Weekend Pulp Posts, Pages, and Cavemen

I’ve been a little under the weather recently (nothing serious) and I’ve been trying to get a book finished, so I never got around to scheduling any pulp posts this past weekend. I hope they’ll resume as usual next weekend.

And speaking of finishing books, I wrapped up novel #387 today, as I’d hoped to. I’m creeping closer and closer to 400. September has been a pretty productive month for me with 320 pages written so far, and I plan to start the next book tomorrow. Averaging 10 pages a day (calendar day, not working day) is easy to keep track of and produces about three-quarters of a million words in a year for me, so if I’m well above that average, I know I’m doing okay.

In other news, I got an email from one of the DNA places I’m signed up with that informed me I have more Neanderthal DNA than 65% of the population. Sounds about right. They also listed some traits that go along with that, and one of them was “Has difficulty getting rid of seldom-used possessions”. In other words, the hoarder gene. Well, that’s right on the money. I can just hear my ancestor, ol’ Thog the Caveman, saying, “Boy, don’t throw away that perfectly good dinosaur bone. You might need it one o’ these days.” (And before anyone corrects me, I know that humans and dinosaurs didn’t exist at the same time. One of my favorite TV shows as a kid was THE FLINTSTONES, so what do you expect?)

“You might need it one of these days” was one of my father’s favorite sayings, along with “It didn’t need that piece [or screw] anyway” and “It’s not goin’ anywhere”, both uttered frequently when he was putting back together something he had taken apart to work on and couldn’t find a particular piece or screw. Sounds a little slipshod, but you know what? I don’t recall a single case where whatever it was actually did need that piece (or screw), and none of it ever went anywhere.