A Very British Witch Boxed Set

by Isobella Crowley

  “I’ve just come to pick you up.”

  “Pick me up? Pick me up for what?”

  “For a date.”

  Scarlett grinned. “Oh, really?”

  “Yes, really, but not just any date.”

  “Oh yeah? Why not eh, what’s going to be special about it?”

  “Because, my dear, it’s a date that will involve lots of talking and clearing the air. I—I…” He broke eye contact. “What I’m trying to say is, I really like you and I think it’s about time that we were honest with each other. I think we should both come clean, don’t you?”

  Scarlett nodded. “Yes. I’d been thinking the same thing myself. One minute please.”

  Scarlett ran back inside and up the stairs into her bedroom. Raven was at on her bed, listening to every word. “Sounds like you’re getting on well.”

  “Yes, yes we are. He’s asked me out on a date, so I’m going out for a few hours. You going to be okay?”

  “Yes, of course I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

  Scarlett headed back towards the door.

  “Oh, and Scarlett?”

  “Yes?”

  “Good luck.”

  Flashing Raven a quick smile, she descended the stairs, locked the door and ran to be with Tim, who was waiting in his car.

  “You okay, dear, you look a bit flustered?”

  “Yes. I was just err—talking to Raven.”

  “Oh yes, the talking cat. How is she?”

  “She’s fine, it’s just—”

  “It’s just what?”

  “I don’t like leaving her. She needs a friend to protect her.”

  Author notes: Izzie Crowley

  Austin, Wednesday, 19th December, 2018

  Thank yous

  Thank you for reading all the stories to this one, and then also taking the time to read these author notes too. I’m so glad you’re here!

  I’ve said this before, but without you, there would be no point in spending the hours and hours to write these books. It’s because of you that I get to write these stories, and for that I am truly grateful.

  Thank you also if you have taken the time to review this on Amazon. As we know from Ell, reviews are SUPER important for helping other readers not just decide what to read, but also in getting Amazon to show the options to more people in the search results.

  In this way, the success of a series depends on the success of the reviews, and I am truly grateful to everyone who has taken the time to write a review.

  With that in mind I would like to say a special thank you to all the reviewers (at time of writing) for the first two books:

  Scarlett: CaeriNZ, Dennis, Steve, S. Petersen, Mark Plough 1, Krystyna, George Lawson

  John, Walwyn 124C41, Sara L. Skroh, Krys Prendergast, and Andrew Wright.

  Jade: Steve, Richard Leach, and Sara L. Skroh

  Guys – you rock! Thank you!!!

  I’d also like to thank our super awesome JIT team. I super appreciate everything you have done to help get this manuscript in good working order. Thank you for caring, and thank you for your efforts. I deeply appreciate you. <3

  A lot of people go into making a book like this. A big shout out goes to the production team: David, Terry, Brittany, Bel, Amy, and Jeff. Thanks for rallying around this series and giving it the best chance of success.

  I’d also like to thank Ell Leigh Clarke for introducing me to this crazy caper of indie publishing and helping me navigate the challenges. There is a whole process, and I don’t think I could have managed it on my own. Thanks Ell!

  Coming soon: Raven – Book 4

  The next installment of A Very British Witch is in the works already. We hope to have this turned around and ready for consumption about a month from now. For those who like to get hold of bonus chapters, it will likely be available through Ellie-verse Direct before it goes live on Amazon, and KU. If you’re interested in catching it then, make sure you’re on the mailing list and keep an eye out in your inbox for an email with the words Ellie-verse Direct in the subject line.

  There is much more to come in this story….

  The military knows that Ronnie exists now, even if they don’t know his human identity. And though Moseley has suffered a temporary setback, what with his card being implicated in the escape, he’s still the cruel asshole that he’s always been. I don’t think he’s going to just accept that one of his play things has got away. And then there’s this newbie in the group – Raven. I don’t want to give too much away, but you might have guessed from the title of the next book, Raven has something to do with what happens next!

  If you want to be the first to get your hands on the next episode, before it hits Amazon, then go ahead and get on the mailing list here:

  http://isobellacrowley.com/

  Energy healing in Austin

  It’s 6.30 in the morning as I sit writing to you.

  I have an appointment at 9am with a local energy healer. I’m perfectly healthy, but you know how sometimes you just know that something is off?

  I’ve had a sequence of bad interactions with people trying to take advantage of me – financially or otherwise. I’m the common denominator, and yes, I know that I just need to get better at being more mistrustful and aware, but I feel like there is something else going on.

  I don’t know if you’ve noticed but some people just attract angry people, or people who are just down right mean. I think I’m attracting narcissists, and although I’ve done the usual stuff like sage-ing, meditating and taking salt baths, I think it’s time to go and see a professional. Whatever is going on I’m ready to fix it, learn what I need to learn, change whatever belief I need to change, and have that energy released.

  So I’m going to see an energy healer.

  This will be my second session with her. She’s super smart, super aware, and I really like her. So far she’s had me practicing saying no to energies that make me uncomfortable. She even tested me during our last session – which was kinda unnerving. (I love people who have real control over their energy field, but damn it’s scary!) She (energetically) came at me, as if she wanted something. Physically she didn’t move, but pushed energetically. OMG. It took a few tries before I realized what was happening and that I should be saying ‘no!’ energetically as well as verbally.

  Sigh.

  I eventually got the hang of it but now I have to start applying it in the real world. Previously I would just leave a conversation or a room. Now I have to stand my ground and push back. Ohhhh, spiritual evolution. Why are you so necessary?!

  Anyway, I love learning new things, and I’m looking forward to being able to protect myself better going forward. I’ll keep you posted on what happens…

  +++

  On the Beat

  My friend’s hubby is a cop. She and hubby have been on about me going for what is a called a ride-along where you spend a shift with a cop and see what they do when they’re out on the beat. They said it would be good for my writing, especially if I wanted include police procedures or anything cool like that.

  I’ve been fascinated by that kind of thing and have even considered doing some kind of internship with the BAU Behavioral Analysis Unit in the FBI. However, after talking to my friend’s hubby, it sounds like those guys guard their secrets pretty closely and aren’t interested in letting writers or interns shadow them.

  Plus, I think being British is probably another strike against me.

  But anyway, doing a ride along with the local PD is a possibility, so that’s probably something on the cards for after the holidays.

  To be honest, while I’m excited about seeing the job up close, I’m also a little scared. Some of the stories he’s told about the situations these guys get into aren’t pretty. My friend’s hubby is a good guy though. He’s great at diffusing situations and is very competent from what I can tell. I’m sure it’s going to be an eye-opening experience whatever happens.

  Love Izzie xo

  Author notes: El
l Leigh Clarke

  Austin, Wednesday, 19th December, 2018

  Thank yous

  Hey there. I’d like to echo Izzie’s thanks for reading the stories and our author notes. It’s true – without you, there would be no stories, so thank you for making this happen. <3

  Our JIT team of volunteers have been super awesome in helping to get this series off the ground, and I’ll be forever grateful.

  JIT means Just In Time. They step in after the manuscript as been written and edited to help catch any last-minute issues.

  If you have an eagle eye for typos and you’d like to join our special team of readers who help us do the quality check before we put things out, we’d love to have you. Just hit me up with a message on facebook and we’ll go from there.

  As we produce more series and have more collaborators join us down the line there is only going to be more to do – and we’d love to have you on board! :)

  Marry Poppins and Lin-Manuel Miranda

  I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this before but my friend Amy is an uber fan of the show Hamilton, and by extension Lin-Manuel Miranda.

  She’s seen Hamilton a bunch of times, and is obsess with the history and sound track. She’s even read the tomb of a book that inspired Miranda to write Hamilton. (I think at some point I’ve already mentioned she’s a super-geek, right?)

  Anyway, about four months ago she asked what I’d be doing for Christmas. If you were around last year, you’d know I stayed home, in my apartment in LA, and basically just hid away for the day. (All my family is in the UK, and to be honest, I don’t really get on with them. The thought of spending another dysfunctional holiday with them was just too much, and so being in another country was the perfect excuse!)

  So I told Amy, nothing, and she explained to me that she has a ritual. Every Christmas day she takes herself off to the cinema to see a movie. On her own.

  She loves it. She says it’s liberating.

  And she gets to do her favorite things: “whatever she pleases!”

  This year though, she’s invited me to go with her! Woot :)

  I’m super looking forward to it. I mean, it’s not like we don’t trot along to the cinema quite a lot. (Less so since MoviePass has been lame. Amy canceled hers. I keep thinking… I’ll hang on one more month and see if they can turn their act around…)

  But this time is going to be particularly special.

  Why?

  Because: Lin-Manuel Miranda!

  It turns out that her favorite person in the whole world (after her new bf!) is staring in the new Mary Poppins movie. Ever since she found out, she’s mentioned it every single week. And every single day since Thanksgiving she’s been checking the cinema’s website to make sure that she locks in our tickets.

  Well yesterday tickets finally went on sale, and we’ve finally managed to reserve them. Marry Poppins is happening on Christmas Day! Clearly I’m not excited as Amy about seeing this movie, but it will be fun.

  Plus, the theatre we go to serves food and adult milkshakes… which are awesome.

  It’s going to be a fun Christmas.

  Deep Work

  If you’ve been with me since my first confession in the author notes of the first Molly book you’ll know that I don’t read. (Well, not fiction anyway. If you’re seeing this for the first time and are outraged, go check out the fuller explanation in Book 2 of the The Ascension Myth – and you might be less outraged).

  Anyway, I do read non-fiction, and being able to accumulate books since I’ve been in one place for the last couple of years, has been refreshing. Carrying books as a nomad was a no-no as you might imagine. Anyway, I’ve taken to listening to interesting books when I’m at the gym and doing laundry, and recently finished Algorithms to Live By. It’s a super interesting book about applying computer science to every day decisions like when to get married, through to sorting your book collection, and even the meta concepts about how to make good decisions. Totally the kind of thing I spend my idle moments considering.

  Anyway, having finished that, I turned to my wishlist, looking for my next project. As you may have seen on fb or in Patreon I’ve taken to studying certain maths topics in order to better understand some physics I’d like to revise. As a result I have a series of books geared around that, maths and computer science. There are so many great books I want to listen to, but I found myself noticing how long some of them are. 40 hours! I mean, that’s an entire work week. Figuring out I listen about half and hour a day, five days a week, that’s 80 listening sessions. It’s going to take me 16weeks – four months! – to get through something of that length.

  That’s a massive opportunity cost.

  In that time, what about all the other books I could have absorbed?

  Anyway, I have certain criteria I realized as I was assessing what to listen to next. (I’m sure you have some of your own when you’re assessing which book to pick up next). I looked through the whole list and decided which were going to be the most impactful on my ability to study effectively. Then I’d look at the number of reviews and the star rating. That narrowed it down pretty quickly.

  And after I started listening to my first choice, I was pretty pleased with the selection.

  The book is called Deep Work, and it’s all about the benefits and how to harness the state of deep focus for producing truly impactful, creative work. Now, as a writer, you can see how this ability is super important. But it’s also going to allow me to use the maths and physics to train my brain into this state, and every gain I make in one area, is going to in turn help with the other process. Maths will help my writing, and writing will help my maths!

  Win win :)

  I’ve already started reorganizing my day to make sure that I protect much longer chunks of sacred time. Some of the concepts aren’t necessarily new yet, but I’m learning a ton about why they’re so important, and there are examples of things people have changes and what they’ve achieved as a result. I started this month with an idea of what I wanted to achieve next, but seriously doubted if I could take it on. But between learning about Deep Work and the recovery from adrenal failure going well, I’m starting to believe that anything is possible.

  I’m super excited about this coming year.

  Speaking of Next Year

  As we come to the end of one years, it’s natural to reflect on the past year, and notice what’s different and what’s the same. In fact, along these lines of reflect, and prompted by a charity gig I was at the other week, I started to question what things should I be shooting for: in other words, what goals can I set that will be meaningful for me. (For the longest time now I’ve set goals because they were the smart or necessary goal to choose – things that would enable me to make an income, for instance.). But as I discussed in more detail in a recent Patreon post, I feel like goals should also be more meaningful and I’ve been grappling with how to figure out what is meaningful – and also how to define whether something is meaningful. (Just because it helps a lot of people, may make it nobel in the eyes of others, but it doesn’t necessarily make it meaningful for the individual automatically). I’ve more thoughts developing on this, but I think in a few days I’m going to be in a position to add more thoughts to this consideration. I’ll likely post those over on Patreon too. (That’s where my more intellectual and personal musings are published!)

  https://www.patreon.com/ellleighclarke

  Hexe is coming!

  Ok, enough with the philosophical musings…

  Putting my publisher’s hat back on for a moment I need to tell you that a new collaborator, and longtime friend of mine, is coming on board. I’ve mentioned him before, Rex Baron, and we’re getting really close to releasing.

  He’s in the middle of expanding his eight-book series and adding additional juicy plot lines into the series. I’m so excited for how this turns out. I’ve read the original version in its entirety (unusual for me!) and I love his writing – which is also why I’m keen to help him pu
blish, and get these books in your hands.

  As soon as he’s done tinkering with the first three, we’ll set a publishing schedule and let you know what to expect. It’s going to be called something along the lines of Hexe. I’ll get him to explain why in his author notes when we release book 1.

  I can’t wait.

  Ok, that’s it from me for now.

  Again, thank you for being here, for reading, for your 5* reviews and your constant support. I appreciate you so much.

  Have a wonderful holiday season, and I’ll see you in the next set of author notes. (Or before if you’re on fb or Patreon!)

  Love,

  Ellie x

  A Very British Witch

  Book Four

  Raven

  Isobella Crowley

  DEDICATION

  For the souls who dream of making the world more magical.

  — Izzie

  To everyone who ever dreamed of making a dent in the universe.

  — Ellie

  RAVEN

  A Very British Witch 04

  JIT Beta Readers

  Brian Roberts

  Jackey Hankard-Brodie

  Robert Gould

  Robert Brooks

  Chelsea Wright

  Diane L Smith

  Mary Morris

  Kris Prendergast

  Kimberley Beaulieu

  If I missed anyone, please let me know!

  Editor

  Mary Morris

  Chapter One

  Thursday Morning

  Bicester Vintners, Bicester, UK

  Scarlett glanced past the shelves packed full of wine bottles, to the clock on the storeroom wall and felt a buzz of excitement. It was finally 11:45 am, meaning she was just about within her rights to request an early lunch.