S.A. McLAIN
ABOUT S.A. McLAIN

Michigan-born S.A. McLain has worked as a pizza maker, bartender, interior designer and marketing manager. After moving to the UK, she got her financial planning qualifications and spent a number of years in financial services while writing novels in her spare time.
Her debut novel, When Red Is Blue, is a National Indie Excellence and Readers' Favorite award winner. She has also written articles for several travel and lifestyle websites and a three-part series on financial planning for Scottish Woman magazine.
Blood on the Veld is the first book in the Christian Bekker Wildlife Crime Thriller series.
She lives in a village north of London with her husband and two house lions and loves an ice bath.
News
13-2-25 - New Books Network Podcast
In December I was invited on the New Books Network podcast with Miranda Melcher to talk about Blood on the Veld. You can listen to the podcast here. If you prefer a transcript is below:
(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity)
MM (Miranda Melcher)
Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Doctor Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Sherri McLain about her book titled Blood on the Veld, published by Eleven Books in 2024, which is the first book of a new wildlife crime thriller series that features or centers on the character of Christian Becker, who I think we're probably going to be talking about, and his decisions and choices and challenges and between being in South Africa where he's from and Britain where he's had to go to. We might talk a bit about that but it really centers on these ideas about animals and crime and who gets to be in charge of what and who gets to make what sorts of decisions. I'm really trying not to give away things here, but give listeners a flavor of some of the things that we're probably going to be talking about. Sherri, thank you so much for joining me.
SAM (S.A. McLain)
Well, thank you so much. It's great to be here.
MM
I'm very pleased to have you. I wonder if we can start off, please, with you introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book?
SAM
Okay, well, I'm Sherri McLain. I'm the author of Blood on the Veld, as you said it's my first book in the wildlife crime thriller series. I'm originally from Michigan. After I left grad school, I moved over to California (and) started working for a number of large companies in marketing. And while I was there, in my spare time, I started writing my first book, which is called When Red is Blue, and it was a literary fiction novel. And after that book came out, my husband and I decided to move to the UK because my husband is from Wales originally and we settled in Edinburgh, and then I started thinking about writing a series. So my writing tastes have kind of changed over the years. I now tend to gravitate more toward thrillers for both books and movies. So I decided to write a crime thriller series because it was what I enjoy reading, and of course, Blood on the Veld is the first of the series.
I decided to write about wildlife (because) when you look at thrillers, the definition of a thriller, it always involves a profession. So, you know, common thriller professions are, as we all know, police.Surgeons, spies, test pilots, lawyers, those sorts of things. So I thought a really interesting profession or a world to revolve a story around would be the world of conservation, but specifically people who are fighting against wildlife traffickers.
MM
That I think is a really interesting sort of combination of things. I mean, yes, as you said, of course, thrillers do focus on a profession, but why international wildlife crime?
SAM
Well, so when I came up with this kind of idea, I started thinking about it. I did some initial research, as you do, because I didn't know what I was getting myself into, really, and I quickly realized the extent of wildlife crime and how many people are involved. Of course, for a writer, that's a lot of material. So for example, organized crimes, organized syndicates, they bankroll wildlife traffickers. They pay locals to kill the animals. They bribe government officials, they bribe the police, customs officials, shipping companies, anything they can do to get the animals to their countries to sell and there are other people as well that are involved like for example antiques dealers - that's one because maybe they have some connection with somebody who wants to purchase these animal parts. But even more interesting to some people would be that these gangs then use the money they receive from wildlife trafficking to fund activities like human trafficking or drug operations. They purchase arms with the money. They even fund terrorists. So this money goes a long way and it affects everything. So of course, as I said, that's a lot of material for a writer to be able to tap into.
MM
Yeah definitely useful to have lots of source material to come up with something. So given that foundation for the kind of genre and the focus within it, can you give us a brief overview of the book and some of the key characters?
SAM
Sure. Well, as you mentioned,my main character for the series is Christian Becker, and he is the head of conservation programs for a zoological society in London. That society owns a zoo and a wildlife park. So it's pretty common for zoos to have in-house breeding programs and species reintroduction programs. They breed the animals and they actually reintroduce those animals to a protected area, you know, a park or protected area in a country. They also provide funding and support technology expertise to conservation programs all over the world. That allows Christian to, you know, so he spends a lot of time traveling for his work and the story begins in London with his father's funeral. So the police have determined that his father died of a suicide and after the funeral he's going through his father's things, he finds an envelope with a USB key and that contains photos and a spreadsheet. Along with a note basically asking him to go back to South Africa where he grew up.
Then we find out that 20 years earlier, after just after his high school graduation, Christian and his friend Ruben, were out camping. They came across two poachers. They got into a shootout with them and Christian and ended up killing one of them. So he's arrested. He claims self-defense, the judge though finds him guilty of what's called culpable homicide. So that carries a sentence of up to 15 years in prison. But the judge says because of his age, he's got a little bit of leeway, so he can either go to prison or his family can give some compensation to the poacher's family,and then they'd have to leave South Africa permanently. His father always had doubts about what actually happened. He thought there was more to it, and so now he wants Christian to go back and try to find out the truth.
So Christian goes back to the Eastern Cape. He stays with the Davies family who were his next door neighbors. They had a neighboring ranch, but their ranch is now what's called a game reserve. So it's a wildlife reserve where people go and they stay and they see the animals. Lawrence Davies' daughter Beth now runs the reserve along with her husband and her husband's name is Patrick. Christian arrives, he starts asking questions, he starts, you know, overturning stones and causing problems. And he gets the attention of wildlife traffickers who have been operating in the Eastern Cape for many, many years, and they're not happy about it.
The main characters are Patrick Nala who is Beth's husband. As I said, he's the general manager of the game reserve that's called Somfula. Christian and Patrick don't really get along, they don't see eye to eye. There's a rocky relationship. But as the book progresses, the relationship evolves. So he kind of becomes a supporting character for Christian. He also runs into his old high school friend Ruben. Ruben is now a Hawks detective. The Hawks are a branch of the police, they are in charge of serious crime. They investigate organized crime, corruption, economic crimes and wildlife trafficking, as I said, falls under that remit because it's organized crime that's funding it. Christian, of course, asked for his help. On his quest, Ruben doesn't want to give in to him because he's in the middle of his own investigation regarding a poaching attack in another reserve.
We also have Annalee Weiss, and she is Christian's old high school girlfriend and she's ex-military. At the time, she wanted to join the military, South Africa didn't allow women in combat, so she moved to her father's home country of Norway and enlisted there. And then eventually she joined their Special Forces division. In the story, she's now retired, retired from the military, and she's taken her first job in the private sector, and she's got herself into some trouble on her first assignment at Kruger National Park. My two main antagonists are Esther Sawambi and her second in command, Moses Tockway. Esther is minister, who's in charge of wildlife and the environment and Moses is what's called a provincial commissioner in the police, he's in charge of all the police and the police stations that are located in the Eastern Cape.
So those are my main characters.
MM
That's a very helpful kind of lay of the land, as it were. I wonder if you can tell us a bit about some of the influences and inspirations you use to develop those characters?
SAM
Sure. Well, initially, my inspiration for all of it was really anger, if that makes any sense, because I was reading a book that was talking about inspiration, and it was talking about ways that writers are inspired. There were some exercises, one was to write everything, write a list of things you love, and write a list of things you hate, and wildlife trafficking was at the top of the things I hate. So that was actually my first inspiration for all this. The more I thought about it, the more excited I got about using that thread of wildlife trafficking throughout a series. Then I also started looking at other novels with a similar idea, and there are a few writers, Wilbur Smith, but he did a lot of other things. He did a couple of books on Africa and wildlife trafficking. Tony Park is probably the biggest one. He's done quite a number of books, but they are all set in Africa, and I was thinking more because wildlife trafficking is all over the world, as particularly in Asian countries.
So I kind of wanted to have Christian go to different countries and get into trouble with other people and other gangs and stuff with regard to wildlife trafficking.
MM
That makes a lot of sense to have, you know, as you said, starting from that point of inspiration, whether it's positive or frustration can often be quite a powerful thing. I wonder then if we can talk a bit more about that, the kind of research process of this book you mentioned earlier, you know, there's a lot of material to work with. Obviously, you just mentioned now, you kind of looked at what else has been done in similar sorts of ways.But kind of after sort of figuring out that there was a lot of material and knowing sort of the angle you wanted to take, how did you go about researching this to make it sort of accurate?
SAM
Right. Well, I started with a feature animal and a country and I think that worked out really well,and I think I'm going to do that for future books. For Blood on the Veld, the featured animal was the elephant and of course the country the main setting was South Africa. So I started initially with just immersing myself with all the books, articles, documentaries, podcasts, everything I could get my hands on that were related to those two things. So books on wildlife trafficking, books on elephants and elephant behavior. South Africa, the way their politics and their organization is set up, their political organization, their the police, how they work,you know, everything I could think of. Then that kind of thing gave me a little germs of information, little sparks kind of started developing (for) the plot and the characters.
Then I got the idea that I wanted to have some of my books set in game reserves. So I thought, OK, well, how do I find out about these game reserves? So then I decided to take a research trip. I spent two weeks at Kariha,which is a game reserve on the Eastern Cape.I was a volunteer, so I did manual labor, I pulled weeds,cleared paths, did game counts, all that stuff. I was up close and personal with the animals. I talked to people who work on the reserve, I got the feel for the setting, the sounds,you know, all those things that bring a book to life. That was one.of the best things I ever did.I mean, it was an incredible thing to do, and I recommend it to anybody to go to if they want to if they want to volunteer anywhere to go to one of these game reserves. So then I started looking at, you know, doing more character development. As I went, I said, OK, so Christian'scharacter, I'd like to speak to somebody who was in that role. So I found a guy by the name of Doctor Jonathan Bailey and he had the actual role he was director of conservation programs for the London Zoological Society. He was very generous with his time and spoke to me about the job and politics and the challenges and all that. I also spoke to an ex Hawks detective,so he gave me,you know, lots of first hand information about his job and. What he did and how he did it and various challenges and so on.
Now there were a couple people I tried to contact, but they wouldn't talk to me. So, so that's, you know, that's always going to happen. Occasionally you're going to find somebody, you're going to say, oh, I'd love to talk to this person.There's a woman who's kind of a real life Annalee Weiss and I really wanted to talk to her, but she, I tried to and she just didn't want to, she didn't want to talk to me.I also talked to wildlife experts. Vets and so on to get information there. There are a few scenes in my book that Ineeded to get expert information on the animals and ailments, things like that. Oh, and finally my husband, he does Krav Maga, which is an Israeli self-defense, you know, kind of a martial arts type thing and he helped me choreograph a couple of the fight scenes..
MM
So thank you for taking us through those different components. Of course, doing the research though is one thing translating it into not just writing, but fiction, right? Where you don't want to just go, I had this interview and I asked this and he answered that, right? That's sort of skill and process in and of itself. So what were the parts that were, I suppose the trickiest or the most surprising in doing that translation?
SAM
The trickiest scene I wrote and I'm a very linear person. I should probably say that. So I like to write the book scene-by-scene as I'm going through the story and that's the way I normally do things. This scene,I came to it, I was really struggling with it. I put it aside and then I continued with the book until I found other people that could help me with it, and I kept going back to it, trying, failing, trying. It was the scene that involves the rhino and the rhino giving birth, and there was a problem with the birth. I wanted kind of a bonding scene, I wanted something with Christian and Patrick that they were together and they put their differences aside for a second and they kind of worked together as far as their relationship and progressing the relationship.
But I needed something that would happen to a rhino, a complication that would be something that humans could intervene, especially out in the bush, not in a vet hospital, you know.So I had to find some people who could share their first hand accounts and how they were able to help a rhino give birth and saved the life of the baby and the the mama and all that. So that was just an incredibly difficult scene for me to write. Oh (and) I have Annalee reloading bullets. If you're a big gun person, you're probably gonna not just buy the cartridges that are already ready to load into the gun and shoot, but you're also going to do your own. So you have the parts. It's a lot cheaper, and plus, like I said, if you're a gun person, you're probably into doing that and Annalee would do that. So it took me a long time to figure out the process, then to compress it into something that was there, the bits were there, but it was just you just read through it. So while she's thinking about a previous scene, she's reloading her gun. So I know it sounds like a simple thing, but it was quite a lot for me to figure out how to do it properly.
MM
Well, that's what's so interesting about asking these kinds of questions because it isn't often the thing that as a reader, you'd go,oh, that must have been really hard to write, right?
SAM
Oh, actually, you know, oh, I hadn't thought, I hadn't thought of that piece. So, you know, that's why the behind the scenes type questions I think can be so interesting. And it's funny because there was a guy I knew who read the book and he said something to me about it. He said something like, oh, and your reloading scene, that was spot on or something like that, which I laughed at. I thought, oh, good, thank goodness. The last thing I wanted him to say is you got that bit wrong!
MM
That must have been good to hear?
SAM
Yeah.
MM
I wonder if there were any things about that kind of process of writing that were surprising to you?
SAM
Well, there was something I learned in the process that I actually yeah, I think I mentioned it briefly in the book. So it wasn't a major thing in the book, but it was really surprising to me. When I was in South Africa, I was talking to the volunteer coordinator. This woman kind of keeps all of us volunteers in line and tells us what to do, and she started talking about pangolins. And I don't know if you've ever heard of a pangolin. A pangolin is also called a scaly anteater. So picture an anteater with these big scales and they are the most trafficked animal on the planet. I hadn't, I didn't even know what one was, let alone that they were so heavily trafficked. And they're trafficked because their scales are made-up of keratin, and keratin is the same thing in our nails and our hair and it's also in rhino horns.
So there's traditional Asian medicine, some of the cures for diseases like cancer. So they say like rhino horns cure cancer and pangolin scales cure cancer .And of course there have been studies done that there is no connection there. Excuse me, there's no connection. They don't cure cancer, they don't cure any diseases. But these medical practitioners talk their patients into spending a lot of money on them. And China actually has a law against pangolins, using pangolins for this .But they don't have the political will to really do anything about it. They don't enforce it and so there's a massive black market, and that's why pangolins are trafficked to this extent. And they're also, they have no defenses. They're very slow animals, so they're so easy to just pick them up and throw them into a bag, and that's basically it. So that was quite surprising to me. All sorts of interesting things that come up, even if they don't end up being kind of the central feature of the book.
MM
So thank you for sharing that. I wonder if I can ask about something, however, that is very much a central part of the book, themes of homecoming, of marriage. You know, we've been talking about the kind of crime aspect, about the wildlife aspect. Can you speak to these themes and why they were important for you to include?
SAM
Yeah, I think first and foremost when I decided to write a series of crime thrillers, I'm writing books to entertain readers, so that's up to me, that's the most important thing. I work very hard to give readers well developed characters, a well thought out plot line, you know, hopefully immersive settings, hopefully strong dialogue and a satisfying ending. I want these books to be books that people pick up and they don't want to put down. So Christian's marital problems and the whole homecoming theme when he goes back to South Africa, for me, tied into this immense feeling of guilt he had and has been carrying around with him since his family had to move to London. He blames himself that one moment in time when he killed the poacher. He replays it in his mind over and over again, he wishes it never happened, he thinks he's ruined his parents' lives and that guilt affects all his relationships, which is, you know, probably a good reason why he's getting divorced because his wife can't reach him on a deeper level. So that's part of the character development of the really well developed characters. If I didn't do that then you'd have a book about wildlife trafficking that was just basically (just) a vehicle for the wildlife trafficking.
A long time ago I read a book, one of Arthur C. Clarke's books and I'm sure you've heard of him and I know there are loads of Arthur C. Clarke fans, sci-fi fans out there who loved him. He was a visionary. He was a futurist, everybody puts him way up high in terms of people who really, really could see into the future. So I read one of his books and I almost didn't finish it. Yes, the descriptions of the spaceship and the future and all that were amazing, but his characters were very two-dimensional. They were stereotypical. The plot line was weak, the pace was slow, so I didn't, as a novel, didn't really think it was that great, really. I mean, I'm going to get, I'm going to get shot for this, I know there are these people that are saying that Arthur C. Clark's books are amazing! But for me personally, and that and that's not what I wanted, I didn't want a book that was a vehicle for wildlife trafficking that wasn't that good of a book.
MM
So is that then the main thing you hope readers take away from this, a sense of being entertained in an immersive environment?
SAM
I think I'd like them to take away three things. I mean, first and foremost I'm not preaching about wildlife trafficking.That's not, that wasn't the reason I started writing these books. I wanted it to have an educational aspect. I wanted people to learn about it because I know that the vast majority of people don't know anything about that, they have no real idea about wildlife trafficking and how brutal and dark that world is and how pervasive it is. But yes, I wanted them to read the book, be moved, entertained, think, put the book down and think that that was worth their time, worth their energy to read my novels. Secondly, of course there is an educational aspect, certainly, and I also wanted them to paint a picture of South Africa for this book, for South Africa and South Africans in a positive way. I mean when I went to South Africa, that was something I took away was the people. You know, I love the people, I love the country. I loved, you know, the wildlife, everything. I mean, I really took away a really positive feeling.You know, it was a very positive experience for me, and I kind of wanted to convey that in my book.
MM
No, thank you for sharing that.I think that's a helpful way to conclude our discussion on this book,leaving me, of course, to ask about what you're working on next. Is it the next book in the series?
SAM
Yes. So the next book, as I said, features an animal and a country. The next book is Japan, is set in Japan and my feature animal is whales, and when I say feature animal, there are other animals, there will be other animals, but it's just kind of a thread that's going to go through the book. I have a research trip set for March. Japan is an interesting country because unlike the African countries you see wildlife trafficking is very prevalent in the African countries, mainly because of corruption. So mainly that you know nobody's going to stop the wildlife traffickers until something's done about the corruption on the levels of government and so on. Japan, it's more of a mindset. The Japanese and other Asian countries, governments, they look at wildlife plants and animals as commodities to be exploited basically. If humans need or want these animals for whatever reason, if it makes them a profit, then they don't have the idea of saving these animals from extinction, that these animals are intelligent, that they deserve to live and thrive isn't something that the Japanese really don't think of it like that. To them, it's that, you know, the animals are a commodity. So the laws in Japan are such that they really don't pay much attention to wildlife trafficking at all, they're very easy to get around. If there are any laws, they're very easy to get around or they're non-existent. Which means that there is a whole lot of wildlife trafficking that takes place in Japan. So that makes for interesting writing for me as a writer, an interesting story.
MM
I can imagine. Well, while you work on that of course, listeners can read the book we've been talking about, titled Blood on the Veld, published by Eleven Books in 2024. Sherri, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
SAM
Well, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.