Sally Fernandez - Ripped from the Headlines

Sarasota writer Sally Fernandez is a self-described political junkie. In fact, it was the 2008 presidential election that kick-started her writing career. “I had a lot of questions leading up to the election,” she says. “My husband challenged me to put my ideas on paper.” Meeting that challenge proved to be the inspiration for a series of what she calls “thinking person’s books” that weave contemporary political events into fictional plots.
Fernandez attended Pace University in New York and the University of San Francisco. She worked for Citibank and JP Morgan in New York City and provided technology consulting while living in Hong Kong. But it wasn’t until she moved to Florida in 2009 that she began a career as a writer. Her debut novel, Brotherhood of the Yard, (published in 2011) is an international thriller that takes readers from the streets of Florence, Italy to the highest seats of power in Washington D.C. It was the first in what was to become a series titled The Simon Tetralogy. The story introduces the enigmatic Simon Hall, a man Fernandez describes as “a cross between Brad Pitt’s character in Meet Joe Black and Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Catch Me If You Can.” As the leader of a group of scholars known as La Fratellanza (The Brotherhood), Simon brings an intellectual game into real life involving the election of a president, the banking crisis and international terrorism. “Throughout the tetralogy, the hunt for Simon never ceases as he continues to unleash diabolical plots in the US and abroad,” Fernandez explains. “The readers and the characters are led first to admire him and then slowly grow to fear him.”

In the sequel, Noble’s Quest, the hunt for Simon continues with a joint investigation between Interpol and the States Intelligence Agency as a result of earth-shaking events in the United States and Europe. In Book 3, The Ultimate Revenge, Simon escapes from a high-security prison and leads his captors on a chase that reveals plans for the establishment of a one-world government under the guise of global warming. Redemption, the final book of the series, begins with the news of Simon’s apparent suicide. Meanwhile, the newly-elected US president calls on La Fratellanza to help solve the economic crisis that threatens the country’s survival.

Fernandez’s next novel, Climatized, is the first of what she calls The Max Ford Thrillers. The signature character, Maxine Ford, is a private investigator and former deputy director of the States Intelligence Agency who is hired by the wife of a deceased senator to look into the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death. The investigation leads Max to the mysterious deaths of three scientists who were scheduled to give testimony to the senator’s committee investigating global warming. Max finds herself in a race with an unknown killer when a fourth scientist goes missing. Dr. Harold Doiron, Chairman of The Right Climate Stuff Research Team and NASA Apollo Space Mission veteran, praised Climatized as “…a murder-mystery thriller, full of political intrigue and meticulous scientific accuracy that gets about as close as you can get to the truth…and still call it fiction.”

Fernandez's latest release, The Beekeeper's Secret, is the sequel to Climatized.  When a US Senator is found dead in the Amazon rainforest under mysterious circumstances, Maxine Ford suspects a connection to the deaths of several holistic doctors years before. Her investigation sends her to Mexico to find a beekeeper that might hold the key to the mystery and throws her into a conflict with Big Pharma and the FDA.

 The Max Ford novels are currently being developed into a three-film project. Variety Magazine unleashed the news as an exclusive; (see http://variety.com/2018/film/news/max-ford-movie-climatized-1202734078/) The first film is being adapted from Climatized with Max being fashioned after the Jason Bourne character. It is expected to be released in 2020. The sequel will be adapted from The Beekeeper's Secret. 
  
Fernandez is currently at work on her third Max Ford novel (slated to become the third film in the series) where she will seize another controversial subject to create an exciting fictional plot while offering the reader a gripping story of a contemporary subject.“I set out to inform the reader subliminally, letting the characters debate while I stay out of the fray,” she says.  “I hope readers will close my books and wonder, ‘What if?’”

For more information, visit the author’s website at www.sallyfernandez.com