I get it: cliffhangers can be annoying

I remember watching Breaking Bad (for the first time). Every season (except that weird first one) finished on some kind of cliffhanger. I loved them. I hated them.

Same with Star Wars Episode 5: that ending with Han in the carbonite and the relationship between Luke and Vader just burning a hole in my brain...Loved it, hated it.

The hate was because I had to wait...

I'd been chipping away at four novels over many years before I finally got my act together and polished three of 'em. Then published them. (The fourth, I'm still trying to get right).

Dawn Star (my light-hearted space opera adventure) and the second book in that sequence which ends on a cliffhanger...

Keeper (my dragon baby urban/modern fantasy) which finishes open-ended (although a recent reader felt that "Nope, dude, that's a cliffhanger...and it's annoying there's not a second book to resolve it").

In retrospect, I jumped the gun in publishing these books when they were ready. But when their sequels weren't. (TBH, I wasn't sure until I had some feedback from writing buddy mid-July that I had a second dragon book in me...Turns out I do!).

What I should have done was finish the third space opera book and the second dragon book, THEN published all five close together. Lesson learned.

I make no promises about the time it'll take me to finish those two sequels. I don't want to publish something I've rushed. I want to be proud of it...and present something that I'd be happy to pay for if it was me.

But I do promise I'm working on them. I have a complete outline for the second dragon book (and I'm planning that it doesn't end with a cliffhanger, that it wraps up ... without slamming the door on future spin offs or sequels). I'm on chapter 8 of the write for that book. And I'm really enjoying it.

The third space opera book ran into a massive plot hole when I started it (also my family had some health issues lately but that's another thing). So I'm having to rehash the plot and stop it spiraling into a 600 page epic.

Thanks for bearing with me. Thanks for taking the journey with me. In the end, I just want to entertain you and give you some fun.

Mike out.