#julie teller

[ourtalechara]

The sun was coming up on a new day over the hole in the ground where London had used to be. Far below, in the caverns filled with bats, magic, and bioluminescent oddities, a little girl sprinted through the streets of Veilgarden.

Although the Singing Mandrake had, technically, already come to a close, a handful of people (and things that were presumably people) still sat drinking within it's walls. The barmaid, of course, placing used mugs in the sink and eyeing spills of wine that she knew she would have to soon clean up. Then there were a few customers that she hadn't the heart to kick out - poor unconscious patrons who had blacked out from the alcohol. She couldn't find it in herself to wake them and make them leave, not in the state they were in.

Finally, at a far table, sat a newsboy - a regular to the Singing Mandrake, but not for the reasons most would expect. He'd only arrived a few minutes before closing, so Cassie let him stay a few minutes after, too. Though, in reality, she mostly had him stick around because she enjoyed his company. The two gossip trains had never had a boring conversation, but she knew she could trust him to be sensible about what he said, as well as the volume in which he said it. Not only was it useful for secret keeping, but for times like tomorning, when the Mandrake wanted to remain peaceful and quiet - although the banter between the two of them still remained lively.

As the laughter between them died down, Harry raised his mug to his lips, before pausing. He placed it down and reached into his inner pocket. It was warm.

He pulled out a gem encased in a metal frame - a piece of jewelry, a pendant that didn't hang. The red gemstone was glowing, brighter than it was supposed to.

"...Julie?"

Suddenly, there was a frantic tapping at the door.

Cassie scoffed. "Damn critters. They always -"

But Harry cut them off.

"Open it."

They turned to look at him, a quizzical expression on her face. A panicked one on his. He was standing up now.

"Open it."

With some internal reluctance, but no physical hesitation, Cassie hurried over, unlocking and opening the door. They looked around, unsure whether she was supposed to see bats, or people, or masters, a constable, a demon, or what have you. But at her feet stood a child - a girl, shaking, only a few feet tall, eyes filled with teardrops and clutching a bright red jewel between her hands.

Her eyes locked onto the newsboy across the room and before Cassie had time to process that she was there, the little girl's little legs were carrying her across the Mandrake's floors.

She flew into Harry Teller's arms and tried to wrap her own around him. She cried into his shirt as he smoothed her hair back, shushing her gently.

"Shhhhhh... It's alright. It's alright, Julie. Daddy's here now. Shhh... You're okay. Tell me what happened."

Cassie cautiously closed the door, completely confused, as Harry picked the girl up and sat her next to him on the seat he had been at. She blubbered words into his coat that they couldn't quite make out... Tall... Scary... Dark... Everything else sounded muffled to Cassie, but he managed to make out everything.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered, giving her a light kiss on her head. "I'm so sorry. But it's okay. I'm here now. See?" He took out his own gemstone and touched it to hers. "They're glowing. It's okay, kiddo. I'm here."

The girl's breathing slowed, and she calmed as she saw the bright red glow of the gemstones. She closed her eyes and relaxed into the seat. "I'm sorry," she whimpered. "I just- I was so scared and I went to you. It just- the gem, and I- I-"

He shushed her some more and smoothed back her hair to try and get her breathing under control.

"When was the last time you slept?"

She didn't answer, but wiped her wet face in silence.

"Let's get you to bed, okay Julie? You're gonna feel a whole lot better after some shut eye."

He began to stand, but her fingers dug into his coat.

"Don't you want to go home?"

If she answered, it was imperceptible.

"Don't want to go outside?"

She shook her head.

"Julie... It's alright, I'm here now."

He sighed. "Cassie?"

"Yes?" Answered the barmaid, who had been awkwardly alternating between eavesdropping, pretending to ignore the situation, and hoping that the blacked out costumers would stay that way, lest she have to explain the circumstances beyond her own understanding.

"Might you happen to have an open bed upstairs?"

Cassie grimaced. They grappled with the thought of trying to excuse to their boss why they'd let a newspaper boy stay after closing and why they'd let a child as young as this one into the Singing Mandrake. With as little knowledge as she had, she dreaded having them stay longer than was strictly necessary at this point.

But, seeing the exhausted child huddled in her friend's arms...

She decided to ask questions later.

"Of course."

[amateur-wordsmith]

the hyperpigmentation meme but with Harry and Julie

[justhavinfunnn]

Ooof!!

[agardenandlibrary]

Just finished:

The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong

Very sweet, low-stakes fantasy. If you're looking for more books like Legends and Lattes, definitely pick this one up.

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Fate, Clark Pub. Co., July 1969

[wearethekat]

November Book Reviews: The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong

One of my anticipated new releases for this year. Disinherited by her family, Tao wanders the country in a caravan working as a minor fortuneteller. But when she reluctantly allows a reformed thief, a mercenary, and a young baker to travel with her, she's plunged into a tangle that might force her to reckon with her past.

As an angst enjoyer, my experience with fantasy books marketed as "cozy" has been more miss than hit. But I persevere, since I have found some really great gems. For me, The Teller of Small Fortunes was leaning towards the miss column. I did love how Tao's "small fortunes" worked, the way she was terrified of being identified as a seer and instead just made little predictions that made for interesting glimpses into the lives of background characters, like predicting where the village's goats had gone, or the best crop for next year's harvest.

However, I wasn't thrilled by the background politics plot, which I found a little bit flattened and facile. The "found family" element also felt a touch forced, like the platonic equivalent of instalove. And while I strongly suspect it was accurate to the author's childhood in New Jersey, I found it a touch grating that the first thing every character said to Tao, whether they were supposed to be the good guys or not, was some kind of nasty comment about her race. (She's loosely fantasy East Asian in a loosely fantasy Europe setting). I know cozy fantasy tends to blunt the edges a bit, but let Tao be really mean to someone for once.

This book didn't work for me, but I bet if you like Legends and Lattes or The Spellshop, this is also something you'll really enjoy.

[bradshawsbaby]

This man is just like me—always a little bit red 🦞

[fuddlewuddle]

So @playingwiththeboysisagayanthem sent me a prompt which basically meant combining these two

From Born on the Fourth of July and Thank you for your service, and I’ll be honest, I’m pretty proud of what I came up with.

If anyone reads it, I’d love to know your thoughts 🥺

[carmenell]

call these the 'murica 🦅🏈🇺🇸🔥 movies™

[disarmluna]

[acmoorereadsandwrites]

An Interview with Julie Leong, Author of The Teller of Small Fortunes

One of the most anticipated cozy fantasy debuts of 2024, Julie Leong is a Malaysian Chinese-American author with a great love of citrus, round animals, and flavorful food. 

You can read here or on my substack

Julie, where’s the yuzu? You wrote this whole book and there’s no mention of yuzu?

Julie: I’m sorry! I need to save all my yuzu content for my eventual future book about a citrus witch; I’m sure you understand.

Teller opens up with casual racism and xenophobia directed at Tao for being Shinn, but one of the definitions I’ve seen of cozy fantasy floating around is that the worldbuilding is free of discrimination and the conflict is focused on something else. For authors who want to explore similar topics in cozy fantasy, what do you think is the right balance?

Julie: I think the definition of ‘cozy fantasy’ is a dynamic and inherently subjective thing, because ‘cozy’ is about how a story makes you feel, and different people will necessarily feel different ways in response to certain stories. Personally, I don’t think ‘cozy’ means the total absence of sadness or conflict. If anything, I prefer my cozy stories to have just a dash of darkness so as to highlight the warmth and joy all the better – like a sprinkle of salt in hot chocolate, if you will. 

There definitely is a balance to be struck, though. I do believe that cozy requires a happy ending (or mostly happy, at least), and that if a story delves too far into violence and heavy themes, it can be challenging to pull the reader back into the cozy mindset. I’d encourage authors writing cozy fantasy to try to be mindful of how they feel as they’re writing the story, and to take special note of any scenes that evoke tense or painful emotions – are they followed by scenes that soothe away those hurts? Is there catharsis by the end? Are readers ultimately comforted, or troubled by your story?

Ghibli has been a big reference point for cozy and a lot of their films carry a thread of grief or melancholy, an undertone that Teller shares. Do you think cozy and melancholy/grief are not only compatible, but those feelings are a necessary ingredient in a cozy SFF?

Julie: I don’t think melancholy/grief are necessary in cozy SFF, but as I mentioned above, I do think they can provide a powerful counterbalance that highlights the warmth and catharsis often offered by cozy stories. They can help make the joy feel more earned, as well, and give the story an emotional heft that may be otherwise lacking.

Kiss, marry, throw off the wagon: Mash, Kina, and Silt

Julie: Oof, that’s hard. Kiss Silt, marry Kina, and throw Mash off the wagon just because I know he can keep up on foot anyway.

We have fortune cookies and tea for fortune telling and Kina is a baker. If you were a fortune teller, what food-based style would you use and how does it involve citrus?

Julie: Hahaha. Citrus-based divination! Tangerine tarot? Peel open an orange, count the number of segments and seeds, look for patterns in the pith; burn the rinds and inhale the citrus-scented smoke… there are so many ways I could go with it. 

A lot of people unfamiliar with cozy are trying to define it, but I think it’s pretty defined by the community that has helped propel it from selfpub to traditional publishing. What do you think is the future of cozy and do you think the term is a bit more fluid than some might believe?

Julie: I do think the definition of cozy is fluid and still-evolving, as I mentioned above. I can’t say for certain where the future of the subgenre lies, but I can say what I hope we’ll see more of! Personally, I’d love to see more diverse voices in cozy, more cozy stories that don’t necessarily center a romance, more cozy stories that don’t involve small businesses, and more bittersweet cozy that plays with heavier themes without necessarily getting very dark.

A major theme in Teller is the importance of small changes and small moments, both good and bad, and how they add up. What other themes are you hoping readers will get from this?

Julie: I think it’s up to readers to take what they like from a story, but when I was writing Teller, other themes that were central in my mind were the different ways in which one can ‘belong’, the struggle between free will and fate, and the eternal conflict between self-interest and the common wellbeing.

You had a bit of a unicorn experience as Teller was the first book you wrote and you're launching with multiple crate deals. What has been the most exciting and the most humbling experience for you?

Julie: It’s been such a fairytale, honestly. I never in a million years expected all of the things that have happened to me and this book, and I’m so, so grateful – a lot of the credit goes to my fantastic publishing teams at Ace and Hodderscape, who have done so much to get this book out there.

One of the most recently exciting developments was my attending New York Comic Con at the invitation of my publisher. I have never (nor will I ever again) felt like such a rock star as I did signing 100+ copies of The Teller of Small Fortunes for enthusiastic readers at the Penguin Random House floor booth, and it was an amazing experience to co-present at a writing panel alongside brilliant authors like CM Waggoner, Sarah Hawley, and Rob Hart. 

The most humbling experience? I’ve had a lot, but the moment when I first visited the Penguin Random House office in New York, and strolled through a hallway lined with incredible, renowned, bestselling books whose authors I’ve loved for years and years – that was definitely a surreal moment of “Oh wait, there’s been a terrible mistake. I don’t think I belong here.”

Do you think you’re going to stay in cozy fantasy or do you want to branch out into cozy sci-fi like Becky Chambers or try your hand at an epic fantasy one day? Or, perhaps, venture outside of the speculative genres and try your hand at a mystery or contemporary?

Julie: I don’t know yet, to be honest! As of right now, I still have more ideas for cozy fantasies that I’d love to write – but I also don’t want to limit myself. There’s something thrilling and liberating about the idea that I might one day wake up and decide to write something totally new and unfamiliar.

Tao is very AroAce-coded, which is slowly becoming more common in fantasy. Was that a conscious choice on your part or did that organically reveal itself as you wrote the book or something in between?

Julie: It was more of the latter. I knew from the start that I did not want to write a romance-centric book, in part because I wanted to tell a story that highlighted the importance of non-romantic relationships like friendship and family. But it wasn’t until midway through the first draft, when Tao and Kina were having a conversation about romantic attention, that I realized that it felt very natural that Tao – as I had written her – was aro/ace-spec. 

Tao briefly considers the story of the Monkey Prince and how it mirrors her own journey. Is this a call back to Journey to the West and Sun Wukong? 

Julie: Yes! Journey to the West is such a classic tale from Chinese mythology, and also one of the first bedtime stories that I heard from my dad growing up. It felt right for Tao to know it, too.

Sorry, but I have to get a bit sappy. As an immigrant and the child of an immigrant, I found a lot of my own journey reflected in Tao even if there are some differences, including the part where she’s constantly othered despite having lived in Eshtera for a long time. It feels like there’s not that many fantasies that truly get into the nitty-gritty of what it means to be an immigrant. Were you filling in a gap that you saw or is there a treasure trove of immigrant fantasy I don’t know about?

Julie: I’m so glad that that part of Tao’s story resonated with you. I, similarly, have never read much fantasy that features immigrant experiences specifically, and I knew from the very start of writing Teller that I wanted to tell an immigrant story. I wanted to see myself reflected in a character who felt caught between cultures, and was wrestling with herself about where she belonged, and how she defined her own identity. Some of Tao’s experiences I took directly from my own childhood, and I’ve already heard from many readers how they shared those experiences and felt them deeply: the loss of language, for example.

Until recently, cozy was pretty much relegated to selfpub and then exploded on the traditional publishing scene with Legends and Lattes. When you queried Teller, the trend was just starting to pick up in traditional publishing. Do you think authors looking to be traditionally published should pay attention to what is trending in selfpub?

Julie: Absolutely! I think any aspiring authors should pay attention to what’s happening in their genres, period. 

Completely agree. You need to know your genre to write and sell in it.

There's all kinds of advice out there in regards to the writing process, but I've found that the best thing to do is experiment with a lot of authors' processes until you find a combination that works for you. What's your drafting process like?

Julie: It’s… chaos. I basically turn into a hermit and disappear into my writing cave for as many weeks as it takes to churn out a workable draft. I draft scenes out of order, I cobble together an outline only if and when I start feeling like I need one, I edit as I go sometimes and leave entire scenes as bracketed placeholders other times… basically, I give myself the liberty to write when and how I want to, and I don’t subscribe to any particular process or system. I’m not sure I’d recommend it to others, but it’s what’s worked for me so far!

We talk a lot in writers spaces about how you have to read modern authors to be part of the conversation going on in our genres. What books is your book in conversation with?

Julie: Love this question! Definitely Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes, which sparked the recent wave of cozy fantasy, but also with heavy influence from Becky Chambers’ Monk & Robot series, and the Singing Hills novellas from Nghi Vo.

Author as Brand gets thrown around a lot in some circles and not everyone likes it but it's impossible to stop the train at this point. What do you want your Brand to be?

Julie: Kindness. Humor. Warmth.

Some authors focus on food, others on clothes. What's your favorite way to worldbuild?

Julie: I'm a vibes-first writer! My worldbuilding happens sort of like piecing together a puzzle, where various sections and chunks of it come together first before I fill in the rest of it. Some of those starting pieces might be big (political and economic systems) or small (cats and bees are inherently magical beings).

I only do as much worldbuilding as I strictly need for a given book, in part because I like there to be some vagueness/unexplained things, but also to leave room for more worldbuilding in subsequent books, so I don't accidentally write myself into any corners.

What's next on the horizon for you?

Julie: I’m currently revising my second book, The Keeper of Magical Things, which will be coming out in fall 2025 if all goes as planned. It’s a sapphic cozy fantasy set in the same world as Teller but with a new cast of characters. I’m pitching it as The Spellshop meets Warehouse 13 with Stardew Valley vibes.

Are there any debuts you wanna give a shout-out to?

Julie: So many wonderful fellow debuts! I’m sure I’m missing some people (and apologies to them), but off of the top of my head:

Genoveva Dimova (Foul Days, Monstrous Nights)

Eliza Chan (Fathomfolk)

SA MacLean (The Phoenix Keeper)

Maiga Doocy (Sorcery and Small Magics)

Amy Avery (The Longest Autumn)

Riley August (The Last Gifts of the Universe)

Samantha Mills (The Wings Upon Her Back)

Lucy Jane Wood (Rewitched)

Frances White (Voyage of the Damned)

John Wiswell (Someone You Can Build a Nest In)

Jules Arbeaux (Lord of the Empty Isles)

I recommend all of those titles as well, especially Phoenix Keeper, Foul Days, The Wings Upon Her Back, and Fathomfolk.

Thank you so much, Julie!

Where to buy:

Waterstones

Amazon

Kobo

Barnes and Noble

Mysterious Galaxy

Penguin Random House

[ourtalechara]

I had this Neath! OC

Meet Julie Teller, Harry's daughter. I don't have too much information on her, but she's very young, and very shy. She was either born slightly before, or slightly after the Fall, so she's likely lived her whole life in the Neath. She's particularly quiet around people she doesn't know very well, and she knows almost no one.

I'd be happy to talk more about her if you have any ideas or questions

[amateur-wordsmith]

@ourtalechara

[justhavinfunnn]

Everyone say thankyou Keleigh!

[agardenandlibrary]

Tao's response to most problems being "have you heard of the nunnery full of lesbians? I hear it's nice there" is so funny

[micco777]

2024/06 【Hydrangea fortune 💠】