"...terrible mismanagement of the production staff to not have
wrapped the main characters in contract for the duration."

We did.

As has been noted elsewhere...when you write a novel or produce a
series, you learn things you can learn no other way. And we looked at
where we were with the story, and figured we could keep on going just
fine as we were. But if we did X, risky as it might be, it would open up
whole new directions, and let us improve the quality of the story in its
range, its scope, and its impact. THEN we went to Michael for his
thoughts. Both sides had some good reasons for doing this. This isn't a
matter of "patching things over." On our part, this is a deliberate
decision which we think will improve the hell out of the story.

jms