Texas can be a mighty dangerous place

Texas can be a mighty dangerous place

Published 12:00 am Sunday, July 31, 2016

“Winning Texas,” by Nancy Stancil. Black Rose Writing. 2016. 226 pp. $16.95.

By Deirdre Parker Smith

[email protected]

In the season of beach reads, former Charlotte Observer journalist Nancy Stancill has a new, short novel that’s got intrigue, romance, shady characters and several puzzles.

Stancill revisits reporter Annie Price from her first book, “Saving Texas,” which was about Texas secession and a determined group that would do anything to make the country of Texas a reality.

Now the issue is to declare certain counties German Texas in a nod to the heritage of the area. The idea is to teach German in schools, have signs in German, promote festivals, etc.

The subplot is about the dying newspaper industry. Annie is now a mid-level editor at the Houston newspaper, which, during the course of the book, loses two reporters, one who quits and the other …

The baddest guys from the first book have escaped to Mexico — Dan Riggins, the secessionist leader, and his girlfriend, contract killer Alicia Perez.

Annie also has to deal with ex-reporter Rob Ryland who just about killed her in her last adventure.

But that’s only part of it. Annie’s in charge of an investigative team which is trying to learn about the German Texas movement. They meet Sen. Sam Wurtzbach, a nice guy who wants recognition for his part of Texas. It seems innocent enough, but after the explosive secessionist crowd, everyone’s feeling a little suspicious.

And it’s with good reason. The effort arouses the interest of Riggins, so much so that he is willing to cross back into Texas, risking arrest, to do something about it.

He’s relying on his nephew, who happens to be the ex-reporter, and old friend Tom Marr to help him out. But Marr’s had it. He is out of the secession business and trying to raise his teen-age daughter, Betsy, by himself. And that branches off into another subplot involving strip clubs, which brings us back to the German Texas movement and Riggins.

The book starts with a body floating in the shipping channel at Houston’s port, but that, too, is another subplot which ties in strip clubs, human trafficking, German Texas and murder.

That’s a lot of balls to juggle. Stancill adds in not one, but three love interests for Annie: Her former lover Sen. Jake Satterfield, who returned to his pregnant wife after romancing Annie; Marr, who has held a candle for Annie ever since she connected with the child Betsy; and a recently divorced deputy. Marr and Satterfield actually competed for Annie in the past.

The deputy is merely a distraction or a character placed to prove Annie has poor judgment when it comes to men.

Meanwhile, back at the newspaper … new owners are coming in to change everything and every job is at risk.

Somehow, Annie must help one of her investigative reporters unravel the strip club/German Texas connection, find out if Riggins and his deadly girlfriend are back in action, track down the people in charge of the human trafficking and be available to a runaway Betsy.

Annie and her team face a plethora of danger, risking their lives for the truth, such as it is. The body in the water gets short shrift, probably because so much else is going on. And poor Annie is injured, threatened, dumped and likely to be unemployed.

At the end, things are not exactly rosy for all involved, with betrayals left and right, but it’s wide open for a sequel. Will Annie survive another run-in with a group of dangerous and determined characters? Will she even have a job as a reporter? She’s narrowed down her choice of men, but that could change, too.

Stancill has also been a reporter for the Houston Chronicle and has an MFA in creative writing. The grittiness of Houston inspires the first two books, and likely more.

An interesting note: The cover of “Winning Texas” is based on the same photo used on the cover of “Saving Texas.” The clouds and sky are the same, and a road runs right down the middle.

http://www.greensboro.com/go_triad/arts/books/review-winning-texas-shows-maturity-in-its-author/article_d82ce890-8b8e-5088-812c-fa980c7d71be.html

Review: ‘Winning Texas’ shows maturity in its author

Posted: Sunday, July 31, 2016 12:00 am

By Linda Carter Brinson

Special to the News & Record

In real world time, it’s been two years since Nancy Stancill’s first thriller, “Saving Texas,” appeared on the scene. But in book time, it’s been four years, and Stancill’s heroine, Annie Price, has faced changes and setbacks.

As Stancill’s new book, “Winning Texas,” opens, the newspaper business is in even worse straits than it was before. Annie is working as an assistant metro editor because her beloved job as an investigative reporter has been eliminated. The newspaper is so short on staff, however, that she sometimes gets to help cover a story, an opportunity she relishes. Like everyone else on the staff, she lives with the constant threat of being “downsized,” a prospect that appears more imminent as the story progresses.

Her personal life is not faring much better. As the previous book came to its dramatic conclusion, her longtime relationship and her newer romantic interest both ran into major problems. At 40, Annie is wary about getting involved with someone new or picking up where she left off with anyone from her past. But sometimes she’s tempted.

In the greater world, many things remain much the same, however. Houston, where Annie works for the only daily newspaper, is still a gritty city, And Annie and the reporters who answer to her often see the worst it has to offer — an unidentified body in the ship channel, topless clubs that push the limits of lax laws, even human trafficking. All of Texas, really, is still a rough, sometimes violent place. Annie was instrumental in helping to thwart the secessionist movement four years earlier, but there are signs that its ringleaders have not given up their goals, and that they are still dangerous.

Meanwhile, the German Texas movement is gaining momentum. The idea is to enhance and capitalize on the strong German heritage in the Texas hill country in an effort to draw tourists and stimulate the economy. As the story progresses, it becomes evident that the secessionists take a dim view of the German Texas movement and pose a threat to its members. Annie and one of her reporters are at a German Texas fundraiser when the threat becomes all too real.

Two dramatic murders propel the action, and one hits very close to home: A young reporter who works with Annie is killed in the parking lot of a strip club he’s investigating.

Stancill, who moved to Charlotte after losing her real-world investigative reporting job in Houston, has written a sequel to her first thriller that provides a fast-moving plot and plenty of action. She writes in third person, shifting the point of view among various leading characters.

This second book shows some maturity in her as a writer: The dialogue is more believable, and Annie is a little more discriminating in her romantic dealings with men.

Stancill continues to paint a realistic, if depressing, picture of the state of the newspaper industry, and she doesn’t hesitate to portray some of the contemporary problems and tensions in Texas.

“Missing Texas” also has fewer editing lapses than the first book, although there is a confusing passage in which Sunday morning somehow becomes Saturday morning.

As she did at the end of “Saving Texas,” Stancill leaves us with the strong suggestion that Annie Price has more adventures ahead of her in another book in the Texas series. It would be interesting if, now that she lives in North Carolina, Stancill would try her hand at a thriller that delves into the darker side of this state. Maybe if Annie is downsized in Houston, she’ll find a new job at a newspaper in Charlotte or, say, Greensboro.

Linda Carter Brinson writes a books blog, Briar Patch Books (lindabrinson.com) and lives in Stokes County near Madison.

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]