Gold light, fat moons

First things first: My debut novel, THE UNMAPPING, has a cover! 

It’s available for pre-order. Pre-orders are fun. You make a tiny little investment, forget about it, and then, months later, FREE BOOK! I can confirm this feeling is true; earlier this year I pre-ordered Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo and Karl Ove Knausgaard’s The Third Realm and when they showed up in the mail it felt like my birthday. The publication date of The Unmapping is Tuesday, June 24, 2025. What will you be doing on Tuesday, June 24, 2025? You’ll wake up and the sky will already be a light, bright blue, such a perfect blue that going to work, or being inside at all, will feel like sacrilege, especially when there are all these white fluffy clouds to examine and baby birds nesting in your favorite walking spots. You’ll either call in sick that day to go for a walk in the woods or you’ll head to work anyway but get nothing done, staring out the window, wishing this would be the day the human body would learn to fly. Then it will be five o’clock p.m. and a whole, empty evening will stretch out ahead of you, an evening that doesn’t need anything at all to become perfect, it simply is, and anything you do will fit in just right, like going to the nearby market to pick up a little lemon pastry; or watering your flowers, kicking away the rabbits; and what will be at the front door? A new book, smelling like sugar. 

Here’s the other fun thing: after you pre-order, if you fill out this form, you’ll receive an annotated first chapter ahead of time, as well as being put into a raffle for more presents, including a whole extra book a month in advance. 

I’m so very proud of this book. I just finished with the copyedit process and, after a non-zero amount of time gently arguing with the copyeditor about post-colon capitalization and Marcus Aurelius, I finally feel like it’s ready to share with the world. Of course, there is still a long way to go with the proofreading and formatting and printing and reviewing and so on, but my part is essentially done. Now I can move on to different stories and different pieces of my life and then I’ll wake up on June 24 and it will be a happy day. Also, I adore the artist who worked on the cover, Ibrahim Rayintakath, along with everyone I’ve been working with at the publisher. I feel so lucky in so many ways. 

Second things second: I feel very unlucky in some other ways. This month has been tough. That being said, there will be no normal “noticement” for October. It’s sort of hard to write about my life while avoiding this other painful thing that I don’t feel like writing about. Back to the regularly scheduled programming in November. 

In the meantime, I am counting my blessings and falling in love with Wisconsin autumn and walking to the lake by our house every day and taking in the early golden light and the big fat moon and discovering the trees in our backyard through the color and scent of their fallen leaves, what sort of oak, what kind of pine. Every night, Seth and I tell each other what we’re grateful for that happened that day, because every day has gifts to discover. This is why I started noticements. So even if I don’t write about them, know that I am feeling them, living them. I hope you are too.

See you next month,

Denise

PS: A couple recent publications:

A short story I wrote called “Sevilla, Seville” has been published in the Washington Square Review. Read it here.

I interviewed the author Jami Attenberg for The Rumpus about her new book A Reason To See You Again. Check it out here.