Hello, distant cousin of some kind by way of Uhtred of Northumbria!  I now have a new e-mail address, one that I finally am revealing outside of my immediate family, a long time after my computer was hacked, and some awful things attempted by an extortionist…I won’t trouble you with that story, or the significance of the new e-mail (It relates to my service in Vietnam, but I tell that story only if asked, so you’re free on that one!). I also won’t go into everlasting g detail on how many health issues my wife and I have faced this year, except to say that finding more of your books to read has been a very welcome escape, to rest my weary soul at a time I very much needed that rest.
I confess we have been buying them at a used book store, at a much reduced rate (which helps, as income as a disabled veteran doesn’t stretch as far as it might). Do such re-sales count in the totals when they are counting up for the best-seller lists?
Now to my question: I’ve just read “The Winter King”, in which you once refer to Excalibur by its name from Welsh legend, Caledfwlch. I am of Welsh descent on my mother’s side, and still correspond with cousins in Gwynedd,North Wales, on occasion. I once asked the one who is most knowledgeable about Welsh history and tradition if Caledfwlch did indeed translate to English as “Hard Lightning” (by far the coolest and most appropriate-sounding meaning I’ve heard, cognate with the legendary Irish sword of similar name–Caledbollt, I think it was, in Irish Gaelic??), but he stubbornly insisted that it *had* to be translated into the clunky English words “Hard Gap”.  I asked if that could be taken to mean something like “strong opening” (as in a shield wall?), but my stubborn Welsh cousin insisted on “Hard Gap”. How “unpoetic”! And to think my Mom’s father once won a prize at an Eisteddfod!
Well, did you go with “Hard Lightning” because you found better sources, or was it poetic license, and it just sounded better in an epic tale?

I also read “The Fort” a while back, and paid full price for it, and found it’s depiction of how wars get fought to be disconcertingly like my experience in Vietnam!
Blessings by whichever God(s) you revere, and *please* keep writing!
Dave Finster