I've been holding this one in for awhile, but anyone paying attention on Tumblr or Twitter probably could have pieced it together: the trip to Mexico City, the photos of the Angel of Independence statue, and all that lucha libre.
Luchador is officially announced now, and it's a bit of a break from where Interlude Press started, because romance is not the driving theme of this book. This is Gabriel's story, a coming of age piece about a young enmascarado in search of identity while wearing a mask.
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 conflicting 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 faith to find the future that may have been destined for him since childhood.
It's easy to call it coming of age fiction, but it wasn't until I was done writing it that I realized I'd written a story about finding family and being true to yourself.
And Lycra. Lots of Lycra.