Southern
Colorado, 1879. The gringo town of Conejos Blancos has just hosted the Mexican
circus; no sooner do they move on to their next venue when Hart and over thirty
desperadoes take over the town – and the adjacent silver mine! The sheriff is
slaughtered and many of the citizens are held hostage.
In desperation, two boys escape from
the locked-down town. They recruit seven Mexican circus performers, the
Magnificent Mendozas: the troupe comprises Mateo, the leader, and his wife
Josefa, both expert knife-throwers; José, younger brother of Mateo, a trick
rider who lusts after Josefa; Antonio Rivera, sharpshooter; Juan Suaréz,
gymnast and trapeze artist with his companion Arcadia Mendoza, who is also expert
with bow and arrow; and Ramon Mendoza, escapologist. In order to penetrate the
cordon of sentries and free the hostages, the troupe employs their many skills.
Not everything runs smoothly,
however. Soon, it’s a battle of wits between the Mendozas, Hart and his men and
the townspeople. There’s betrayal, bravery and plenty of quick-fire action… and
death on both sides.
***
If
you read yesterday’s blog (Magic Seven), you might have a strong inkling how I was influenced
to write this book.
A
few years ago, I was intrigued by the Mexican government’s objection to how
Mexicans were perceived in several western movies. So, I thought, why not turn
the idea on its head? Instead of gringos
coming to Mexico, why not have some Mexicans helping out a gringo town? Then I had to decide who these Mexicans were
going to be. I didn’t want to slavishly copy the original western (though that
was a copy, as we know, of a Japanese movie). So, I would not make the Mexicans
gunfighters. Then, after I’d done a little research, it came to me in a
blinding flash.
Many
circuses toured the American West in the latter half of the nineteenth century,
and several were Spanish or Mexican. Before I began writing The Magnificent Mendozas, I noticed a
little film had been released and for an instant my heart sank. Was The Warrior’s Way (2010) going to ruin
my storyline? Would I have to make adjustments to avoid copying? (Synchronicity
in creative work crops up a lot, more than plagiarism, and that will make a
blog one day, too!) The Warrior’s Way
is a fantasy where East meets West and although it features a circus and
fairground, it is happily nothing like my storyline: it is weird, colourful and
quite spectacular, however.
So, now I had to knuckle down and create a circus troupe who would in effect be the magnificent seven. Like the movie characters, each would possess a skill that would prove useful. [I felt that the skills of the seven men in the movie were underplayed at the end, but that might have to do with the rushed script and filming as much as anything else.] That’s one of several unwritten laws about character creation – if your character has a skill, she or he should be seen to use it.
I
enjoyed plotting the book, and writing it. I was a little daunted by the number
of subsidiary characters (who had to be named), but noted that most genre films
of this type would have a similar number in the cast. Here, I purposefully mention ‘films of this
type’ while referring to this book, as it was my intention to write
cinematically as much as possible, while still sticking to character point of
view for particular scenes.
Initially,
I wanted my seven to avoid killing since they were not hired gunmen though they
had experience at killing in their past; a small departure from the shoot ‘em
up perception of westerns. Inevitably, the action ramps up to a point where
that becomes impossible and the killings do begin… At risk are not only the
seven, but the townsfolk held hostage. And there will be deaths and loss on
both sides, as the blurb promises…
Tomorrow, I’ll post an excerpt and continue with this analysis.
You can obtain a hardback copy of The Magnificent Mendozas
From the book depository, post-free worldwide here
From Amazon UK here
From Amazon COM here
2 comments:
Nik- good article and very interesting premise!
Thanks for the comment, Jack. Appreciated!
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