The smallest fever
On hearing, hoping, and holding on
Hi friends,
Much to tell you, and all of it gleaming with the particular spit-shine of mundane miracles.
1. The first is this: I’m understanding speech now!
It took five weeks—five long weeks of my brain learning to translate the electrical signals of my new cochlear implant into meaning, into language, into the human world.
I’m still far from wherever the finish line might be—which is what? As much comprehension as is humanly possible? A return to some imagined wholeness?—but I’m on my way, regardless.
I can MOSTLY understand podcasts, which is something hearing aids never gave me. Before, I had to read transcripts and follow along that way—perfectly fine, but it rather defeats the purpose of audio, doesn’t it? Also, it’s very tiring.
I can’t yet talk on the phone and am relying a lot on lip-reading still. Audiobooks remain more elusive, for some reason. I can catch about 65%, which is a maddening way to read, and so I’ve been listening to books I don’t particularly care about—The Pumpkin Spice Cafe, for instance.
No shade to the Gilmore Girls-adjacent kinds of romance, but I prefer my stories with a bit more darkness, I guess. Though if you’re drawn to farmers nursing abandonment wounds, you might find something there. It’s free on Hoopla, the library’s audiobook platform, if you’re curious.
2. I also got a new hearing aid to sync with my cochlear implant, and it sounds—well, quite good actually. People still have that chipmunk quality, voices pitched higher than they should be, but music is softening at the edges, shedding some of its robotic luster.
Yesterday, I even heard Ricky purr. Usually I have to press my head right against him to catch it, but now I can hear it from several feet away. I could also hear his little paws padding down the steps, each small percussion of cat against carpet.
As Aladdin might say, it’s a whole new world!
3. AND—in book news—my paranormal romantasy The Sinking God is finally, officially on submission. This means my agent is shopping it around to editors and publishers in hopes that one (or several, let’s dream) will want to buy it. This can take months and months, so it’s a long game. My previous novel that went on submission “died” there—meaning no one bought it. That’s the actual industry term: death. Isn’t it terrible? Being an artist is fun.
But I’m hopeful, nonetheless, for this one. Here’s the short pitch:
THE SINKING GOD by Anna Pulley is a dark, funny, and high-stakes, queer urban fantasy about a half-deaf, mixed-race medium cursed to kill anyone who loves her. Blue can hear the dead better than the living—a curse that’s kept her isolated, until a fearless woman searching for her missing mother drags her into a supernatural mystery of ghosts, trickster gods, and ancient bargains. To survive, Blue must choose between saving the woman she loves or freeing herself from the curse that’s defined her life.
A sapphic Constantine with grit, heart, and humor, THE SINKING GOD blends Indigenous and Mexican mythology with the intimacy of paranormal romance and the scale of urban fantasy. Think Cemetery Boys meets the slow-burn emotional core of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and the mythic energy of Mexican Gothic.
4. While rehabbing, I came across a podcast featuring a thought exercise from cartoonist Malaka Gharib, who said: “Sit for a moment with an idea that you recently found beautiful, maybe from a poem, a film, a book, or something you saw. What was it exactly that moved you? Meditate on that thought for a moment. See if you can find a parallel story from your own life.”
I loved this idea, so I did sit with it. Here’s what rose to the surface:
A line from Close to the Knives, David Wojnarowicz’s memoir: “There was a wealth of images in that jawline, slight tension to it and curving downward to a hungry-looking mouth.”
We went to see the Monarch butterfly migration in Santa Cruz last weekend, on their long journey to Mexico—their frenzied wings battering through shade-thrown trees, sun-dust hanging in perfect, hazy swirls across the forest floor—a curtain of light. The profound quiet of it. And throughout, a woman sitting on the wooden partition, not taking photos or videos the way we all were, just looking up, neck craned, chin in hand, marveling.
The children playing tag with the ocean—guess who won? They didn’t care, just ran straight in with all their clothes and shoes on, and it was freezing because it’s the Pacific and November, and their squeals of delight pierced even the fierce wind and the birds swooping and plunging and diving overhead. When was the last time you jumped headlong into the unknown just for the surprise of it? I can’t say I have an answer to that one. Unless “being a writer” counts.
An image. The glistening of me on your lips as you pulled yourself up from between my thighs and draped yourself across my body, a river of me edging into your ocean as you kissed me, and the sweat on my lower back spreading like the smallest most persistent fever.
5. Some books I’ve read and enjoyed recently:
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Lesbian astronauts in the ‘80s! About halfway through, I was like, wow, this is Jenkins Reid’s third book about a queer woman living a closeted identity! One shouldn’t speculate about authors’ personal lives, I know, but how can one NOT speculate? Then a friend told me she’d come out as bi when the book was released, so hey!
Speaking of bi humor:
Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. A gorgeous, fairy tale-esque story involving Aztec gods and a mouthy Cinderella, set in 1920s Mexico. I love a good quest and this didn’t disappoint.
The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley. A fun enemies-to-lovers fantasy. The ending isn’t an ending at all—one of my pet peeves with fantasy! Don’t split a story into two books just because it’s long—but the humor is sharp and the sweetness genuine. The toilet jokes wore on me after a while, but overall a solid time.
Free Books
Yours,
Anna
P.S. This month’s Hot Box is a collection of user-generated reasons to be alive—some sad (“so my mom doesn’t have to lose another son”), some silly (“because there are so many people to prove wrong on Reddit”). Which is your favorite?
P.P.S. My dear friends Kelsey (who illustrated The Lesbian Sex Haiku Book (with Cats!)) and Rogge cofounded Visibility Drawing, where artists gather to draw trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming models—bodies that have been historically erased from life drawing studios, from art history, from the archive—and increasingly from the street, from the bathroom, and from the right to exist in public at all. Visibility Drawing need donations to keep going. Throw them a few bucks and support the simple, radical act of insisting we’ve always been here and we’re not going away. Donate here.
“I live because I am not dead yet” makes me laugh lol!
So glad to hear your hearing aid journey is progressing!!
I also have to wear hearing aids, and when I do, voices sound higher. Not chipmunks but higher. Glad to hear the implant works.