RE: FINAL CHAPTER of The Allies of Old; Book Two Renewal: "Darkness is Coming"
You are absolutely right, at this point this is a Bridge book, and I am not publishing it when I publish Reborn. I might do a post soon that will explain this more fully, but I won't be able to finish this book properly until I've 'basically' finished book three, and actually the same will go for each book of the series until the end. Reborn is only the way it is because I waited until I was mostly done with Renewal before doing some serious re-writing. Truthfully I kind of wish I could write the whole story from start to finish before publishing any of it, because for me it really is one long story, and not particularly stand alone books. Turning them into stand alone books is the tricky part. Though it is possible, if I stick to the formula I used for Reborn.
The only reason I even decided to put this book through when I knew it wasn't truly done, is because I didn't want to leave everyone hanging for a long time and therefore cause people to lose interest. The way I will set it up here on steemit is when I feel I have the proper end to this I will do a Special Extension for Renewal or some such thing lol, before I start putting book three through, and there's a good chance this will happen every time until I'm done. Also, aside from Reborn, steemit will not be getting the finished, polished versions of each book, not quite the rough drafts either of course, but somewhere in between.
I actually am starting to form a clear idea of how to do the end for this one as I write book three, and it only requires a few additional chapters, two of which will come in earlier on to set it up, and if it wasn't for everything going on at home I might have been able to get it done before I was forced to wrap this up, but such is life. But when it is truly ready to be published I believe your concerns will be satisfied, ones I agree with so, yeah. lol.
Maybe you could use Lord of the Rings as a blueprint? The Harry Potter books feel episodic, so I don't think it follows the same pattern. If you're not able to introduce that sort of arc to this, you might consider publishing the series as a serial instead. With that, you'll have the freedom to tell the story sequentially without needing to make them stand alone on their own.
If you choose that route, you can divide it into arcs instead (Allies of Old Book One, Book Two, etc), and with a hundred or so pages for each one. You can do a monthly serial to keep people on the hook. I forgot which podcast I've heard it on, but the serials they produce actually make more than normal books since what should be a normal novel is divided into more. Let's say The Allies of Old is made up of five books but can be divided into twenty or so different arcs. You wouldn't need to cram side stories into larger stories, you could just spin them off into their own novellas.
I've actually thought of doing that years ago, but I became employed and had to put writing... on the shelf (ha!) for a while. If I remember correctly, that podcast was hosted by three people, and they cycle with each other to co-write stuff. Author A has his own books, but also have a number of series with B and other series with C, the same goes for the other two. Ah! Collective Inkwell is what they called themselves. Wouldn't it be fun to have that sort of thing as well with Boom, Paul and others? We would be publishing under one banner, but we all have our separate independent imprints as well. Like, you have your individual one, then you have one with Boom and one with Paul, then one with me, etc. The possibilities are endless!