Progress no longer said to be snappy

'Snap', initially a reference to a schoolgirl's opportune photo of an about-to-marry couple, became more relevant as 'Snap is not a children's game' developed. As usual, this fifth book in the 'Love triangles with murder' series was kick-started, in December 2019, with a conversation. As also usual, as the novel progressed the conversation moved from opening chapter to page 130.

 I declared the first draft 'done' in a record time of thirteen months and after resting it, sent it to one of my ever-wonderful beta readers in February. She returned it in March, with some praise, lots of margin questions and an incisive and honest summary of 2200 words. Her verdict: "There is a story here but you still need to tell it."

I felt ashamed at having asked her to spend time on  such a sub-standard piece of  … writing.

Since then I have been removing superfluous words, characters and plot-strands; strengthening those new to the story and (I hope) enabling the plot to stand  n its own merit.

Current word-count is 110,743. It needs to rest for a while (so I can forget what I meant and thus read what it says – or does not say) and insert chapter numbers, then I can offer it again for beta reading.