I Grew Up With Cliffhangers That Were NEVER RESOLVED.

I like cliffhangers. I like them a lot. As you could see from the conclusions of these first two chapters of THE LIFE SMUGGLERS, I’m not shy about using them to get you to come back to see what happens next. But one thing I will never do is end a story arc on a cliffhanger. Like every story before this one, THE LIFE SMUGGLERS will have a definite conclusion and it won’t leave you hanging… because that nonsense happened to me all the time as a child.

It all started with a box of comic books my father brought home from a business trip. His work associate didn’t want them, so he brought them home to his sons. I loved those books. They were my first taste of the comics medium for adults. But these were random books, taken from the middle of their story arcs. So all the comics I enjoyed had cliffhanger endings with the heroes in peril, unconscious or seemingly dead, and NO RESOLUTION because the following issues weren’t in the box my dad brought home. I still don’t know what became of Sensor Girl in that Legion of Super Heroes cliffhanger issue because I was seven and I don’t remember anything else about it!

The trend continued during my early school years. My mom would let us watch television before we had to go to school. Some classic 80s kids cartoons, too. But we had to go to school just after the penultimate commercial break. You know, the one that leads up to the conclusion of that episode. So countless TV episodes were, for me, left unresolved for me simply because it was time to go to school. To me, the Silverhawks are still trapped in stasis as a time bomb ominously ticks down towards zero!

I feel I do cliffhangers well because I was quite literally raised on them. I know how they feel, I know the burning need to know what happens next, and I know how torturous it can be when that resolution never comes! Cliffhangers may be a trademark of my storytelling, but I feel you can always trust me to reward you for coming back to see what happens next.