Meet my alter ego, Olivia Hardy Ray. She’s a bit off, as any alter ego should be. She helps me to see things in the dark that aren’t there. She insists I’m not crazy when I talk to ghosts, when I walk in time and when I actually do away with Jack the Ripper (But that’s in the sequel). Olivia applauds my pious puritan soul and yet takes so much pleasure in the devil’s demise. She’s a naughty girl, always insisting I go out on a limb and tell people how I swung by my neck in Salem yet live to walk in centuries of my choosing. She whispers in my ear constantly, but I always listen, for she talks to me of spirits and God and how the devil can be beaten and time is an endless moment of now. She preaches, sometimes, but gives me handsome heroes and despicable demons, androgynous women to taint my life and priests to save my soul from the pits of hell. Thank you Olivia, as I now write the sequel to Annabel Horton, Lost Witch of Salem, thank you for being so daring and so bold and so completely oblivious to the natural world.