In hindsight, Will Staples realizes he’s always been a writer. He loves creative storytelling, loves the power of a well-chosen word, loves spinning his yarn around a trick, which makes it magic. But he always felt writing was an identity people have or don’t have. He wasn’t a writer; he just liked to write. In college, he wrote what was required, but it wasn’t creative.
Once he began writing for his own reasons, Staples realized writing is not just what he does but who he is, and he needed to embrace it. So the Pacific Grove-raised Princeton grad, who’d equipped himself with a poli-sci/econ degree, ended his first year of banking by loading up a U-Haul and moving to Los Angeles, to be a writer.
Twenty years later, he is an established screenwriter and producer with credits on television productions such as “Shooter” and “The Right Stuff,” as well as the video-game series “Call of Duty.” He is now also a novelist, having just released his first book, a fiction-based-on-fact thriller about global animal trafficking, organized crime, and a deadly pandemic. He titled the book “Animals,” and the reader gets to decide to whom he is referring.
A lot of people make stuff up, craft a compelling tale, and call it fiction. Staples didn’t do that. He didn’t develop his storyline or the understanding behind it from his desk in Los Angeles, where he lives with his family, safe and secure from the dark and dangerous realm of animal trafficking. He snuck around in the eye of the storm, taking pictures and making notes. He saw it, heard it, felt it, wrote about it.
To experience the issues behind animal trafficking up close and accurately, he recorded hundreds of conversations with people who care, among them Jane Goodall, members of the CIA, and Australian-born vegan Damien Mander, a former Special Operations military sniper, and the founder of the International Anti-Poaching Foundation. He also joined wildlife photographer and conservationist Karl Ammann and Mander on a month-long research trip, which took them through seven countries, across three continents. Sometimes he was by himself.
“Writing this book was a whole new experience for me in many ways,” said Staples, 42. “I actually was hired to write a movie about animal trafficking for three A-list actors: Tobey Maguire, Tom Hardy, and Leonardo DiCaprio. When it became clear that while drugs, guns, and human trafficking are law-enforcement priorities, no one investigates animal trafficking — except journalists and conservationists. I couldn’t write a movie about it without learning about it.”
Through his travels, Staples learned about money laundering in South Africa, visited poaching villages in Mozambique, and went to a genetics laboratory in Pretoria, where DNA profiling and a DNA database are used to protect endangered animals. Much of what he saw should never be seen. But he paid attention. He had to.
“By the time I got home, I was pretty messed up from the trip,” he said. “I’d spent time in places where young girls were involved in prostitution. I’d been served tiger meat and tiger wine, and had witnessed animals being poached. Karl Ammann says, ‘The whole of creation is waiting for us to become humans.’ I lost a lot of weight and a lot of faith in humanity.”
And still, Staples came home and wrote the movie. Producers loved it, he says, and so did the actors. But their schedules weren’t going to align to make a movie any time soon. Sitting on all his information and experiences was like holding down the lid on a pressure cooker.
“I wasn’t someone who had spent a lot of time thinking about animal trafficking,” he said. “Then I saw how horrifying it is and yet how out-in-the-open it is with so few who are willing to look at it. Someone has to shine a light on this, and I have no excuse not to because I make living telling stories. So, I wrote the book.”
Easier said than written
Staples had undertaken a big project. His book had to dovetail the movie that eventually will make the screen. He had developed muscular roles for the three actors, creating Randall Knight, Cobus Venter, and Kevin Davis — each with a complex, morally gray character. Their internal conflicts needed to be symptomatic of broad issues around animal trafficking, and give readers a reason to care.
“One of the greatest dangers to the natural world is apathy,” said Staples, “and another is a sense of futility about it. I also needed to address the issue of why we should care, which is a hard question to answer. It’s all connected. It takes a fairly unique skill set to be able to write fictional narratives that appeal to a broader audience, as opposed to recording nonfiction that will appeal only to people who already know all the issues.”
Staples found support, inspiration, and a sense of how to handle his book during his meetings with legendary conservationist Jane Goodall.
“Getting to know Jane Goodall,” he said, “was why I needed to write the book. She is an incredible writer and storyteller and is so intimidatingly brilliant. She cares so deeply about this. I’ve worked with a lot of big movie stars, but this was epic. If she can tell her stories for 60 years, trying to save the world for my kids, I should, as well.”
Staples’ ultimate challenge lay in developing the end of his novel about an issue that has no resolution. But he’d been there before. Right before he wrote “Animals,” he wrote a movie about unrest in the Eastern Congo and struggled then with the challenge of ending a story about an ongoing issue.
“I didn’t want to pretend I’d solved the issue,” he said, “because it isn’t over. But I also didn’t want the readers to feel so numbed out and hopeless at the end that they wonder why I took them on the journey in the first place. I decided to give the audience a win at the end, but make it clear that the system hasn’t changed.”
Staples’ hope is that people who read the book are affected by being exposed to the issues around animal trafficking and are inspired to make a difference. He believes readers will be satisfied by the way the story ends without letting go of the issues.
“I always want to make sure I’m the appropriate person to tell the stories I do. I would rather creatively and financially collaborate with a culture than capitalize on it. I love the types of stories I get to tell and am grateful for the opportunity.”
Staples’ story
Staples was raised with two siblings on 16th Street, right at Lovers Point in Pacific Grove. He attended All Saints School, followed by Stevenson, and spent a summer working at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, before heading off to Princeton.
Staples currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife of 12 years, educator Stacey Staples, and their two children, Damien, 6, and Noemi, 12.
“Stacey didn’t realize how deep down the rabbit hole I’d be going to research the book,” said Staples, “but then, neither did I. She has been really supportive of my mission.”
So has Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jane Goodall, Tony Camerino, author of “How to Break a Terrorist” and “Kill or Capture;” Nicole Perlman, cowriter of “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Captain Marvel;” and many others who did an early review of the book.
“Will Staples is passionate about wildlife and conservation,” wrote Goodall. “Although this book is a fictitious story, it is based on sound research and a real understanding of the issues discussed. Animals will help people realize the horrors of global wildlife trafficking — the cruelty, the corruption and, as we now know from COVID-19, the risk it poses to human health.”
“Animals” was released in hardcover on March 30 by Blackstone Publishing, and is available in hardcover and on Kindle, via Amazon.
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