Sangre De Toro (Old Draft - Now Published!)

Author's note

Thank you all for reading this far and getting to the end. I truly appreciate it.

I'm really shocked that I managed to finish it and even more so that it got such a great response on here. I have only finished 2 full length books before and they were both part of a dystopian trilogy, the last one was way back in 2016 and I've been working on it since I was at school, whereas this just took me a few months.

I was 'inspired' to write this book after doing a bit of research and a very in depth article on a politician who I unfortunately partly based Henry's character on. He has among other things, used secret pseudonyms to write about his love of bullfighting, which he did in extremely graphic, upsetting and gory ways. That and a series of scandals among the ruling classes started me thinking about what other things politicians might be trying to hide.

The club and magazine are, sadly, real, I changed the name but they exist and they're very easy to find. Some of the article titles from the magazine are genuine as are some of the quotes by the evil characters. In many cases, but not all, they are things people actually said. I'm more than happy to DM a link to my article but would rather not have it linked to my real name atm.

I'm sure I didn't get everything right and am more than happy to be corrected. But, as far as possible, I based this book on facts, I wanted to give an accurate depiction of how evil this truly is. That meant basing a lot of things on literature by bullfighting aficionados, such as the articles in the magazine, as disgusting as they were to read. The pretentiousness is sadly off the scale as is the callousness, self delusion and cruelty.

When writing this book, I looked for other books that had given a similar depiction of the same subject, both on and off Wattpad. Sadly, I couldn't find any, even though the cruelty is now so widely known. There was an article by an aficionado that said 'if a story about bullfighting was written today, it would be extremely negative and judgemental'. But it seems to me there just hasn't been. I actually toned some things down for the book. In my opinion it's utterly evil, and it shouldn't be ignored. So, I decided to put Pepelito's story front and centre and make him into the hero of the entire thing. 

The only way that this story could end, was for good to defeat evil and for evil to be completely destroyed. 

I am hoping to self publish this book and give the proceeds of it to CAS International the anti bullfighting charity.

CAS International is a charity that not only campaigns against cruel events with bulls around the world but it has been instrumental in getting it banned in some parts of the world. The awareness they have raised of what goes on, means that in holidays to countries where bullfighting happens, the huge majority of tour operators no longer offer a trip to see it. They also campaign against hunting events with dogs.

They also rescue bulls (and cows) that were used for such activities. One of these was Polvorin, a bull that was used as a 'fire bull' for a festival in a village called Medinaceli in Spain, he had a wooden structure attached to his horns that was set light to, which caused the animal terrible pain and suffering, including being blinded in one eye. Although he was badly injured they still managed to rescue him and the bull is now living a happy life in a large field with other bulls and cows.

Another example was Tina, a cow that had been used in illegal bullfighting events and was rescued when a few months old, very traumatised and badly beaten. You can find videos of Tina on YouTube now, being very sweet and affectionate.

My aim was to write a good story that was hopefully very entertaining in parts. I really hope it worked. Parts of it were a bit light hearted as when writing a story about animals, you have to.

I truly hope you've enjoyed reading this book as much as I've enjoyed writing it.

Rachael