Why It's a Birthday

The Mirror starts on a birthday sleepover, and that wasn't an accident.

In the book, Jr and Dakota were born two weeks apart. Every year they do one party in the middle, plus a sleepover to make it official. There was a bounce house the first year. Year three was a water balloon war. Last year they built a blanket fort that survived four days. This year it's chocolate cake and a movie neither of them watches.

I wanted the story to start on the safest night of the year. A birthday sleepover is the most ordinary, most protected night a kid has. Everybody's home, everybody's happy, and nobody is watching the clock.

That's exactly why it's the right night for something to go wrong.

It matters for another reason too. Once the boys are inside the hallway, there are no clocks and no windows, and Jr badly needs to know what day it is. A birthday is the one date a kid can't get wrong. He holds on to it like a rope.

Readers won't notice how much that date matters until later in the series. When they do, I hope they flip back to the first chapter and the cake.

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