Mimi Hynes - Mastermind

MIMI HYNES. There was something incredibly special about that name, particularly to Radnor Cliff – one of today’s many aspiring authors. He felt forgettable before he encountered her, especially since none of his books had ever taken off. Maybe it was owing to the fact he hadn’t settled on a single idea from day dot. He jumped from genre to genre, never writing anything entirely committal. He desperately needed a break from it all. The letters were wearing off his computer keyboard from prolonged and often frenetic overuse.

“Damn it,” he said to himself, shaking his head in frustrated disbelief.

He looked at the assemblage of words before him. They said so much in terms of word count and so little in terms of content. They say there is a story stored inside everyone, but he couldn’t seem to locate his. He needed a coffee break, and maybe, he thought, a break from writing. He had had sixteen politely worded declines from publishers that week alone.

“I’m going to the library,” he declared to his ten-year-old dozy dog Jasper. Jasper didn’t answer but his ears flicked, so Radnor knew he had heard him. Either way, he looked unbothered by whether he came or went.

Radnor walked to the library at the end of his street. For its proximity to his home, he thought how, with a sense of shame, he hadn’t once made use of it. Even though it took two minutes to walk there, Radnor had forgotten to read. He’d been so busy writing – churning out stories like they were books on a conveyor belt, not stopping to see what he needed: a reason to write. Good reading would reinspire him, he decided. He just needed to change things up for a while. He didn’t know what he wanted to read, but he hoped he would find something of interest there. He wasn’t wrong; he just didn’t find it right away. It didn’t fall into his hands from the heavens, the way fateful things are supposed to do. He was, however, greeted by a library assistant when he made his entrance.

“Welcome to Grove Library, are you registered with us?”

“I don’t believe I am,” he said.

“First things first – let’s get you your library card and then we can start the important business of finding you something to read.”

Radnor followed the librarian, whose name he had read on her name badge: Samantha.

She was glamorous and attractive, but he wasn’t in the right place to consider such things. Instead, he let her create his membership and whenever she asked for his name, he said, “Rad – it’s short for Radnor.” Barely anyone shortened his name, but he thought it sounded less stiff.

“That’s a cool name - Radnor. I’m sure it was a bit of a mouthful when you were younger.”

Radnor nodded in weary agreement.

“It’s like everything else – you get used to it,” he said.

Samantha gathered books from different shelves she knew so well she could have done it without so much as a torch at midnight.

The stack of books was generous.

“How many are we allowed to borrow at once?” he asked.

“Ten.”

“Ten?! How do people carry them home?”

“They probably park at the door,” said Samantha. “If you want to read, you’ll find a way to do it,” she added.

They worked their way through the pile, right to the very bottom.

“Oh, have you heard of this author?” she asked, holding up a book in a plastic sleeve for Radnor to read the blurb.

Radnor seemed to lighten up as soon as she handed it to him. It was by someone called Mimi and it was an apocalyptic tale, but it was also so much more than that. It was engrossing as soon as he opened it. He had to know what happened in this new world. He had to take it home. The strange thing about Mimi’s books was the fact that they had pretty-in-pink covers and main characters dressed like meringues in tutus and similar: the last thing Radnor would have thought to pick up. Her protagonists were always frivolous and didn’t fit with the plot at all. End of the world stories with silly, frilly main characters sounded like a recipe for disaster, but somehow, it just worked. Radnor felt compelled to keep reading. At home, with Jasper sleeping at the foot of his bed, he turned page after page after page, losing sleep over each book until it was finished and added to his “to be reread” list. He knew very little about the author, but he was fascinated by the workings of her mind. He wanted to have that hold over his own readers. It was like she had cast a spell over the reader that lasted from start to finish, and then they had to go in search of another one of her books. Radnor didn’t want to read anything else. All the other books he had borrowed from the library were left, unopened – neglected for Mimi’s latest release. She was prolific too – a book came every few months, the plotlines getting more and more bizarre, the characters getting more and more farcical.

His favourite, he decided, was the story of Delilah Dolly: a housecleaner with feather duster she carried everywhere she went. She’d started scouring the kitchen on the point of an alien invasion, seemingly nonplussed by it. He couldn’t believe how well the contrasting elements went together. It ran against everything he’d been taught to do as a writer. Radnor had been educated to be a writer, but he knew his compositions didn’t come close to Mimi’s; she just had that natural talent for it that so few storytellers have. The kind of talent that makes every reader in the room disappear into the world in their book and forget about the real one.

Whenever Radnor had finished the last of Mimi’s books, he felt a certain devastation, like he’d just lost a close friend. He knew he would have to wait for the next release to read or reread the others he could get his hands on it. In that moment, he realised, he wanted to write.

He sat in his study, his laptop in front of him, a spectacular view outside his window: the early morning sunrise spread out before him. He put his fingers onto the keys of his keyboard and started to clatter away. He put the unlikeliest person into the strangest situation, and as he was writing it, he realised, it just worked. He added in as many surprising features as he could. It added layers of interest to the story, and he realised how one dimensional his writing had been before. He sat for hours on end, writing so fast his fingers could barely keep up with his ideas. He couldn’t wait to write the next part, to see what happened: the surest sign the reader wouldn’t be able to put the book down either.

He didn’t know who Mimi Hynes was – he had seen an author photo, but those never really told you as much as the author’s books did. Radnor promised himself he would get his book published, and whenever he did, he would make a point to find out who she was. He would track down Mimi to thank her - in person - for her brilliant and bizarre books.