport, the beautiful tall buildings and verdant landscape of uptown and the morning energy of the newspaper’s newsroom. (Of course, the building was imploded a few years ago and there is no newsroom. I couldn’t bear to use that in the book. Since it’s fiction, I describe it as it was when I first started working there.)
Annie initially worries that Charlotte will be too small and quiet after the roaring energy of Houston. But she loves the vibe of an easier city to live in after the traffic and pollution problems of Houston. Much of the book contains other familiar details: Annie’s first home in Plaza Midwood, her move to a luxurious Myers Park house after her marriage, and the delicious barbecue lunch she enjoys at Bridges Barbecue in Shelby.
As a writer and now a 31-year resident of Charlotte (minus three years in London) I found that finally setting a book here was a pure pleasure.
Stancill’s book is available now at Park Road Books for $19.95 and as of Dec. 12, on Amazon and other online sites. It’s published by Black Rose Writing of Texas. A book signing is scheduled at Park Road Books on Jan. 9.) For more information about Deadly Secrets and Nancy’s other books, please read more on this website.
I congratulate Nancy on the publication of Deadly Secrets. As everyone who has read my blog knows, I take a special interest in novels written by residents of Charlotte as well as novels set in Charlotte. Since Deadly Secrets checks both boxes, it makes a great addition to Storied Charlotte’s literary history (or alternate history.)
By Nancy Stancill
When I first heard of the terrible devastation in the North Carolina mountains, I was shocked and sad.
Like many North Carolinians, I had a long and emotional relationship with that beautiful region.
Much of my latest book, Deadly Secrets, is set in those mountains. In the mystery, North Carolina is split in two in a legal secession to benefit an evangelical mega-church minister. He names the mountainous counties Westcarolina and becomes its governor. He and a ruthless lieutenant government start changing it to suit their beliefs and bring in more money.
Annie Price, my investigative reporter protagonist, moves from Texas to Charlotte to cover Westcarolina. The new governor lives in a 12-bedroom mansion in Blowing Rock. She lived in nearby East Tennessee growing up and hasn’t seen the mountains in years. Here’s a description of her first look as an adult:
“She knew she was looking at the Blue Ridge Mountains. Their blue haze, a reflection of the blue-green fir and balsam forests that grew there, was distinctive. Leisurely drivers flocked to the gorgeous Blue Ridge Parkway in autumn to see red, yellow and orange fall colors. In the spring and summer, tourists could look forward to the healthy foliage sprinkled with wildflowers. Annie thought the mountains were equally beautiful when covered by snow, with just the tops of some trees sticking out…She sighed with pleasure—how she’d missed this.”
The tourists that flocked to the mountains won’t be there this fall—or possibly for a long time. Roads are badly damaged, and many hotels and restaurants won’t be open, likely for many months. How will the region’s fragile economy recover without tourism?
When I was a young girl, we’d travel through the mountains to see relatives and back again to our home in East Tennessee. Many of those return trips would be late at night, in the fog on winding roads. I’d hold my breath sometimes, wondering if our car would plunge off the mountains. Sometimes I’d be carsick, an ailment made worse by my dad’s intermittent smoking. In those days, the dangers of second-hand smoke weren’t known. I just knew that I felt sick when he smoked. But in the mornings, the mountains seemed glorious to me.
I moved to Charlotte in 1993, close enough to my longtime UNC-Chapel Hill friends to plan at least one mountain weekend a year. Our favorite places for renting a large cottage for the eight of us were West Jefferson and Black Mountain. The major requirement was a back porch with a mountain view. We’d hike, walk around the towns, eat at interesting restaurants, and just sit on the porch and talk. Last year, three of my siblings and husbands rented a place near Boone in the fall.
The most traumatic time I had in the mountains was when my father died. His funeral was in Suffolk, Va. where they lived. Then the family began a pilgrimage to Elizabethton, Tennessee where he’d be buried. It was a long, terrible trip. He died in 1995, a few days before Christmas and it was snowing, cold and dark. When we reached Happy Valley cemetery (a misnomer if I ever heard one) a tent was set up and the minister gave some last words. I didn’t want to leave him there, even though he was in a plot next to my grandmother, grandfather, great-grandmother and great-great grandmother.
I asked my mother gently if she’d go back with us for Christmas, and she said, “I don’t know what I want, Nancy.” She went across the mountains with the three of us to Charlotte, where we had an empty holiday. Some neighbors on our cul-de-sac left food, so we didn’t have to cook. Our 14-year-old son had cried for a long time when we told him about his beloved grandfather, so I remember trying to be cheerful for him.
The mountains, especially around Boone, Blowing Rock and Asheville hold happy memories for me and the one that was indescribably sad.
I’m happy that my Westcarolina book is newly published, but the timing seems off. I write for the love of good stories and to pay homage to the places that formed me. I never expect to make much money.
Because I love the mountains and they mean so much to me, I’m donating half my proceeds from Deadly Secrets to one of the fine organizations helping its people. I could do no less.
Aug,. 4, 2024
My newest book will come out this fall. It’s the third in the Annie Price, investigative reporter, series.
The Bottom Line: Crackling with immediacy and suspense, Deadly Secrets is an unforgettable political thriller about murder, corruption and personal freedom in the divided states of America.
Welcome to Westcarolina, the newest American state. Encompassing a conservative region of what was once western North Carolina, the new government is sponsored and backed by Kingston Avery, the state’s minister-governor. The move follows a pattern happening elsewhere. Secessionists in Texas are planning more violence enroute to becoming a true nation, and similar movements are also underway in Alaska and California.
As Deadly Secrets opens, a radicalized anti-abortion activist and his wife are about to become domestic terrorists. Specifically, they bomb a local chemical plant that makes a key ingredient of the abortion pill. The act appears to have the full backing of God’s Gift leadership, of which they are insiders.
Enter 42-year-old Pulitzer-prize winning report Annie Price. After accepting a new job offer, she travels to Westcarolina to cover the new state. Little does she know that one of Avery’s top officials, Rob Ryland, is responsible for murdering her best friend back in Texas.
Annie quickly sets about interviewing residents, community leaders and politicians. Among her findings are that God’s Gift has significant business investments, including residential real estate, retail shopping centers, as well as budding media and marijuana empires. She also learns that competing churches are being forced to pay taxes for the privilege of operating in Westcarolina. But as Annie continues to dig into what appears to be an unconstitutional theocracy in the making, a series of troubling “accidents” begin to claim the lives of Avery’s rivals–and even some of his allies.
Author Nancy Stancill devotes much of the narrative to Annie’s point of view, but also offers significant glimpses into Avery’s inner circle. Given how much access we have to Avery and Rob’s insidious plans, readers often know about major plot twists long before Annie does. Nevertheless, Stancill’s approach begins paying off when certain extremists realize that even they are horrified at what lines may be crossed if the new state’s current trajectory goes unchecked. As the book reaches its conclusion and inevitable power struggles emerge, Stancill proves that no character is truly safe.
As a veteran reporter, Annie’s resilience is expected. But Stancill has also done wonders with Annie’s backstory. Her complicated personal life–she…can’t choose between two lovers—is all the more fascinating in the context of Westcarolina, where the ability to make personal choices appears to be disappearing fast. The book can be read as pure entertainment but given how closely the book parallels real political divisions, it’s equally effective as a warning.
– BestThrillers.com
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Bookwatch: Deadly Secrets is the third Annie Price mystery in Nancy Stancill’s series, but newcomers will find it as attractive as prior fans. Here, Annie faces new conundrums when North Carolina splits into two states and she follows her reporter’s investigative nose into trouble.
The story opens with a literal bang as a “godly mission” achieves its explosive goal. The self-appointed justice duo who call themselves The Westcarolina Righteous Action Committee comes from a mega-church whose secretive mandate for change challenges both individuals and social and political systems with proactive, sometimes violent responses.
Issues of pro-life beliefs and politics coalesce as opening chapters swirl around the church’s clandestine plan to rid America of medical abortions. The evangelical church’s setup of Westcarolina and its fostering of a new era of both terrorism and active pro-life beliefs translate to a sticky situation that investigator Annie finds immersive and dangerous.
Stancill takes her time to fully portray this futuristic community in the first two chapters before introducing Annie, a Houston Times reporter newly back on the job after a medical hiatus. During her recovery from her last assignment, her newspaper has vastly changed its scope and audience. At age 42, she’s in the uncomfortable position of contemplating new work and starting over.
As she reviews news of the explosion and considers the ongoing impact the secession of Westcarolina has had on America, she finds her expertise on the subject applied in different ways as she’s drawn to move to Charlotte during the course of her latest inquiry.
There, she uncovers not only political subterfuge, but mounting murders, and fraud cases that test her ability to quietly report the truth.
Stancill excels at juxtaposing the divergent perspectives of church with a quest for justice, capturing the attitudes and intentions of all players in this complex scheme and futuristic setting: “…we’ll do our best to ignore a news industry that exists to put us down and kill the dreams of a God-centered state.”
The conflicts, idealism, and murderous events coalesce in a whirlwind of violence and realizations which will keep readers riveted—especially since many of the political scenarios presented here aren’t far from present-day possibility.
Annie’s personal life comes into play with emotions and reflections that also provide a satisfyingly realistic contrast to the murder mystery itself.
Libraries and readers seeking a story set in a fictional, yet familiar, near future where religious, psychological, social, and political interests intersect will find much to appreciate in Annie’s character and focus in Deadly Secrets.
Book clubs, too, will find it an unexpected opportunity to discuss a variety of subjects about church, state, women’s issues, and the price of proactive thinking and behavior on all sides.
In short: Deadly Secrets is powerful in its characterizations, astute in its political extrapolations, unexpected in its action and twists and turns, and hard to put down.
– D. Donavan
