Today, we have Deb Taber in to talk about her newest book NECESSARY ILL.
Jin is a designer and spreader of plagues intended to keep the human population in balance with the dwindling resources at hand. Jin is also a neuter, one of a clandestine group of naturally genderless humans whose lack of gender-specific hormones and needs results in an advanced capacity to grasp science and mathematics–but in Jin’s case, not human nature and emotion. When a young woman named Sandy is thrust violently into the world of the neuters, the worlds of genders and neuters begin to clash, and only Jin can set things right…if it can connect with others enough to understand how.
So what’s Deb’s Favorite Bit?
DEB TABER
I won’t say that Necessary Ill was written solely as an excuse to explore the cave systems and landscapes of southeastern New Mexico—really, that wasn’t the intent when I first began writing the book—but despite the main character, Jin’s, often questionable activities, I really owe Jin for the opportunity to physically revisit one of my favorite places on earth…and call it research.
I was eleven years old the first time I went to Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico, and the limestone seeped into my blood. As I began to write about the underground Neuter Network and Jin’s travels on foot across the state, I knew I needed more than childhood memories to give the scenes the flavor they needed. So I went back, this time on my own. The magic was still there.
If you’ve never been on the self-guided tours offered by the park, picture this:
You descend an easy slope that curves down and around through raw-sienna-colored rock, down into the wide-open mouth of the earth. As you drop from sun into shadow, the caverns’ steady 56 degrees eases the burn of the desert sun, and your eyes adjust to the artificial lighting set to accent the shapes and shadows of the insides of the earth. Bulky pillars, tiny claws, thin sheets, and towering cones of stone are on every side. Sounds are hushed, and the water you see is clearer than glass, inviting you to explore deeper. Darkness peeks at you from behind every rock formation—from holes in the walls, from the back sides of boulders—not in a threatening way, but as if curious about these travelers who have brought light and camera flashes down below.
The main cavern tour is just a taste of what’s to come, though. For the real flavor of the desert and the hidden spaces below, it was time for a wild cavern tour, a hike through Spider Cave.
After walking across a canyon through patches of prickly pear and yucca, sunbaked stones, and a wealth of autumn sun, my small tour group and I climbed down a ladder into an unassuming hole in the ground and clamped on our headlamps.
Spelunking is not for the claustrophobic, but I’ve always felt at home in small, dark spaces. I was the kid who climbed into the new suitcases the family bought for travel and closed the lid on top. I jumped in every cardboard box that could be stretched to fit me with as much enthusiasm as the little girl in Mama (though, unlike her and Jin, I didn’t eat bugs). So exploring little-used passages underground was no big thing, right? Mostly right.
There is something extremely humbling about approaching a tunnel of rock as it funnels down to perhaps 18 inches in diameter, knowing that you are about to crawl through it, pushing your small pack supplies ahead of you, and you have to keep moving because there is someone else coming behind—but when you’re in the tunnel, it’s just you and all that earth. All that rock. It’s so heavy on top, it could all come crashing down at any moment. But it’s also the strength of that rock that holds everything up, keeps the earth you’re crawling through solid as you worm through the tunnel on your belly, breathing the smell of damp earth and—in my case—loving every minute of it.
At the end of the tour, before turning to head back, there is a moment where everyone shuts off their lights. That darkness—whether comfort, cover, or conqueror—found its way into the book in various scenes, most directly in the following passage:
Bruvec reached out and held her hand briefly, flicking off its light after she turned off hers, letting the darkness settle in around them. In the absolute black, with a warm hand in hers, Sandy cried. Not the shaking sobs she expected, just near-silent tears that ran down her face and made little thumping sounds when they dropped off her chin. Her nose started running, but she didn’t want to sniffle and break the silence, so she let it run. Finally, sticky and soggy and feeling a mess, she smeared her face with her sleeve and breathed in deeply, slowly. She squeezed Bruvec’s hand and let it go, savoring a moment completely alone in the dark. The old prayer she had said over her mother came into her mind again, and she hummed its high, eerie chant although the words meant nothing to her now.
When asked what type of fiction I write, I often say that I like to find the alien in the everyday. That alien world of darkness and solitude beneath the desert sun is a prime example. The passages in Necessary Ill where Jin finds its way back after crossing the desert, the passages where Sandy learns how to explore her new world underground, all of these together form my favorite parts of the book, because I hope that readers can get some of the flavor of that awe-inducing power in this bewilderingly complex entity that is the earth beneath our feet.
RELEVANT LINKS:
Necessary Ill: Amazon
Spider Cave Tour: http://www.nps.gov/cave/planyourvisit/spider_cave.htm
Carlsbad Caverns Cave Tour Home: http://www.nps.gov/cave/planyourvisit/cave_tours.htm
BIO:
Deb Taber is a writer, editor, and Pacific Northwesterner, complete with the standard-issue coffee addiction and an irrational affection for giant slugs. Her dark fantasy stories have appeared in such venues as Fantasy Magazine and River: An Anthology, and her science fiction short stories have appeared in various anthologies, including Art From Art and Dark Futures. Necessary Ill is her first novel.
You can occasionally spot her lurking at www.debtaber.com.
