Juliet Clark’s second fiction book this year just came out, and you can download it for free at JulietDillonClark.com. But before you do, perhaps you want to know its backstory? Juliet shares how real-life experiences inspired her to write The Fortune Teller’s Daughter, as well as how her research brought her deep into the gypsy culture and the business practices of psychic shops.
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The Fortune Teller’s Daughter: Crafting Fiction From Real Experiences And Funnel Building Tips
Welcome to the show. Before we get started, I want to remind you about our July event. I know a lot of you really need it. It is, Your Funnel Is not Broken, It is Empty. How to Drive Real Traffic to Your Book and Your Business. I know a lot of you guys have been building funnels. I hear all the time, “It does not work. Nobody’s opting in,” all of the things. I am going to talk a little bit about the book business and how you can enhance it, and some tools out there that can help you build as well, if you already have a book out there.
That will be July 10th, 9:00 AM, 2026. Mountain Time, and we will have the links up by the time this is out, so that you can go over and register. If you want to pre-register, get in touch with me, SuperbrandPublishing@gmail.com, and say, “Please register me for the event,” and we will get you in. We do not have the landing pages up yet. What I am going to talk about today is I am going to tell you guys the story behind The Fortune Teller’s Diary. My second fiction book this year just came out last week, and I am really excited about it.
Researching And Writing About The Gypsy Culture
I am more excited to tell you the story behind it because, as many of you know, fiction often comes from things that happen in your life that you’re just like, “What just happened there?” The Fortune Teller’s Daughter was one of those books. Back then, it must have been earlier than that, maybe 2008. I was in the midst of a really ugly divorce. As many of you guys know, my very first book, Players, which I have taken off the market, I actually killed my ex-husband in.
Believe me, he knows it too. He jokes all the time, “Are you going to republish that one?” It was just this really bizarre event where I went down to visit my little sister in Newport Beach, and we went down to Balboa Island for the day. She said, “I have to take you to this psychic down there. She does these angel drawings.” We went into this angel place, and my sister went first, and it was a full hour because the woman did a reading and then she did these beautiful angel portraits as well that you got to take home with you.
My sister went first, and she came out, and she was really unhappy about some things that she was told. I was like, “Whatever.” I went in. The woman started telling me how I had this really dark cloud. She started doing the thing that I know now is a big psychic trick. I went in, came out, and a couple of days later, this woman called me. She says, “I’d really like you to come in. I want to talk to you about clearing all this darkness out.”
I called my sister. I am like, “Did that woman call you about your darkness?” She is like, “No.” I was like, “Why am I dark and you’re not?” Just for funny moments. I went down to this woman’s shop in Newport Beach, and she wanted $5,000 to clear this darkness. As soon as I heard that, I was like, “What’s going on here?” Typically, I played along. I said, “Why don’t you just give me one session for a reduced rate and we’ll see if I like it or not?” She did the reduced session.
I peeked during the session, and all this woman was doing was Reiki. I was a certified Reiki person at that point. I was like, “She wants $5,000 for this?” I got really curious. I do not know what it was about the whole situation. There was just something really funky about it. I was at the shop in Newport Beach. She had said that the shop on Balboa Island had been broken into.
I thought, “That’s weird. What would they steal from a psychic? Why didn’t she see that coming?” Anyway, I went home, and I looked up her name. I was trying to get some information on her. I came across this weird story that was in Newsweek, in which she was mentioned. It was a rare look at gypsy culture, and these two feuding families down in the Newport Beach, Orange County area of California let whatever feud they were having over territories spill out into the court system.
There was this whole story about a death that had occurred and break-ins into each other’s shops. The funniest part is that the head of one family was White Bob, and the head of the other family was Black Bob. I just started thinking, “What a story. I could write something from this.” I actually spent about the next six months researching gypsy culture, which is really hard to find good information on because they are so secretive. The gypsy culture is so secretive.
I got some information on it. I lived in LA County at the time. I decided I was going to go see some more psychics there. I started looking around and going and identifying like, “What is that trick? How did she just get that out of me?” As I was researching the culture, it was very interesting. I found that the women are the major breadwinners in gypsy culture and that they actually teach their daughters from a very young age how to do this con, how to actually get money out of people. I started writing the book.
Gypsy women are the major breadwinners, and they actually teach their daughters from a very young age how to do psychic con. Share on XI actually figured that, “Why worry about it if this is all a scam?” The person in the book is actually somebody whom I had gone to while I was doing it. It was just a very interesting story, going to these people and watching to see how they did this. What are the cues they are looking for? How do they teach their daughters how to do it? Something really interesting was that I had gone to one in Manhattan Beach, just a normal house. It did not look. If you have ever gone to a psychic, you have looked at, they have these readily identifiable houses.
You can see they are very opulent looking, I guess, is what I would call them. This was just a normal house in Newport Beach. About a year after the book came out, I looked that woman up again, and she and her daughter had been convicted of fraud. They conned somebody out of $750,000. It was just very interesting. I wove the story around it. The story does not really look like that.
I found out in the process that a lot of times, if you do not have the money to give them, they will ask for jewelry or something else of value. You will see that in the book. It is really interesting when you are writing something like this, that it is always grounded in something that has happened in real life that you have identified. Maybe in your head, you have made up a story about it, or you have done a little twist on the real story so that it does become fictional.
It was a really fun book to write. The funnest part was going to different psychics and seeing how they read the cards and what they told you. I have never been really locked into that much, but it was interesting at the time. You kind of grasp how they are getting that information out of me to know that’s what to talk about? Also, some of the things that they suggested and some of the things that they said were really a riot in terms of everybody having darkness.
Some of them wanted to sell you something more. Some of them you would just go into a shop. There was a shop I used to go into to do this a lot called the Psychic Eye. It’s in Van Nuys, as well as independent psychics as well. It was really all very interesting to figure out how they do it and learn about the culture.
For those of you who do not know, regular people who are not part of the gypsy culture are called the gadjo. The gadjo are there for one thing, and that is to get money from us. You can see everything they do when I was reading more into it. The men do a lot of construction-type things, termite work, different things like that, where they get the money from the individual, but then they do not do the work, or they do shoddy work and then disappear.
Download The Fortune Teller’s Daughter For Free
The women seem like they are very stable, and they always have shops either out of their home or in a retail space. That’s the story. The Fortune Teller’s Daughter is available for free on my fiction website, JulietDillonClark.com. Please go download it, and if you like it, go grab the rest of the series. Dark Granny just came out last month. Forgotten Farmhouse is going to be out in two weeks on Kindle.
Bad Lie will be out in August. It is currently being edited. I am super happy because the editor is like, “Why don’t you have an agent, girl?” He must think it is really good. It is a little bit different because I think, because it’s a golf story, there will be a little bit more of a male audience. Remember, email me if you want to come to the July event. I will be sending out invites and places to sign up in the coming weeks. I want you to think about that, about having a funnel built, and maybe it is not building quickly.
If you have a book, there are so many tools you can use now to build. I am finding this out through my fiction publishing. There are some really cool things you can do. I have also added a new YouTube channel for you guys who like mysteries. It is called Mystery Lab Books. It is over on YouTube at Mystery Lab Books. You can actually see some of the swaps that I am doing. I will talk about it. I am not very good at it yet. It is just such a different way of doing things compared to this.
They are shorter, less than fifteen minutes. That is part of filling that funnel, getting yourself over on the platform that does this, and doing some book swaps and promoting each other. I will see you next time. I hope you go and download The Fortune Teller’s Daughter. I think you will really enjoy it. It is a great summer beach read. Later guys.
Important Links
- Juliet Dillon Clark
- The Fortune Teller’s Diary
- Players
- Dark Granny
- Mystery Lab Books on YouTube
- SuperbrandPublishing@gmail.com
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