Interview with Blackbird Crow Raven
Pop Cracklesnap, Time-traveling Animals, Dr. Dolittle, and The Monkey Wrench Gang
The following is an interview with Blackbird Crow Raven by Niles Finnety about the former’s new novel Taterskin & The Eco Defenders. The interview took place at a public park in Angels Camp, California, on May 29, 2022
Niles: Blackbird — may I call you Blackbird, or do you prefer Mr. Raven?
Blackbird: Blackbird is fine.
Niles: Is Blackbird Crow Raven your real name?
Blackbird: No; I was born Pop Cracklesnap; full disclosure: Pop N. Cracklesnap.
Niles: What does the N stand for?
Blackbird: Nothing.
Niles: The N doesn’t stand for anything?
Blackbird: I didn’t say that; I said the N stands for ‘Nothing.’ My full legal/birth name is Pop Nothing Cracklesnap. I just use Blackbird Crow Raven as my nom de guerre when writing works of fiction.
Niles: Why?
Blackbird: Would you read a book by a guy named Pop Cracklesnap?
Niles: Well, we are always told not to judge a book by its cover, so I guess we shouldn’t judge it by the author’s name, either.
Blackbird: Nevertheless, I don’t think people would take a book written by a cat named Pop Cracklesnap seriously.
Niles: Perhaps you’re right. But we’re burning daylight. Let’s get to your recently released book, Taterskin & The Eco Defenders. What is it about?
Blackbird: Didn’t you read it?
Niles: No. No time. My boss keeps me hopping 24/7; I cover everything from cats stuck in trees to PTA meetings to wrecks on the highway to finance reform to concert reviews to climate change . . . he even makes me create the crossword puzzles for the paper every day! I’ve got no time to read!
Blackbird: All right, then. Taterskin & The Eco Defenders is, in a nutshell, about a group of people and animals — mostly animals — who live in the year 2525 and travel back in time to solve problems and prevent catastrophes from happening.
Niles: What kind of animals? What types of problems?
Blackbird: All sorts and kinds: Taterskin, the narrator, is a Labrador Retriever. There is also an orange tabby kitten named Marmalade, but most of the critters are more exotic than those two. There’s everything from Elephants and a Bengal Tiger and a Koala Bear and a Bearded Dragon to a Duck-billed Platypus — even a Pterodactyl. As for the problems they solve, they range from going back in time 15 million years to warn the Germans about Hitler, to freeing slaves and preventing the Civil War in the 1860s, to preventing the massacre of Native Americans at Wounded Knee in 1890, to bringing an end to vivisection to . . . all sorts of things, culminating with the protection of the Amazon Rain forest in 1978.
Niles: 1978? Why 1978?
Blackbird: Read the book and you’ll find out.
Niles: I told you: I’ve got no time to read. I spend all my time reporting and writing.
Blackbird: You know what they say: ‘All work and no play . . .’
Niles: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell that to my boss.
Blackbird: At any rate, I was talking to your readers, mainly, when I encouraged you to read it.
Niles: Well, you know how people are: They want to know what a book is like before they invest time reading it. What would you tell my readers about the sort of book Taterskin & The Eco Defenders is?
Blackbird: My book Taterskin & The Eco Defenders is unique, but I would say it most resembles a cross between the seemingly disparate Doctor Dolittle series of books by Hugh Lofting and Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang — with, of course, my own idiosyncrasies (“style”) added.
As for genre, I would call it a mashup of science fiction, fantasy, social commentary, picaresque time travel . . . it could even be labeled young adult, I guess.
Niles: Young adult? Why, does it have a romance story blended into it or something?
Blackbird: There is a little romance in there, but I say ‘young adult’ because that is the age group that tends to be more open-minded and willing to accept what older ones would view as too far-fetched or radical.
Niles: OK, I have to wrap this up — I just got a text from my boss that Sheryl Crow is going to play at the Frog Jump next year, and I need to interview her about that.
Blackbird: Ah! My fellow Crow and Missourian — tell her ‘hi’ from me.
Click the image below to see the book’s page on amazon