Spotlight & Giveaway: The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Julie Leong to HJ!

Hi Julie and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, The Teller of Small Fortunes!

 
Hello! So happy to be here!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

The Teller of Small Fortunes is a cozy fantasy that I’d describe as Legends & Lattes with Ghibli vibes and diaspora feelings. It’s about Tao, an immigrant fortune teller who tells only small and unimportant fortunes. But she’s on the run from dark secrets in her past, and when she bumps into a thief and a mercenary looking for a lost girl, she gets roped into helping them search for her and finds herself opening up to them. But helping them find the girl might mean confronting what she’s running from, once and for all…
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

I’m particularly fond of this one line from near the end of the book:

“No,” said Tao. Here, at last, was something she was sure of—something that she had learned in her journeys, that perhaps the High Mage had not. “You’re wrong. There’s no such thing as greater good—there’s just good, and the more of it we can do, the better.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• The very first thing I wrote was the title! “The Teller of Small Fortunes” just came to me along with the idea for a smalltime fortune teller who refused to muck about with ancient prophecies or epic quests.
• Tao’s name comes in part from my own Chinese name, 如涛 (rutao), and means a great tidal wave.
• I listened to a lot of Studio Ghibli soundtracks while drafting it, which may have influenced the vibes!
• Fortune cookies were actually invented by Asian immigrants in America, which made them a very fitting inclusion in the book.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

Oh my gosh, I had so much fun writing the troll scene. I wanted to play with the traditional fairytale expectations of a troll on a bridge, but subvert it in a whimsical, philosophical way that better suited the world of The Teller of Small Fortunes. So here’s a snippet of the main characters confronting said troll:

“Troll,” the ex-mercenary shouted. “Show yourself!”

For a moment there was only the sound of Mash’s voice, echoes reverberating against the peaks of the mountain pass. Then—suddenly—the bridge moved.

“Oh shit,” said Silt, looking up. Fidelitus yowled his alarm and dived behind the curtains into the wagon.

For what they had thought was a mound of rock had bent over itself and risen slowly into the air before them.
“What Do You Want?” said the top half of the rock mound. The voice was ponderous and gravelly; each word groaned out like the shifting of the earth, and Tao felt it vibrating deep in her bones.

They could perceive now, towering above their party, the figure of the troll, sitting upright. Its head was the size of a wagon wheel, craggy and misshapen. Eyes, small and dark like obsidian, gleamed back at them from deep-set crevices; which fissure served as a mouth was unclear. The rest of its body, apparently supine, was a mountainous course of rocky edges, blocking the way across the bridge for any travelers lacking climbing spikes (and possessing, perhaps, any instinct of self-preservation). Tao now understood the farmer’s and his wife’s fear; it was difficult to look upon such granite immensity and not consider that even the smallest part of the troll’s hand could easily smash a grown man to a pulp.

“We seek passage across the bridge,” shouted Mash, leaning back to look up at the troll and brandishing his mace bravely. “For ourselves, and for all others who travel this road!”

The troll focused its glimmering eyes on the warrior, who looked tiny before him.

“You Don’t Have To Shout,” it said.

“Ah,” said Mash, lowering his voice and his mace slightly. “Er . . . apologies, troll. Will you move, and let us pass over the bridge?”

The troll considered him, eyes unblinking.

“No,” it thundered eventually.

“. . . Why?”

“There Is No Point. Progress Is An Illusion. You Are Better Off Staying Very Still, Like Me.”

Readers should read this book….

if they want a warm, cozy, cathartic book that feels like a hug! And also if they’ve been craving more immigrant and diaspora representation in their fantasy.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I’m currently editing the followup to The Teller of Small Fortunes, which (fingers crossed) should come out next fall! It’s a sapphic cozy fantasy set in the same world as Teller, but is a standalone story featuring different characters: two mages who are sent on a seemingly dull assignment to a rundown farming village, but who end up having to grapple with all sorts of magical shenanigans–as well as some rather inconvenient feelings for each other…
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: One copy of THE TELLER OF SMALL FORTUNES for a U. S. only winner.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: When was the last time a book made you cry? What was it about that story that inspired such depth of feeling?

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 
 

Excerpt from The Teller of Small Fortunes:

ONE

On the day the Teller of Small Fortunes came to Necker, the village was in an uproar because the candlemaker’s would-be apprentice had lost all the goats.

Laohu plodded to a stop in the town square and Tao patted his rump. It had been a long day’s travel for them, through forest and field. The mule stamped his hooves and snorted, relieved to be done with it, his breath rising in steamy tendrils through the early-evening chill. It was Tao’s first time coming through Necker. She’d made good speed in anticipation of a hot meal and soft bed when they arrived, but the scene around her wagon gave her doubt she’d find much welcome at the moment. She sighed.

Wrapping the reins loosely over a wagon shaft, Tao swung gracefully to the ground, looking around at the activity. They’d come to a stop just in front of a tavern-a handsome one, two full stories and larger than a village like Necker rightly needed.

But where there should have been a crowd of well-fed villagers drinking ale, there was instead a strange assembly line, with rather a lot of yelling and chaotic banging of metal.

“One bucket o’ grain and a bell to each! Hurry up now, take a bucket, there’s a good lad.”

“And who’s to pay for all this grain, I’d like to know!”

“Oh, stuff it, Mallack, we can sort payment later; the headman’ll pay you fair for the grain and you know that’s true.”

“Yes, well, I’d like to be sure of the price afore all the grain is spilled through the woods halfway to the sea and none to account for it! There ought to be a premium for interrupting a man’s supper and raiding his stores without so much as a-”

“You scoundrel! If we don’t find them, Necker’ll be a ruin and your mill with it, for who’ll buy your grain when there’s no goats to feed and no coin to pay with?”

A teenage boy, gangly and flop-haired, sat on a stump some distance away, watching the commotion with a desolate expression. As he seemed to be the only one not rushing about, Tao chose to approach him first.

“Hello,” she said, walking up to him. “Can you tell me what’s happened, please?”

The boy startled out of his misery to goggle at her. “You’re Shinn!”

“I am,” said Tao patiently. “Can you tell me what’s happened here?”

“But you speak Eshteran!” said the boy. He squinted up at Tao with suspicion, as if expecting her foreign features-dark, hooded eyes; tawny skin; and black hair twisted up into a loose bun-to change before his eyes and better suit her speech.

Tao sighed internally and tried a different tack. She flourished her cloak with one hand and bowed.

“Greetings, young sir, from this humble traveler. I am a teller of fortunes from the faraway empire of Shinara, and have come to these lands to seek wisdom and learning.”

“. . . in Necker?” said the boy, doubtful.

“Wisdom can be found in all places,” said Tao. She pressed her hands together with what she hoped was solemnity. “Wheresoever river inscribes rock with truth, and men fan flames of creation.”

“Ah,” said the boy, suitably impressed. “You’ll want old Derry the blacksmith and his forge, then? He’s holding a pail on the left, there.”

They both looked over again at the assembly line, which had now been more or less equipped with buckets of grain and various noisemaking implements. The boy drooped further, all elbows and knees and teenage despair.

“What are they doing with all that grain?” Tao asked.

“They’re sending out search parties. I lost the goats, you see,” the boy said miserably. “Arty had me watching the herd today, out in the west pasture, and I fell asleep after lunch, and when I woke, the goats were all gone.

“And now the village’ll be ruined, and it’s all my fault, although how was I to know that the goats would rather climb down all those rocks than stay in a nice sunny pasture full of grass? I was to be the candlemaker’s apprentice, not a goatherd, and now who knows if Bern’ll still have me! I’m good with his bees; bees don’t make a fuss-they stay put where you want them, unless you fumble the hives-but Arty’s bad leg was twinging again, and I didn’t mind helping just for the day, and now look what’s happened. Stupid goats!”

The words burst out of him all at once, a hot concoction of youthful indignation and shame.

“Hm,” said Tao. “Perhaps I can be of some assistance.”

She strode to her wagon and leapt back up onto her driving perch, Laohu shuffling impatiently in his traces. But rather than pick up the reins again, Tao ducked beneath the glowing lanterns swinging gently from where they hung on the jutting ridge beam, and into the small wooden traveling wagon that served as home.

A hanging curtain of embroidered canvas hid the interior from both rough weather and curious eyes; behind it was everything Tao owned, tucked away as neatly as could be managed in what might generously be called a storage chest on wheels. Pots and pans of various sizes hung on one wall from a crooked nail. Opposing them was what Tao thought of as her pantry: a small bag of winter apples; jars of grain and tea leaves strapped into place on their makeshift shelf; mint and nettle, hung in bunches to dry. Here, also, was her bedding: a few sacks of hay (which conveniently also served as Laohu’s feed-though it meant that when they went too long between resupplies, her sleep inevitably suffered for it) swaddled in thick woolen blankets. In all, it made for a cozy-if humble-nest.

But all this Tao took in with only a quick glance. Everything was where it should be. Which meant that what she needed would be in the back, where she kept the things most precious to her.

Moving through the cramped space with the ease of familiarity, Tao sorted through the carefully wrapped bundles in the very rear of the wagon, behind the small stools and folding table. From these bundles, she extracted a disc of hammered bronze, hung on a ribbon, and a small cloth-wrapped mallet.

Grasping the ribbon and mallet in each hand, she ducked back out through the curtain, blinking in the warm glow of the swaying lantern light. Tao stood tall on the perch of her wagon (or as tall as her slight frame allowed), made sure her hooded cloak was billowing impressively so that its blue velvet lining could be seen, lifted her chin, and-with ponderous ceremony-struck the disc.

A low note tolled out, brassy and deep and authoritative, and a hush rolled out over the crowd of villagers as they finally noticed the young Shinn woman perched upon a traveling wagon in the middle of their square. Tao struck the gong once more, and the sound reverberated as all eyes fixed on her.

Excerpted from The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong Copyright © 2024 by Julie Leong. Excerpted by permission of Ace. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

A wandering fortune teller finds an unexpected family in this warm and wonderful debut fantasy, perfect for readers of Travis Baldree and Sangu Mandanna.

Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells “small” fortunes: whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve. She knows from bitter experience that big fortunes come with big consequences.…

Even if it’s a lonely life, it’s better than the one she left behind. But a small fortune unexpectedly becomes something more when a (semi)reformed thief and an ex-mercenary recruit her into their desperate search for a lost child. Soon, they’re joined by a baker with a knead for adventure, and–of course–a slightly magical cat.

Tao sets down a new path with companions as bighearted as her fortunes are small. But as she lowers her walls, the shadows of her past close in–and she’ll have to decide whether to risk everything to preserve the family she never thought she could have.
Book Links: Amazon
 
 

Meet the Author:

Julie Leong is a fantasy author who grew up in New Jersey as the daughter of Chinese-Malaysian immigrants, and lived in Beijing, China as a teenager. In her day job, she does finance, strategy, and other business-y things. Currently, she lives in San Francisco with her husband Drew, her spoiled cockapoo Kaya, and a magical Meyer lemon tree in the backyard that somehow always has ripe lemons. When she’s not writing, she enjoys making unnecessary spreadsheets and flambéing things.