The Ending of The Soul Collectors

I want to thank all of you who have taken the time to contact me via email, Twitter and Facebook regarding The Soul Collectors.  Given the amount of responses and questions I've received about the ending, I feel as though I owe everyone an explanation.

First off - SPOILER ALERT - if you haven't read the book, please stop reading now.

Okay, for those of you still with me, let me tell you my thought process when I was writing The Soul Collectors.  As I approached the ending, I wanted Darby to come up against something completely evil.  I love the endings of movies like The Blair Witch Project and The Vanishing (the Dutch version, not the horrible American remake) - an ending that is completely unexpected and unsettling.  Jack Casey and his daughter disappear, and Darby is forced to carry on.  I thought this would be a unique twist, a great "holy shit" moment.  I thought readers would love it.  

And some of you did.  Others hated it; you wanted to know what happened to Casey and his daughter.  Fair enough.  A small handful of readers accused me of setting up an ending that purposely left the reader "hanging" in order to sell the next book.  Not true.  I respect my readers too much to manipulate them in such a way.  In my mind, the ending was the ending.  It was never brought up in the editing process (and a lot of people read the ending and didn't comment).  I went to work on the next book, The Killing House, the first book in what I hope to be a series featuring Malcolm Fletcher from Deviant Ways and The Secret Friend.  (I can promise you the ending to The Killing House is quite clear).

I don't believe in "writing by committee" but I do believe in giving the fans what they want.  I've never done a sequel, per se, but I don't want to leave readers hanging.  I'm playing around with an idea that would bring Darby back into this world.  In other words, do you want a resolution?  Do you want to know what happened to Jack Casey and his daughter?  I'd love to hear your thoughts.