AHOSKIE – Terrell Gatling was at the Uptown Café in Ahoskie on Saturday afternoon to sign copies of his first novel, “Well Balanced.”

Gatling said this was his first book signing trip to his home town and that he was very pleased with the “great turnout.”

Gatling said he is a Union native and a 1998 graduate of Hertford County High School.

After high school, he attended Virginia State University for two years. In addition to academics, he played basketball for the Trojans.

As a younger man, Gatling spent his time between the Ahoskie area and Patterson, NJ, where “Well Balanced” is set.

Gatling said this first novel, “is doing great on Amazon,” where it has received 5 stars out of 5 by readers.

The Amazon synopsis of the novel reads:

“Tony Rodriguez life was a mess. Left with two kids to raise after an emotional divorce, Tony’s job as one of the Bureaus top federal agents was slipping away. On the path to restore his legacy, Tony is determined to capture the North Main and CCP crew, who are in the middle of a bloody drug war. While cleaning up the streets, Tony has to settle some old debts and possibly make a deal with the devil to maintain his family and career. Davon Jones was a country boy who led a normal life. After graduating high school he was set to enroll in one of the nation’s most prominent colleges, Georgetown University. Divans future looked promising. That is until he decided to visit his cousin Mecca for the summer in the mean streets of Paterson, New Jersey. Fascinated with Mecca’s lifestyle, Davon slowly finds himself on the other side of the tracks and in love with a woman who could ultimately send him to prison for life. Will he fulfill his family’s desires of being the first Jones to graduate college or will he become another FBI number? One thing for sure, he’s WELL-BALANCED!”

“Well Balanced” is Gatling’s first novel, which he published himself.

“It is a fictional story about a young man who is on the right track but takes the wrong turn when he discovers a taste of the city life,” Gatling said.

He said he was an average student in high school, but after spending time in prison on a drug conviction decided he needed to do something different with his life.

Gatling said he will be returning to the Ahoskie area in June when his second novel, “Still Balanced,” is released.

The book jacket says of Gatling, “After overcoming the struggles of the streets, he is now a law abiding citizen of Raleigh, N.C.”