{"id":4380,"date":"2024-12-08T09:11:10","date_gmt":"2024-12-08T14:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=4380"},"modified":"2024-12-08T09:11:12","modified_gmt":"2024-12-08T14:11:12","slug":"nancy-stancills-new-mystery-is-both-a-thriller-and-a-work-of-alternate-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2024\/12\/08\/nancy-stancills-new-mystery-is-both-a-thriller-and-a-work-of-alternate-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Nancy Stancill\u2019s New Mystery Is Both a Thriller and a Work of Alternate History\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Since retiring from her career as an investigative reporter for The Charlotte Observer <\/em>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, <\/em>will officially launch on December 12, 2024.  <\/p>\n\n\n

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This book has many connections to Nancy\u2019s 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<\/em> is different from the place that Nancy now calls home, for in Nancy\u2019s 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<\/em> is both a political thriller and a work of alternate history.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I recently contacted Nancy and asked her how she came to write Deadly Secrets.  <\/em>Here is what she sent to me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s a question I\u2019ve asked myself since I began creating <\/em>Deadly Secrets about three years ago. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fourteen years ago, I was newly retired and living in London when I began writing <\/em>Saving Texas, inspired by some fairly dangerous reporting I did for the <\/em>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.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my second book, <\/em>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 <\/em>Tall, which focused on my experiences as a six-foot-tall woman.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201cthe first Christian state.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 <\/em>Charlotte Press, is investigating King, his church and state and its secret plots and murders.  King\u2019s major headquarters are in his 12-bedroom mansion in Blowing Rock, a favorite town of mine.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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, <\/em>https:\/\/www.heartswithhands.org<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As usual, I called upon my own experiences being recruited by the <\/em>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\u2019s newsroom.  (Of course, the building was imploded a few years ago and there is no newsroom. I couldn\u2019t bear to use that in the book. Since it\u2019s fiction, I describe it as it was when I first started working there.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Stancill\u2019s book is available now at Park Road Books for $19.95 and as of Dec. 12, on Amazon and other online sites. It\u2019s 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 <\/em>and Nancy\u2019s other books, please click on the following link: https:\/\/www.nancystancill.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I congratulate Nancy on the publication of Deadly Secrets.  <\/em>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 <\/em>checks both boxes, it makes a great addition to Storied Charlotte\u2019s literary history (or alternate history).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s life in Charlotte.  Like Nancy, Annie Price is an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[316,92],"class_list":["post-4380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-storied-charlotte","tag-alternate-history","tag-mystery-novel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4380"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4383,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4380\/revisions\/4383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}