Teaser Tuesday: “The Shadow of the Wind”

~ James Viscosi

So this week I was reading The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Luis Zafón:

The premise of The Shadow of the Wind is that there’s a book called The Shadow of the Wind, and when the main character tries to find more books by the author, he discovers that somebody is going around destroying everything the man has ever written. If this rather meta self-referentialism reminds you of In the Mouth of Madness, then hey! You must be me.

I have literally just started this book so today you just get the first two sentences, free and clear:

I STILL REMEMBER THE DAY MY FATHER TOOK ME TO THE CEMETERY OF Forgotten Books for the first time. It was the early summer of 1945, and we walked through the streets of a Barcelona trapped beneath ashen skies as dawn poured over Rambla de Santa Mónica in a wreath of liquid copper.

Carlos Luis Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

Based on that description alone, I’m guessing this book will have at least one fewer ax-wielding maniac than the trailer for In the Mouth of Madness.

Now, usually with Teaser Tuesdays, I follow up the teaser from the book I’m currently reading with a teaser from the book I’m currently writing. However, sadly, things didn’t go so well when I tried to pick up any of my previously-active projects (you know, The Apprentice and Blue Roses and the unnamed one about the guy who has a ruptured aneurysm), so after frustrating myself for a while I decided to put them all down again. Maybe I’ll try again later. I have been remembering my dreams a little more lately, and I still have this weird theory that the lack of dreaming is related to the lack of ability of progress on the fiction. I mean, sure, the dreams have still mostly been extremely boring ― the other day I dreamed I was so tired that I fell asleep on the kitchen counter, which means I was literally dreaming about sleeping ― but hey, at least it’s a dream, right? Beggars and choosers and all that.

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Published by James Viscosi

13 thoughts on “Teaser Tuesday: “The Shadow of the Wind””

  1. I notice similarities to the movie, “Pan’s Labyrinth” by Guillermo Del Toro about a young girl who escapes the horrors of the Spanish Civil War in the gardens of her family home. It’s very dark fantasy genre. Don’t know if the vibe is the same.
    Give the writing a nap, keep reading, and listenening to great music, and I’m sure the breakthrough will happen!

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  2. these last 3 years, i’ve only dreamt of one thing. other than that, strangely enough I haven’t dreamt. not even like a passing image. it’s strange how the mind works when it’s allowed to roam completely

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    1. I remember a snippet of a dream from last night … I dreamed I forgot I was wearing hearing aids while I was shaving and severed the little wire to the speaker portion. These are the sorts of dreams I have now, instead of alien invasions and whatnot like I used to. Sigh.

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  3. In my younger years I had some rather fantastical dreams: Mickey Mouse chasing me through a parking lot and up into the Toronto Airport/s control tower…Air Canada airplane coming down in my backyard after the decals on it (with the maple leaf logo), came off in a rain storm and pulled it down…wow!!
    Yup, we lived about 20 minutes drive from that airport…and the planes would fly over our house if the winds were right.

    Now I dream about stuff like what happened at my work, or other mundane junk…must be our imaginations run out of good stuff the older we get! Hmmm

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    1. I still had the fantastical dreams up until The Event … I miss them, but considering I didn’t remember any dreams at all for the first several years afterwards, I guess anything is an improvement, even if they’re boring now!

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  6. a great author – left this earth far too early. tx much for visiting my site. I love anything to do with books & would be thrilled if you’d write a guest blog post for my site, which is for anyone who enjoys writing, or books, and all the arts. If you think it might be fun or helpful to have my followers (who total about 10k across my various social media) meet you, here’s the link for general guidelines: https://wp.me/p6OZAy-1eQ – best, da-AL

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