So, how did this change come about? It started with a conversation between our audio book co-ordinator and the narrator of the audio book version. Apparently they both had the same idea at the same time; to make a full series release with all ten stories, plus some bonus material.
Okay, so I got to write a couple of short stories to follow up on a character who appeared late in the last book because a reviewer mentioned wanting to know more about this character. I also wrote a short documentary thing on the Harekaiian people.
Well, to get this on the system for doing the audio book, there had to be at least an e-book release of the full series. This has been done and it's staying on KDP Select and clocking up a LOT of page views as we speak!
The cover designer saw an opportunity to make a full series paperback and designed the background you see on the two volume paperbacks above. Only the page count for all ten and bonus material exceeded what any of the printing sources would do. Funny thing, if you make the book a larger size, the page limit goes down!
Eventually the designer admitted defeat and suggested putting the prettier covers on the existing two volume paperback set. Yay! I love it.
As if that weren't enough, two questions came up. How could paperback readers gain access to the bonus stories and wouldn't the set look even more awesome if there were three. (Gulp!)
The idea of adding the bonus stories to the second volume was discussed, but to keep the two parts a closely similar size, the solution would be to write more short stories, enough to fill a third volume of that same size. That's five novellas page count of short stories, any length.
So, I've agreed to this. There's no time scale and I can write the stories about new characters in different parts of the world, making them whatever length I want as long as I produce enough of them to fill the page count. This could take a while, especially as I want to get my other two books re-written and back out there as well as a third one you don't know about yet.
I'll probably write a few stories between bigger projects and let them accumulate. Exploring this world further is undeniably appealing, especially as I can set them in different countries I've visited.
Oh, and one more thing. The new cover design is going on hardback editions of the two volume set. This will of course be joined by the third volume when it's released.
How exciting is all this?