(Photo credit: Clunes Booktown Festival Facebook Page)
I had several topics planned for my next speculation but they can wait. Today I thought I would talk about book fairs. No, I'm not going to talk about the publishing, marketing and selling of books. We can do that another time. I want to talk about how book fairs bring readers and writers together; how they create opportunities for those who love to read, to talk to those who love to write. And when it comes to bringing readers and writers together, no one does it better than the Clunes Book Fair.
Clunes is a sleepy town in the Goldfields region of Victoria. Unlike Bendigo and Ballarat, the gold rush didn't alter Clunes and neither did time, which makes Clunes so charming. The centre of town, Fraser Street is lined with shops that retain their 1800s architecture. It's a street where horses tied to street posts would not look out of place which is why Clunes often appears as a backdrop in historical Australian films and TV dramas. For example, the opening scene of the original Mad Max movie was shot in Clunes. There's also a beautiful town hall that despite the fact that it can only hold about 200 people, has a grand exterior and a wonderfully painted interior. It's in the town hall that featured authors give their talks. Nice, but not special. All writer's festivals have featured authors. What makes Clunes special on that one weekend in March is not what happens in the town hall. It's what happens on Fraser Street.
In a town that normally houses less than 2,000 people, 2024 attendance swelled to 11,000 and this year it felt even bigger. Fraser Street is lined with marquees that leave only enough space for food vendors. The green between the library and the town hall is setup for children and the bandstand is readied for the musicians who will come and go. Authors, booksellers, food vendors, all vie for limited space and overnight the town that time forgot is transformed.
By Friday afternoon, the marquees are in place and the vendors are waiting to be allowed in. Service street looks like a parking lot as everyone queues up to unload their gear. Fraser Street is only one way but inevitably a newbie tries to enter via Templeton Street. Sometimes there are locals directing traffic but mostly vendors sort out traffic jams themselves. Marquees are not labelled but somehow everyone finds their spot and as the afternoon sun dips towards the horizon, cars are frantically unloaded, lights are strung, marquees are decorated and finally as darkness falls, everyone closes up their tents and heads to the only pub in town for a pint or two and some grub. For a few hours, we relax, make new friends and catch up with old ones. Those who are lucky enough to have accommodation in town stay late but most keep the partying to a minimum because they know that the next two days are going to be brutal.
Everyone is here to sell and unlike a clerk in a bookstore, we care deeply about which books you buy. While we are friends on Friday, come Saturday, we are competitors and by Sunday evening, we are all asking each other the same question. "How'd you do?"
And that's the thing about Clunes, you don't know what to expect. I've had cold, rainy days where I've sold more than I expected and beautiful autumn days where everone's 'just browsing'. And every year, despite the telcos beefing up their systems, the increased activity outstrips the local wi-fi capability. Before you know it, you see authors, phones in the air, wandering with customers in tow, looking for enough reception to register that all important credit card sale. Those who regularly attend know to bring cash. This year, we not only lost connectivity but the ATM temporarily crashed but that didn't dull the party atmosphere. There were groans over lost sales and there were cheers when a sale finally went through or the customer managed to scrounge up enough cash. It's the sort of madness you would find unacceptable in a shopping mall but somehow adds to the charm.
I never know which books are selling the best, although used books at a $1 a bag, are tough to compete with. Food, on the other hand, is more obvious. This year there was the usual pot stickers, sausage sizzles, pizza and sandwiches but the big winner was the Halal Snack Pack truck. "We've temporarily run out. Come back in 15 minutes," the vendor said. No one moved. They would rather wait than lose their spot.
And it's not only food that runs out. The town has one caravan park and only a small number of B&Bs and hotels so accommodation books out months in advance. Over night stays spill into surrounding towns like Cresswick, Ballarat and Maryborough which means that if you plan to stay for the full two days, you'll need a car and that means getting in early to get a prime car park. As for public transport, there's one train that makes the hour and a bit run from Melbourne. It leaves around 8:30 in the morning and starts its return trip around 3:40 in the afternoon. The good news is that the shuttle bus will take you from Fraser Street to the train station.
So with all these obstacles, why do authors and readers come back year after year in ever greater numbers?
Simple. It's the vibe.
This year, I shared a marquee with 5 other women authors. I only knew the organiser of our group Caroline. We'd met two years earlier at Clunes and stayed in touch because we both live in the same region of Victoria (a mere 40 minutes apart). The other authors were from Melbourne, Canberra and NSW. We were an eclectic mix of horror, fantasy, sapphic love, children's books and my speciality, speculative fiction. To me, it was like a bookstore, the kind you rarely find these days. One where the proprietor asks you what you like to read and then takes you to that section and helps you find exactly the right book for you. The kind where, if they don't have what you're looking for, they talk to you anyway. Maybe even suggest authors or books you might like to try.
And that’s what I love most about Clunes. Yes, we're there to sell books but more importantly, we are there to interact with readers. The authors who attend Clunes are either self-published or published by small presses. You won't find their books at the airport or in major book stores but that doesn't mean they aren't worth reading. In fact, as more and more traditional publishers are consolidated into fewer, larger, imprints, there's less variety available, particular for readers in niche markets. And looking on-line can be just as frustrating. There's too much choice and too little real guidance. What the Clunes Book Fair offers readers is the chance to hear from the writer what their books are about. To feel the passion that goes into the making of a book and like any craft market, Clunes gives readers something that modern life has almost lost - the personal touch. Even if you don't buy a book, that experience is something you take away with you.
And that experience works both ways because what happens at Clunes is something more than the selling of books. It's about connections. One man who dutifully followed his partner into our tent, was looking a bit lost so I asked him what he liked to read. He told me that he liked books on meteorites. I asked if he was a geologist and he said, no. He added that he was simply a person with a telescope who liked space rocks. I replied that as far as I knew, meteorites were the only real aliens to have visited our planet and as we joked about aliens in rock form, his partner bought a children's book from Alison Mullen. That short conversation got me thinking about an alien in rock form learning about life on Earth. Something like Chris Flynn's stories in Here Be Leviathans.
Later a group of young women came in. They were interested in the sapphic adventure books written by Hayley Price. While they listened to Hayley talk about her assassin protagonist, one girl stood off to the side looking a bit bored. I asked her what she read and she said blandly that she wasn’t that interested in reading. I found that interesting because she had a detailed full sleeve tattoo of a beautiful woman with a head of snakes.
"Is that Medusa?"
Her face lit up as she replied that that was who it was meant to represent andwtjat's how we got to talking about myths. I told her I was writing a short story about a woman called Atahensic, who's also known as the Sky Woman. According to the Iroquois legend Atahensic fell from her island in the sky and with the help of various animals, created an island in the vast ocean which covered the Earth and gave rise to humans. I said that I liked that myth because sky woman was not a goddess but rather someone who worked in conjunction with nature. As her friends moved on with their purchases, she stayed to talk of climate change and the need to work with nature. As she said good-bye, I wrote the name of an author and a book she might like to read. It was Nataly Haynes' book on Greek goddesses called Devine Might.
The girls were replaced by a young couple who asked what speculative fiction was. They were in their early thirties and as I explained the plot of my series, the woman was intrigued by the idea of all adult males being wiped out by a pandemic. (For some reason, most women are) Her partner, however, became interested, when I talked about how boys could only live to be twenty. He laughed and said, “I’d be dead.” Which led into a discussion about mortality and how young men today perceive the future. I pointed out that we are not that many generations removed from a time when young men his age or younger were given some basic training, a gun, and the license to kill or be killed. He nodded knowingly as I sold his partner the first book in my series, When All Hope Is Lost.
On Sunday, one of those wounded soldiers visited our tent. He was wearing a t-shirt that said Grumpy Old Man and he looked the part except for his dog. Sundays at Clunes are a big day for families and dogs are no exception. As our Queen of horror, Caroline Angel, cuddled his puppy, the self-confessed, grumpy old man told me how the puppy had been born dead. He described how he did everything to resuscitate the puppy but nothing worked so he carefully wrapped it in a towel and placed it outside his door, planning to bury it later. But when he had given up hope, he heard the puppy cry. Somehow that little dog had survived and with that the man went on to tell me how he too survived. As a soldier in the SAS he’d seen a lot of action and then on one mission he was shot. The kevlar vest saved his life but the bullet moved his heart out of position which caused his on-going health problems but what was worse was the psychological trauma. His night terrors were so bad that his wife and he, feared for her life and so they separated. He went on to tell me about his second wife and how she gave him a second chance at life only to die a few years ago. And with that, we were back to the moment when he saved the puppy and it was time for him to go. I watched those two survivors melt into the crowd and thought life has a way of giving us what we need when we need it. Redemption, resurrection, renewal.
By Sunday afternoon, I was exhausted and was about to sit down when a young woman strolled in. Sometimes you get the feeling that someone wants to ask a question but they don't know where to begin. It took a bit of probing but the question was one I'm often asked - how do you become a writer? The answer is simpler than the execution. You make writing a habit. "But what if you don't know what to write about?" She asked. I said that most writers don't know what they are really going to write about until they put words on the page. As for coming up with a great plot, some of the best books are written about everyday things; Elisabeth Stroud’s book Oh William, Hilary Worlitzer’s book Today A Woman Went Mad In The Supermarket, Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. These are all books about everyday people leading every day lives but we enjoy them because we see ourselves in them. I don't know if that girl will take up writing. I hope she does if only for her own pleasure. And that's the thing about writing. Not everyone who writes will publish, nor will every writer be able to make a living from their art but what is true is that writing helps us make sense of ourselves and the world around us.
And so by 3pm on Sunday, the crowds had thinned, the temperature had risen and I was weighed down by all the stories and conversations I had encountered. It was time to pack up, say my farewells and head home. I'd sold enough books to make the trip worthwhile, so in that sense it was a success but that's not why I'll come back next year. You see, Clunes is addictive. We come for the vibe and even if we leave with empty pockets, our soyls have somehow been replenished.
If you were at the Clunes Book Fair, leave a comment and tell me about your experience.