Hit 33,400 Yesterday, 35,000 here I come!!

So, I think it's time I asked the question about the finale?? I know that a bunch of people are going to Washington for the August long weekend. I am not... does anyone want to get together to finish this off?
Regarding my novel, hit my goal yesterday, and have been writing a bit this morning. Still battling myself with trying to delay when I need to push things forward. I have placed all of my characters, I just need to set off the first domino, and everything will began to fall. Just getting there...
Here's a pic of my character, Jackson, who will hopefully reemerge soon, because I like him. He will probably have an intense look on his face, have messy hair, and of course, he'll be wearing his DILF brand khakis.

here's an excerpt of where Hope is at these days...

Hope lay in the hospital bed. She was alone. The doctor and Grace had just left. She had never felt so terrible in her whole life, and that was saying something. Everything hurt. She was so tired. She closed her eyes, and thought about the first time she was with AJ. She thought about how scratchy his monkey tail beard felt on the skin of her face. She thought about how he closed his eyes, about how tight he held her, his weight on top of her. She remembered that she had thought “I could be anybody,” a thought that made her profoundly sad, but at the same time, there was a comfort in that thought. Because being anybody, being amorphous, shifting with the tides, it somehow felt better than being herself. And wasn’t that the appeal of AJ after all? She could be anybody, it really didn’t matter to him. In the band, on the stage, it was the same thing. She could be anybody, whoever they wanted her to be. At the end of the day, that meant you were really nobody, there was no you. She wondered when it was that she decided that being nobody was better than being Hope.
She had been here two days now. The doctor told her that. AJ had not come. No one in the band, not even Felix had come to see if she was okay. Just a stranger she barely knew from the support group she had pretended to attend. Who knew only her lies. But her sisters were here, and that was something. Tears slipped from her eyes. She let them fall. They were tears for nobody.
She banished AJ from her mind, and instead pretended she was back in her childhood bed. She imagined she could hear the slow steady breath of her sleeping sisters. She imagined the warmth of Prudence next to her, the sweet smell of her hair. It was the last place she remembered feeling truly loved. The tears on her face dried, and finally, she went to sleep.


And for you Jackie, a brief Grace excerpt, I'm afraid it's not very funny or interesting. More hilarity to come in the near future I should think, or I should hope anyway.

She opened the door, the humidity of the hot summer day enveloping her as soon as she walked into the sunlight. She could see her youngest sister, sitting in the shade, smiling. In her work, in her life, she felt estranged, empty, lost and without purpose. She felt surrounded by strangers, by people she neither cared for, nor even really liked. With her sisters, she found her place, she knew it instinctively, it was as easy as breathing. She was Grace, the eldest, the protector. As a younger woman, she had fled from that, trying to find her out who she was on her own, wanting a chance to take care of herself, instead of everyone else. Wanting to be someone else. But she was never meant to be on her own. She was meant to be with her sisters, it was where she belonged. With them, she knew her place and she knew who she was, and she knew what mattered. It was a start.
When Prudence saw her, she smiled and waved. Grace smiled back, and began to make her way over to her sister, feeling for the first time in a long time a sense of calm purpose. She thought everything would be okay. Of course, life doesn’t work that way, and things are never that easy. Oh Grace, hold onto this moment, because things always get worse before they get better.