Luchador By Erin Finnegan
Luchador By Erin Finnegan
SUMMARY
Each week, Gabriel Romero’s drive to Sunday mass takes him past “El Ángel,” the golden statue at the heart of Mexico
City that haunts his memories and inspires his future. Spurred by the memory of his parents, Gabriel is drawn to the
secretive world of lucha libre, where wrestling, performance art and big business collide.
Under the con f icting mentorships of one of lucha libre’s famed gay exótico wrestlers and an ambitious young luchador
whose star is on the rise, Gabriel must choose between traditions which ground him but may limit his future, and the
lure of sex and success that may compromise his independence. Surrounded by a makeshift family of wrestlers, Gabriel
charts a course to balance ambition, sexuality and loyalty to f nd the future that may have been destined for him since
childhood.
Excerpt:
braved the stutter-stop congestion of Paseo de la Reforma, using it to cut through the park past the museums and onward north, hoping to beat the afternoon crowds that would later close the avenue. It was the same every Sunday. Gabriel, slumped in the backseat of his godparents’ Mercedes Benz, ticked down the moments until the golden landmark triggered his weekly pre-mass sacrament. He drifted off into a silent world of his own, watching the posh glass and steel boutiques of the chic boulevard not quite push the city’s aging mansions out of their way.
In moments, they would pass Monumento a la Independencia, the golden angel of victory most people simply called El Ángel. It reached high above the center of the traffic circle mere blocks from the cathedral where he worshipped with his aunt and uncle each weekend—even though there were a dozen churches between their home in Lomas de Chapultepec and the Zócalo.
The statue could be seen from kilometers away along the wide, tree-lined avenue. Each week as they drew closer, he watched for it, a golden beacon in an azure sky.
Character Bio:
What is your character’s name? Does the character have a nickname?
Gabriel Romero goes by a lot of names, depending on the audience: Gabriel to his family; Gabe to his friends; El Fenix Oscuro and, eventually, El Ángel Exótico to his fans. Each name is a part of what makes Gabriel whole.
He gets the full name treatment from his aunt if he gets into trouble. His closest friend in the wrestling world, a former American champion, simply calls him Gabe. His instructor Miguel usually just calls him “college boy”. But as he enters the world of lucha libre, his fans know none of this. In lucha, the identities of enmascarados, or masked luchadores, is a closely guarded secret. He starts his career as the Phoenix, a reference to his upbringing in Arizona and the theme of rising from the ashes of his childhood. But as his career takes off and he signs with a major empresa (league), he comes to be known as El Ángel Exótico, a reference to the fact that he wrestles as an exótico wrestler, a luchador who is openly gay and typically competes as a form of drag act. The Angel, a nombre de batalla he had wanted since his youth, references the Angel of Independence statue along the Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City, and may be a veiled reference to his parents.
What is your character’s hair color? Eye color? What kind of distinguishing facial features does your character have?
Gabriel’s hair is dark brown, with unruly waves. He tried and fails between bouts to grow a beard, but it rarely gets beyond scruff. He’s too baby-faced for it, and he has to stay clean-shaven for his character in the ring. His eyes are more amber than brown and though he won’t admit it, he thinks that the gold trim on his mask brings out the color of his eyes.
Whether or not his mask brings out the amber in his eyes, it was designed to play up his two strongest facial features: his sharply-cut jaw and his thick lips. It also hides a small scar under the back of his jaw, the result of a miscalculated leap over the ropes that landed him in the ringside seats of one of his early matches.
Who are your character’s friends and family? Who does he surround himself with? Who are the people your character is closest to? Who does he wish he were closest to?
Born in Tuscon, AZ but raised since age 10 by his aunt and uncle in Mexico City, Gabriel initially throws himself into his studies, but eventually dedicates himself to lucha libre, surrounding himself with a makeshift family of professional wrestlers, including Miguel, a veteran exótico who goes by the stage name La Rosa and becomes Gabriel’s trainer and mentor; Arturo, a talented and determined young rudo; and Ray “The Dark Storm” Michaels, a former champion American wrestler with a personality like sunshine who is determined to become a luchador.
Does he have a secret?
In lucha libre, everyone has secrets—especially the masked luchadores, whose identities are a closely-guarded secret. But Gabriel’s biggest secret is the fact that he is training to become a luchador, fact he has hidden from his family.
Fun & In-Depth Questions
Look at your character’s feet. Describe what you see there. Does he wear dress shoes, gym shoes, or none at all? Is he in socks that are ratty and full of holes? Or is he wearing a pair of blue and gold slippers knitted by his grandmother?
Getting into costume shouldn’t take so long, especially when there is so little to it. Gabriel wears trunks, not wrestler’s tights, after all, but it’s the boots that consume his time.
White patent leather with gold trim, from toe-to-heel they look like most competitive wrestler footwear, save for the addition of a slight heel intended to give him the illusion of height, and the inlays of golden wings along the base. It is the boot shaft that’s the problem, but it’s also the signature piece of El Ángel Exótico’s costume, because the shaft runs from ankle to mid-thigh, and the entire thing has to be laced up. As he finishes lacing them an ties them off with a knot, he sighs, stands, and inspects his handiwork in a mirror. A pain, but he has to admit, they’re kind of hot.
What is one strong memory that has stuck with your character from childhood? Why is it so powerful and lasting?
The mask. A child’s toy, a cheap knock-off of a luchador’s mask that his father had purchased on a whim.
Red metallic with silver trim, Gabriel wore it religiously each weekend while we watched lucha libre broadcasts with his father. When he moved in with his aunt and uncle at age ten, the mask became a sort of talisman, a security blanket of sorts that he kept with him at all times. As he grew older, he still kept it among his prized possessions, until he found a reason to part with it on a visit to Arizona.
Years after his father had given it to him, Gabriel decided to return it.
Your character is getting ready for a night out. Where is he going? What does he wear? Who will he be with?
There’s a bar not far from the old Arena Coliseo in Mexico City. They like to think of it as an homage to lucha libre, its walls covered in old lucha magazines and posters from El Santo movies. The floors are sticky with spilled beer, the customers well-versed in lucha history, and the corner jukebox hopelessly outdated, but Gabriel has loved it ever since the wrestlers from Gymnasio Ciudad took him there to celebrate his receiving his license to wrestle professionally. It’s his favorite place to hang out with friends after a night of lucha at the Coliseo, and he doesn’t even have to get dressed up.
Category Fiction, Romance, LGBT, New Adult, M/M
BISAC FIC011000 FICTION / Gay
FIC038000 FICTION / Sports
FIC043000 FICTION / Coming of Age
SBN (Trade) 978-1-941530-97-9
ISBN (eBook) 978-1-941530-98-6
Publication Date November 3, 2016
Trim 6×9 Trade
Pages 256
Price
$16.99 print/$6.99 multi-format eBook
Publisher Interlude Press
Cover Design CB Messer
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Erin Finnegan is a former journalist and winemaker who lives in the foothills outside Los Angeles. A lifelong sports fan
and occasional sports writer, she has had to dive out of the way of f ying luchadores at matches in both the U.S. and
Mexico. Her f rst novel, Sotto Voce, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and a Foreword Reviews Indiefab
Silver Book of the Year Award. Get to know Erin at Erin-Finnegan.com and on Twitter at @eringo f nnegan.
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