Super Big Series Changes...

Bear with me while I lay it all out.

I was doing some thinking the other day while writing book #22 Where the Forest Remembers Us, of the Kaitlyn and the Highlander series, about how it’s got a bit of a different feel. It’s a time of peace and the family are dealing with family things… a welcome respite, fun, emotional, a shifting — less time shift and more scale-shift.

Most notably it feels like someone could read this book who has read any of the books from, ohhhhh, let’s say #3 on.

And then I thought about the last three books #19,#20, #21, as I’ve been listening to the narrator produce them and how they have a different vibe too, almost as if they are their own discrete grouping. And the narrator has only read from #19 on, she hasn’t read anything before that and she was not lost at all…

And remembering how when I published #18 Time is a Wheel so many readers wondered if that was the happy ending we had been aiming for. Kinda was, I have to admit.

But I couldn’t quit Magnus. So here we are, me adding new books to the end of a very long series, super-fans reading along, some fans quitting along the way (the amount of books are daunting!)… and all of us just watching the books pile up that many readers will never get to read.

There is also another issue, Kaitlyn and the Highlander is a very complicated world, with the shifts and loops of books 11-18 and the giant enclosed loop of 19-21, it’s difficult to continue the story without tromping on those that have gone before. Takes a lot of brain computation. But I, again, can’t quit Magnus.

Time is a wheel you know, there are ruts in the path from our passage but once a wheel veers off course the rut turns into a ditch, and the metaphor is not perfect, but here we are… a complicated world, difficult to navigate.

And so I have been mulling an idea for a time. And like most of my ideas it percolates for a bit then slam, it’s not an idea it’s a plan.

Now the plan is done. Big changes happened this week. The world of Kaitlyn and the Highlander has shifted.

One. The Kaitlyn and the Highlander Series is now an 18 book series. It begins with Kaitlyn and the Highlander and ends with Time is a Wheel. If you look on Amazon it’s already happened.

Two. The books Long Live the King, The Dawn, and The Empire and the Wolf King are now in their own separate series, called Time is a Wheel: The Wolf King Trilogy. They can be read at the end of the Kaitlyn and the Highlander Series, as they were written, but also can be read at any time, not just at the end. There is a handy character and storyline reference to help get it straight, but they are now #1, #2, and #3. The books themselves have not changed at all. If you look on Amazon you will see the new set up.

And that means, that I have the space and time to begin a new series of books with Magnus and Kaitlyn and their family at the center. I do not know where it’s going exactly, I barely know where we have been. But, I can’t quit Magnus, so this is a good place to start anew.

Time is a wheel you know. Family is a tree. And now there is a branch.

The new series is called, Branches of Time: A Magnus and Kaitlyn Saga. Book #1 is what I’m working on right now, Where the Forest Remembers Us. This branch can be read after Kaitlyn and the Highlander series and after Time is a Wheel: The Wolf King Trilogy as it was written, but it can also be read in any place, wherever you are. Even a standalone probably, there will be a prologue, explaining the who, why, and where.

Note that the use of the word ‘Saga’, the #1, and the ‘series’ at the end there all lead me to believe that I intend to write more. We shall see where the story goes, but so far this change has gotten me really excited about what is to come.

I hope this explains all of these new changes, I will be making a reading order list soon, but if you’re all caught up, no need to worry, the story hasn’t changed, just Mags and Katie are in three different series so far! More books are coming!

Sincerely,
Diana Knightley