Sales of medical thriller to benefit diabetes research

The release of Mountain Brook author Stephen Russell’s second medical thriller this month is set to coincide with National Diabetes Month.

Russell’s sixth-grade daughter, Molly, has juvenile (Type 1) diabetes, and Russell is donating all of the author proceeds for Command and Control’s first three months of sales to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, an organization for which he has served on the board of directors for the past six years.

“I know that the money raised will directly benefit Molly and kids and adults like her with T1D,” Russell said. “Seven years into this journey, I am more hopeful than ever that we can stop the accelerating spread of T1D — and then cure it for those who have it — before she has children of her own.”

The first novel in Russell’s Cooper McKay series, Blood Money, reached No. 8 on the Amazon Best Sellers list for medical thrillers three days after its release. 

Russell, an associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at UAB, uses his medical expertise and insider knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry to develop the series.

Command and Control follows Dr. McKay as he saves the life of a man with flu-like symptoms, which leads him to be caught up in a government cover-up regarding the Ebola virus. 

“Command and Control deals with themes of personal safety and individual greed; it explores how the public health system protects us from heath risks beyond our collective ability to treat them, and what could happen when personal ambition pushes back against public health,” Russell said. “The West African Ebola outbreak revisits these themes on a frightening world stage. Fortunately, in fiction I get to change the outcome and choose the ending.”

Command and Control will be available starting Nov. 14.