Thank you for your comment, T. I should perhaps have been a little clearer, because I have done exactly what you do with my own books. However, hopefully with mine, and certainly when I’ve read the first in your series there was a certain amount of wrapping up and a proper finishing point to the book that yes, made you intrigued about what was going to happen next but at the same time left you with the satisfied feeling of a book well completed.

I read one once that literally ended mid action point. That is what I mean by a cliffhanger and it was not a good ending. It was just incredibly infuriating and I did not buy the next book because I knew the same would happen with that and the next one after that.

I agree with you. If you write a series you do need to tempt the reader into the next book but you need to do that properly and not by actually leaving them hanging…

As well as that, I felt I had to speak out in defence of writers who write books with cliffhangers. We do not just write them to get the reading public to buy the next book/spend money; I actually have a 1* review for Tipping Point, accusing me of all sorts of nefarious schemes likes this, including thinking the reading public are ‘suckers’. Not only do I write cliffhangers (in my latest series) but I read a lot of books with them, too. Those I read are like those I write: a long, long story, that is far too long to be just one book. That is why my Tipping Point series, lots of post apocalyptic/dystopian series (as well as the Game of Thrones series by GRR Martin, and Lord of the Rings), are split up into lots of different books. If we stop the book at a point that we hope will make the reader long to know what’s going to happen next, so shoot us!! Isn’t that what they do in TV series, to keep you watching?

Some long stories cannot be neatly wrapped up into stand alones, and the plots are too complicated/have too many characters to ensure that Books #2, #3, #4 etc, can be read without reading the previous one(s). I hope that has made you feel more kindly disposed to writers who write continuing series that don’t have neatly wrapped up endings – it’s really, really not because we just want you to carry on buying our books/spending money. We just want you to want to read them. There’s a difference!

Something I do wish, though, is that all writers of series like mine would do what I do, and put a ‘previously on’ bit at the front – I actually have mine at the back of the books, with a link to it at the front. I’ve just read a Book #2, having read Book #1 several months ago, and I had to download Book #1 again to read the last chapter again, in order to remember what was going on!! I download my books on Kindle Unlimited wherever possible, btw, except with writers I know – they get the immediate benefit!