Year in review: Snow, storms, and surprise swans

On January 1 of this year, Seth and I took a 5 a.m. flight to Madison, Wisconsin, to search for our future home. On January 2, we found it. On January 3, we made our offer, and later that day, it was accepted. On January 4 through 8, I spent every spare minute dreaming of paint colors, floor plans, rugs and lamps. On January 9, we went to our new house for an inspection. A heavy snow was starting to fall. On January 10 through 12, it continued to snow, culminating in a blizzard so white I felt like I was walking inside the sun if the sun were made of a very cold wind. On January 13, we built a tunnel in a snowbank and got yelled at by a neighbor. On January 14, the day we flew back to DC, the temperature dropped to negative twenty windchill, threatening to ground every plane.

Welcome to Wisconsin.

We now live three blocks from the biggest lake in Dane County and I feel the urgent need to check on it daily, to make sure it’s still there. So far, so good. I walk to the lake every day regardless of storms or snow or windchill. I’m no longer afraid of the negatives. It may take ten minutes to put on all my layers, but I go out, because I am now The One Who Walks In Winter. I’ve become acquainted with the cold and its many forms. There are stages of cheek pain. First, the burn. Then, the numbing. Then you feel everything crystallize and somehow get warm again. The pain pricks across your face in spirals and you wonder what it would take to turn your face into one giant snowflake. Blood moves through the body in intervals. At first, it rushes away from the skin to preserve the core. Then, fearing frostbite, it returns and expands the blood vessels. Then back to the core. Like it can’t decide whether to shore up the fortress or go on the attack. Sometimes part of me is cold while another piece is overwarm. Sometimes I remove my gloves so that my body releases excess heat, like an exhaust pipe. All I care about is having a warm spine.

Coldness is an interesting adversary. It feels like it exists, but it does not, it’s a void, a powerful void that needs to be filled, and it doesn’t steal your heat so much as your body freely gives it away, for who can resist a void? Apparently, many writers and artists cannot. Somehow, every single book I’ve read in the past month has included a pivotal scene about the cold. Donna Tartt’s The Secret History: Run out of money, nearly die in a snowstorm sleeping in a warehouse with a hole in the roof. Neal Stephenson’s Anathem: Search for alien monks, fall down an ice shaft. Nickolas Butler’s Shotgun Lovesongs: Get drunk, get lost, get frostbit. Liu Cixin’s The Dark Forest: Meditate on a frozen lake until it cracks beneath you and sweeps you under, and before it closes in, understand the universe. All of these characters, these creations, fighting for their lives in the cold, finding life in the cold. I’m reading Karl Ove Knausgaard’s latest book, The Third Realm, full of melancholy characters listening to melancholy music, so I’ve been listening to the music mentioned, too. Specifically, Schubert’s “Winterreise,” twenty-four German poems set to voice and piano.¹ The poems are all about a man spurned by his lover who goes off into the snow to wander, holding onto his grief, falling deeper into his own loneliness and despair as he walks through forests and wilderness, the poems increasingly meditating on death, as when he hopes a raven will eat his remains, and considers a nearby graveyard an “inn” that, sadly, has no vacancies, until he gets to a village where an organ grinder man plays his instrument with an empty begging bowl, with no one paying attention to him, and many dogs growling at him, and nothing to redeem him whatsoever, and yet the narrator of these poems simply stands, transfixed, staring at this grim musician. And that’s how it ends. Does he find respite in the music, or accept that they are in despair together? Is he one step into the abyss already? There are no easy answers to this song cycle. They are by a poet named Wilhelm Müller, who volunteered in the Prussian war against Napoleon, then died of a heart attack at age 32. After all his time on the battlefield, it was his heart that killed him, his poor heart!

I’m not dying. I can handle a crystallizing cheek. Once I thaw, my skin has never looked better.

I used to end my evening walks at the lake, but now I start there, to arrive before nightfall, because at night, it could be anything, it is black, pure reflection, but by day, it is gray or blue or green or white or sometimes pink and gold. Windy or still, it is always full of birds and fishermen. The ice fishers are out now with their colorful man-sized screwdrivers. As for the birds? This has been the greatest surprise of all:

Swans.

Thousands of tundra swans migrate through the region every year. I discovered this in early December, when I went for my daily walk and there they were. Hundreds of swans, easily, chattering away with an eerie, echoing howls. They sound more like old dogs than birds. I’ve seen swans before. In Scotland, they were all over the canals. But I’ve never seen so many in one place. And in my hometown. I grew up here! And I had no idea. I am not alone. I’ve since asked all my Madison friends: have you seen the swans? They haven’t. They had no idea there were swans. I suppose the swans stay away from the busy downtown area. Instead they congregate in my quiet neighborhood. Every day, wind or snow, they are there, cooing. Here they are in a foggy snowstorm. Can you see them? Do they look very cold?

Even if you couldn’t see them, you could hear them. Howling, echoing. What do they talk about? What do they need to say to each other all day long? Geese are the opposite. They honk when they migrate overhead to tell each other information about their position and flight, but they don’t honk when they’re sitting in the park, nipping at grass. Swans talk to each other in the water, but what about when they fly? Do they ever fly? I’ve never seen it, and you can’t trust online images these days. Somehow they must get from the tundra to here and back, but they could waddle. Or maybe they simply fly in silence. They have nothing to say. They know where they’re going. Why don’t they just live somewhere mild year-round, like Scotland? Why make this yearly trip?

It’s almost New Year’s Eve. A lot can be accomplished in one year. Tundra swans migrate 4,000 miles each way. I myself migrated halfway across the country, even if not with my own two wings. And I discovered the swans. It makes me feel lucky. Always in my life, birds have made me feel lucky. When I see a hawk or an owl or a family of cranes, it’s hard not to take it as sign of divine providence that says: life is working as it should, so something else will work out, too, because everything is connected. I can’t help myself. Here are these creatures of the sky, gracing us with their presence. But now I live in a city of birds, in a house between a lake and a prairie. Is it lucky anymore? It’s a fact of life. And yet, so many people don’t know about the swans.

I do. Now they do, too.

Yes, this has been a good year, which I can count by the number of birds I’ve laid eyes upon, and how many times I’ve gone for a walk and come home more energized than when I left, whether the sky is a bright, piercing blue, or a deep foggy gray; no matter if my cheeks flushed with heat or numb from cold. The lake is still here, and so am I. Maybe next year will be the year. Maybe I’ll finally learn to fly.

-Denise

---

Updates about The Unmapping

I’m still more than five months from publication, but things have been moving forward on the debut novel.

• I’m not doing a big tour, but there are a few events in the works. For those near Orlando Florida, I’ll be at Booknet Fest on May 23. NYC, I’ll see you on June 3 for the launch. DC, come to Politics and Prose at Union Market on June 5. And Madison, let’s hang out on June 10 at Leopold’s. More info to come.

• A few authors I love and admire have read the book and provided blurbs. Including Bill McKibben!?! He called it “a powerful way to get at the essential fact of our time—that the world we’ve always known is now shifting around us, and we must come together to confront that reality.” You can check out the blurbs so far on my website.

• The Unmapping is now publicly readable on NetGalley, for those who have accounts and like to review books. The first few reviews have come in and they are all super positive so far! I don’t want to link to them because one of the reviews is pretty spoiler heavy but I will share a screenshot below the cats.² Anyways, I know people don’t put much stock in random internet reviews but it’s just so wonderful and weird because I don’t know these people, they have no reason to flatter me, yet they really like it in all the ways I’d hoped. (If you’re on NetGalley, request it here! If you’re not, and you’re bored, why not sign up and submit a request?)

• The book is on a couple of “most anticipated books in 2025” lists on Youtube, from A Clockwork Reader and SFF180. Sweet!

State of my writing

Because I love everything about the New Year’s—reflections, resolutions, the whole thing—I thought I’d give a quick update on what else is going on in my writing life outside of The Unmapping. I have two full books already written, waiting to find their home. Yes, two! I kept myself busy after finishing The Unmapping a few years ago! One is a speculative climate-fiction novella collection that I adore but has been hard to convince publishers to pick up because… it’s a novella collection. Apparently nobody reads novella collections. The other is a character-focused novel, which I finished editing shortly before The Unmapping was picked up, so my agent put that on pause until The Unmapping’s publication. Nothing is a given, but I’m excited to think that there are more books in the near future for you all, especially if the first one goes well. (I hope the first one goes well! Pre-order here!)

On top of that, I’m close to a finishing draft of a new book I’ve been working on for a year and a half. It involves Ancient Rome, AI, video games, Congress, and, sort of, zombies. It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever written, but hopefully quite fun and funny and will also make you learn some things about Rome (much moreso than the new Gladiator movie, apparently).

Finally, I’ve found a good groove with interviewing authors about their own books. I published five interviews this year, and have seven more in the works, with three already written. I love talking to writers about writing, so this has been a lot of fun.

Cats

Bonus: Cold Seth

It’s been a strange year, with fewer noticements than usual, but I’m always grateful for the opportunity to sit down and write a little about life once a month, and even more grateful that there are people to read it. Thanks for being here. -D

1. In the orchestra I play in, we’ve been practicing a song cycle called “December Songs,” a festive set of songs about snow, love, grandmothers, I don’t know. Something about a trailer park? It’s hard to listen to the lyrics when I’m concentrating on my cello. But the vibe is happy and light, very musical-theater-esque. I only learned after the concert, which was this past week, that these songs were inspired, of all things, by Schubert’s “Winterreise!” The cycle about death and despair! I didn’t get it. The “December Songs” are so happy? And looking at the lyrics now, I still don’t get it. The final song, “What A Relief,” is all about turning a new leaf, making a new start, and is all very cheery. Oh well. People in the audience enjoyed it, so they tell me.

2. The aforementioned spoiler-free reviews: