Los Angeles writer/producer Jessica Brody is celebrating one of those milestones that makes one do the happy dance. Last week, Brody got the word her novel, ” The Fidelity Files,” had been optioned for development as a television series by Marina Grasic, the executive producer of the Oscar-winning film, “Crash.”
St. Martin’s Press released “The Fidelity Files,” Brody’s debut novel, last summer. The novel is about a young woman who goes undercover as a “fidelity inspector” for suspicious wives and girlfriends who want their men put to the test. The novel focuses on the question women have been asking for eons: Is he cheating or not? Brody says the story came easily to her: “The concept of cheating has always intrigued me. And the idea that you can never really know what someone does behind your back. So I came up with a character who will tell you exactly what happens when you’re not around.”
“The Fidelity Files” is 432 pages, but Brody says she still has tons of material that did not make it into the novel. More than likely, she will get a chance to pitch some of those unpublished ideas for the small screen version of “The Fidelity Files.” Brody is attached as a consulting producer on the show.
A follow-up to “The Fidelity Files” called “Love Under Cover” is due out in November. The 29-year-old writer also has a young adult novel, “The Karma Club” coming out next spring. And she’s still writing and working on a number of other projects as well.
At the top of Brody’s to-do list is a final polish on the first book in a new YA series, which she hopes to get a publishing deal for very soon. In a few weeks, she plans to get cracking on another adult fiction novel, too.
Brody was once an executive at MGM Studios, but she quit that full time job in May of 2005 to follow her dream: “I’ve always loved the mantra, ‘Do what you love and the money comes later.’ That was certainly true for me. I sold my first novel a year and a half after leaving the corporate world and struggling to pay the bills and I’ve never looked back or regretted my decision. Sometimes you have to just leap and trust that the net will appear.”
