Yesterday I finished two novels. One was Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and I have babbled about it here. The other was my own invention. The working title is A Girl and her Squid, and that is what it is about. I am intending to make it a great deal better--perhaps four or five hundred drafts will be enough--and then publish it.

Now, on to the squid news that I missed during the last month of frenzied noveling!

Ammonite shells have bite marks in them that suggest they may have eaten by squid:

Shell-dwelling ammonites, believed to be ancestors of modern cephalopods, became extinct towards the end of the Cretaceous period.

(Correction: ammonites were probably not the ancestors of modern cephalopods; that honor belongs to a different group of ancient shelled cephalopods called belemnites.)

Squid played an important role in the history of Monterey Bay, as written by Steve Palumbi and Carolyn Sotka in their newish book Death and Life of Monterey Bay:

The squid of Monterey Bay remained an untapped resource in the 1880s. This resource had a vast market in China, where dried, salted squid could fetch a good price. . . .

More details are available on the Argentine shortfin squid fishery, proving that squid are a mercurial resource if ever there was one:

"It was an atypical season because at the start we virtually found no squid south of parallel 47, a bit more to the north in the Comodoro Rivadavia area, but overall catches were very poor" . . . Then in June a great mass was sighted and the fleet was out again.

Right now I am afraid of my google reader (SO MANY UNREAD ITEMS) so I don't know who else has been keeping up with all this stuff, but tomorrow I will catch up on everything and cross-link to all my fellow cephalobloggers.

Loved the novel-writing, but it's good to be back!