February 2024 - Update #3

 I finally finished chapter 10 ("Aberffraw") yesterday. This takes Gwernin et al to the King of Gwynedd's court in search of a ship to Ireland. Again I pulled pieces from previous books - "recycling". Part of this is so that people and descriptions will match up with previous books, but also to cover things so that someone who is reading this book without having read the previous five, or hasn't read them recently, is more aware of the background and what's going on. Since this book is the third of the second trilogy, I'm also tying off some things - "closing the circle" as Gwernin said in the fifth book (The Old Gods Endure). I need to solve some puzzles from that book, too, and will - mostly. I'm starting chapter 11 (title not fixed yet) today, where the first problem for Taliesin et al is whether to take all, some, or none of their ponies with them to Ireland. If they can take all of them, they arrive not needing to acquire more, but it may complicate finding a ship or ships that can bring them all back, because they'll need them then to get home... and as Gwernin said in the fourth book (The Fallen Stones), ship captains do not deal in songs of praise.

Only about three inches of snow last weekend, and it's already melted - mostly. Not much more forecast for a while, so we may be able to have our first quarter moon ritual outside this month - more about that another day.