Steve Deels is a veterinarian and writer based in New Zealand. He has worked across rural practice, suburban clinics, emergency settings, and a short detour through the pharmaceutical industry, giving him a rare, whole-system view of veterinary medicine that few people ever see.
His debut novel, Bite Marks and Burnout, is a dark comedy inspired by veterinary practice. It draws on observation, experience, and the stories professionals share behind closed doors, to explore the realities of care, responsibility, and exhaustion in high-pressure work.
Steve writes about systems that ask too much, the quiet cost of caring, and the gap between how professions are imagined and how they are actually lived. While veterinary practice provides the setting, the themes will be familiar to anyone who has ever wondered how a “sensible career choice” turned into something else entirely.
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