by Kitty Felde
Tired of cranking out social media blasts to launch your new book? Why not throw a birthday party for one of your characters?
In my latest Fina Mendoza mystery, Home of the Brave, my young detective celebrates her 11th birthday. But her party gets hijacked by her matchmaking aunts, trying to fix up Fina’s congressman father with his former chief-of-staff. Fina barely gets to blow out the candles.
So I threw Fina the birthday party she should have had. And sold quite a few books along the way.
It had been a few years since I’d attended an 11-year-old’s birthday party. What did they eat? What games did they play? Were boys invited? I needed an expert.
Luckily, I had an 11-year-old neighbor. I asked for help.
“Let me think about it,” she said.
Half an hour later, there was a knock at the front door.
“I have some ideas,” she said.
We sat at the dining room table. She pulled out a handwritten list. Kids her age liked to win prizes, she said, so we’d need various competitions. We settled on cornhole, chummy bunny (a new one to me—you stuff marshmallows in your mouth and try to say “chummy bunny” as clearly as you can), and even pin the tail on the donkey. And a piñata. “We have to have a piñata,” she said. She suggested fingernail painting, which sounded extremely messy, but then I remembered a box of unfinished hats sitting in a box in my garage. “And junk food. Definitely junk food,” she said. So popcorn, chips and dips, and cupcakes with the image of my book on top.
“And I’ll help you,” she concluded.
Word spread around my neighborhood. Other kids volunteered to help. My living room started filling up with dollar store prizes, happy birthday napkins, and candy for the piñata. I ordered cupcakes from the supermarket and a pin-the-tail game from Amazon.
I posted about the party on my neighborhood Facebook group, trying to explain the odd concept of a party (no presents please!) for someone who wouldn’t be there in person. No one RSVP’d. Would no one come?
Saturday at noon, half a dozen young helpers showed up. The kids and my spouse dragged every chair they could find out to the front yard. “Adults like to sit,” said my young expert. Adults! Would grown-ups come to a fictitious 11-year-old’s party? Just in case, I added bottles of beer and cans of coffee drinks to a “grown-up” ice chest.
Center stage was a table covered with my books.
We hung the piñata and set up the cornhole game. We plugged in the glue guns for the hat decorating and filled a basket with ribbons and fake flowers. My helpers begged to let them run the games (fine by me!) and ran home to get changed. Would anyone come?
Come, they did. More than two dozen neighbors of all ages came to celebrate Fina’s birthday. Hats were decorated. Marshmallows were stuffed in mouths. Winners reached inside the prize bag to claim sunglasses and miniature chalkboards and bubbles. The piñata was broken (eventually) and nobody was hurt in the inevitable mad scramble for candy.
We were having so much fun, we forgot to sing “Happy Birthday” to Fina.
I sold and autographed a hundred dollars’ worth of books, met two school librarians who promised to buy more, and planted the seeds for future class visits.
The next day, one of my young helpers knocked on my door and told me, “That was the best party I ever went to!” I had to agree.
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Kitty Felde writes the Fina Mendoza Mysteries series of middle grade novels. She also writes a series of civics quiz books under the pen name of PJ Jaeger called Are You Smarter Than Your Parents About … Civics?
Photos by David Weisenbloom.
