Nancy’s most recent novel is an inter-generational family thriller. In RISKY PURSUIT, an Adult/YA crossover, resourceful high school senior baseball player, Decker Savage, depressed by his parents’ impending divorce, has to find and derail the anonymous mystery man threatening him and everyone he loves before the culprit destroys them all.
When Nancy was seven years old, she and her mother wrote poems to each other on special occasions. The poetry was awful, but Nancy learned that written words have value.
In high school, Library Journal’s Pegasus published her poem, “Time to Lie,” a feat she ranked beneath cheer-leading. At eighteen, with journalists underpaid and English major graduates selling lingerie, she slogged through spectacularly unimaginative courses in Business Administration at the University of Texas-Austin and Houston, and earned a BBA. Fortunately, she took a creative writing course.
She married, had two daughters, read numerous books on writing, and wrote articles, poetry, and the biography of artist Jose Vives-Atsara (Shoal Creek Publishers). She formed the Texas Publishers Association (aka Book Publishers of Texas), produced the association’s trade journal and promoted members’ books for seven years, as their Executive Director.
Returning to college to earn her MA, she studied English literature and began writing NINE DAYS TO EVIL, a novel of psychological suspense, Shakespeare, and nonstop-action – a Clue Award Finalist and winner of the Blether Gold Award.
Her poem, Time to Lie, featured on “Theme and Variations,” was broadcast on NPR.
For three years, she wrote San Antonio Woman’s Book Shelf column and articles for other publications. She was honored by Friends of the San Antonio Library with the 2012 Arts and Letters Award, and papers from the Texas Book Publishers Association and her novels are in Texas State University’s Southwest Writers Collection at the Alkek Library in San Marcos, Texas.
While writing her first suspense novel, NINE DAYS TO EVIL, Nancy and her serious graduate-school protagonist, Meredith, needed humor in their lives. Meredith’s “mature” classmate, Aggie Mundeen, provided it. She fascinated Nancy through four Aggie Mundeen Rom-Com Mysteries. Each book in the series won or was nominated for an award.
Her book, THE PLUNGE, a suspense novella, takes Aggie and Detective Sam to a lakeside cottage on the Guadalupe River in Texas, a few hours before the river unexpectedly floods. This book is based on the actual event – Nancy was there! She learned that people who manage to survive catastrophe are forever changed. THE PLUNGE propels Aggie Mundeen in a new direction.
Nancy is working on book two of the Aggie Mundeen Lake Mysteries. She is also contemplating writing more about Decker Savage in a sequel to Risky Pursuit.
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