Wednesday, October 11, 2006

aka Krin and the Giant Squid

Isn't it interesting how ideas floating around in the subconscious of our netherland bump into each other, hang on, and attract more? Yeah, I'm talking about my nano novel which is starting to take some shape. Which is good, because we start writing in just twenty days.

So, my mom gets Reader's Digest and passes along old copies to me once in awhile. Currently I'm working through 2005 (Canadian editions) and ran across an article entitled Giant Squid Hunter by David Grann in the May issue. One of the things Grann says is:
Peter Benchley, in his thriller Beast, described a squuid that "killed without need, as if Nature, in a fit of perverse malevolence, had programmed it to that end."


And I thought, what if it isn't nature programming it, but someone else? And so it leapt onto Krin's bandwagon waving all eight arms (over eighteen feet long each) and two tentacles (which are considerably longer). It is now the visible weapon of the enemy bad dudes.

I've lost track of which website I found this on:
Vampyroteuthis infernalis (meaning 'the vampire squid from hell') grows to no more than about 20cm long and therefore probably feeds on fairly small animals in the mesopelagic zone (400-1,000m deep) where it lives.

Now, I'm not sure I'm going to use a vampire squid from hell, but you never know. It sounds cool enough to be in a fantasy novel I'm thinking!

I've come a long way from the dragons that inhabited the original idea for Krin's idea. This one is WAAAAY cooler and I'm getting stoked to write it.

3 comments:

Hanna said...

The Kracken! (is that how you spell it?)

Valerie Comer said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraken

Yeah, pretty much!

Erin M. Hartshorn said...

The vampire squids were on the Discovery Channel site, Val.

And Crackle says "hey!"