Shannon Messenger, UNRAVELED (Keeper of the Lost Cities Book 9.5)
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[0:42]Shannon Messenger is the author of Unraveled Book 9.5 in the Keeper of the Lost Cities series.
[0:50]Shannon graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where she learned among other things that she liked watching movies much better than making them.
[0:57]She studied art, screenwriting, and television production, but realized her real passion was writing for kids and teens.
[1:03]So now, she is the internationally New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of the award-winning middle grade series Keeper of the Lost Cities, as well as the Skyfall Young Adult series.
[1:13]Her books have been featured on multiple state reading lists published in numerous countries and translated into many languages.
[1:20]She lives in Southern California with her family and an embarrassing number of cats.
[1:23]Welcome, Shannon. Thanks so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Keeper of the Lost Cities Unraveled.
[1:31]Congratulations.
[1:32]Thank you. And thank you so much for having me. This is going to be so much fun.
[1:35]Oh, well now there's all this pressure.
[1:37]I live my day, you know, with toddlers that don't sleep and throw up on me a lot.
[1:46]I have become a pro at scrubbing toddler vomit.
[1:50]So, you know, I mean, it's a little bar for what I define that's funny.
[1:54]Don't worry, there's not too much pressure after all.
[1:57]So maybe the free spill, which we just talked about when we started is counteracting that all of that.
[2:03]Yeah. Yeah.
[2:04]I'm maybe I'm in my house or that it is.
[2:07]I have become a master at toddler stains who knew that that would become like a mom skill.
[2:12]But you know, it's amazing.
[2:14]The mess is that they can make and that I and my sleep deprived state can make. Oh yeah.
[2:19]I once wanted to start a talk show.
[2:21]I can't remember what I wanted to call it mom something where like we get to show off and compete in all the skills
[2:26]that you earn as a mom that like there's basically no utility for like how fast can you close a stroller
[2:31]and like how many things can you carry at once?
[2:33]And I thought that would be so funny as a show.
[2:35]But anyway, I let it go.
[2:37]I always want to know at what point like I want to measure at what point is it that your reaction to vomit
[2:42]instead of jumping away is to cut your hands and try to catch it.
[2:46]Because I have definitely like entered that zone where that's what I do.
[2:50]And I'm just like, when did that happen because I feel like that was not my natural instinct
[2:56]was like here, let me grab a handful of this.
[2:58]But at some point it's sort of subconsciously clicks in your brain that like I could catch it and just wash my hands
[3:04]or I could spend hours scrubbing the carpet.
[3:06]So you can do that dive.
[3:08]Yeah.
[3:08]I think it's all about the brand of carpet.
[3:11]You have really is what it comes to.
[3:12]Yeah.
[3:13]You need the same guard and problems.
[3:16]But yeah, there's that.
[3:17]I do that move all the time.
[3:19]Like catch this.
[3:21]And then you stand there going, well, now I have a handful of toddler barf.
[3:24]So I'm sure this is exactly what everyone wants us to talk about all the races today, ladies and gentlemen.
[3:34]Oh my gosh, I mean, I think people feel good knowing that they're not the only ones in whatever messes in their lives,
[3:39]whether it's toddler, aging parents or whatever and how, you know, books can really help us through.
[3:45]The fact that you can now write all these books while dealing with all this is yet another amazing feat aside from just the catching of it itself.
[3:52]Why don't you before we talk about the latest book?
[3:54]Can you just for people who might not know about you take people back to, you know, I read on your website about how you started
[4:01]and you want to speak illustrator and then you realize you weren't good enough.
[4:04]And you went into film and it just give us like the little backstory and how you became an author who has sold like seven million copies,
[4:12]something insanely ridiculous.
[4:13]Oh my gosh.
[4:14]I know.
[4:14]I mean, it's been a wild ride.
[4:16]Yeah.
[4:17]Like it says on my website, I was really focused on art when I was younger.
[4:21]But that was just what I thought I was best at.
[4:24]And it was also just what I didn't realize at the time was that I knew I had all these visuals in my head that I was always trying to get down on the paper.
[4:31]But what I didn't realize was that they were actually stories.
[4:33]And, you know, that was the skill that I just don't have as an artist.
[4:38]Like I'm pretty good at rendering if I can see something I can draw it pretty well.
[4:42]But if it's just in my imagination and there's no like actual source material to help me, I can't do it.
[4:49]No matter how hard I try to keep thinking if I just take enough art classes, if I practice enough, I'll get there.
[4:54]And what I came to realize from watching other students that could just do that instantly is that's a different skill set than what I have.
[5:02]And so I was just getting so frustrated because I felt like I never achieved on the paper what I was trying to achieve.
[5:10]I always achieved like even when I came up with something that I was proud of, it was still never as good as what was in my head.
[5:16]And I had also started college really young. I was like 16 when I started college.
[5:21]And so I had this like existential crisis of like, what am I going to do if it's not art?
[5:26]My mom was like deep breath.
[5:28]You are 16 and in college, you know, you can you've got time to figure out how about you just take some classes that sound fun and see what happens.
[5:37]And so I signed up for a class called broadcast writing and production kind of on a whim.
[5:42]It mostly because it kind of sounded like a class where I might get college credit for watching TV.
[5:47]And it was, but we did was right.
[5:51]And we actually were creating pilots for shows and writing episodes.
[5:55]And what I noticed as I went through the course of that class was that finally what was in my head was coming out on the page.
[6:02]It just, I had to use words instead of trying to draw it and suddenly I was hooked on writing.
[6:09]But because it was a broadcast class, I kind of, and living in Southern California, you just kind of naturally get steered toward Hollywood.
[6:15]And so I ended up a film major and graduated worked in Hollywood just kind of long enough to realize this is not for me.
[6:23]It was very, very collaborative because movies are, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars to make.
[6:28]They're not going to just give one person that and say, go do it.
[6:32]And apparently I'm a control freak.
[6:34]And I wanted to be more in control of a project than Hollywood was ever going to allow me to be.
[6:40]And so I kind of had again another one of those crises of like, how did I get here?
[6:44]I hate this so much and I realized what was because I liked writing.
[6:48]And you know, there's those lots of other things that I could write like maybe those book things maybe I could track those instead.
[6:54]So that was kind of where I did the shift and it took me a little while longer to find the right story I wanted to tell.
[7:00]And then to learn how to write a book, I had kind of naively thought, Oh, well, I have all the screenwriting training totally will know how to write a book, but there's a difference.
[7:11]And that's why the published version of keeper book one is actually draft 20 because I had a lot of learning to do a lot of a lot of different habits to pick up and other habits to drop and and really kind of find my own voice as a writer of books, but
[7:27]suddenly here we are, you know, fast forward to keep her came out in 2012 and the series was definitely a quiet launch into the world.
[7:35]It was the heyday of hunger games and twilight and everything was about why and here I was with this little middle grade coming out saying like,
[7:45]Pay attention to me. I'm not Chrissy Jackson. I'm not here but I'm still here and it took, you know, I think it was book five that finally hit the New York Times list.
[7:55]So it was it was a journey.
[7:57]But what was so cool was really fan based. It was I learned I could go on interview social media all day long and be like, hey, bye, my book.
[8:05]And people are like, yeah, no, of course you want me to buy your book.
[8:11]And so it really was booksellers, teachers, librarians and my readers, the, the, something that had given it a chance telling their friends like, oh my gosh, you need to read this book.
[8:21]So I can talk to you about it.
[8:23]And slowly the series grew and suddenly here we are, you know, with seven million copies in print and a movie deal with Warner Brothers and all kinds of crazy.
[8:33]I think we're in like 20 territories worldwide and I've hit international bestseller list and I'm just like, wow.
[8:41]I still vividly remember those days of showing up for events and having nobody there and making a fort out of unsold books.
[8:50]So how did you have sort of the patience and the drive to keep writing if you weren't finding an audience at the beginning.
[8:59]It really honestly came down to this story. That's how I made it through 20 drafts. It was one of those things where this story was just the story would not that would not get out of my head.
[9:08]I came up with it when I was actually working on a different book after I had promised myself that I was not going to change ideas again because I kept doing that.
[9:17]A lot of writers in the beginning you do that you get that shiny new idea which seems so much better than the book that you're working on.
[9:25]So I kept doing that and I had finally decided no, I'm working on one that I really like this is a good one, even if it's not like the one that's going to get me published.
[9:33]I need to learn how to finish a book like let's do this.
[9:36]And I got stuck on it and I was trying to find a way to get unstuck and I remember to writing exercise from my screenwriting classes that said hey get to know your side characters and I had created fits as a side character for that book.
[9:53]And so I went to write a short story with him. I have absolutely no idea why, but for some reason I decided.
[10:00]that the plot of that story was going to be that he was going to meet a little girl and realize
[10:05]that she was in health. And it proves that I'm really bad at short fiction because my brilliant
[10:11]home for the short story was, hey, guess what? You're an elf. It wasn't that just the most satisfying
[10:16]ending ever. But I couldn't stop thinking about that little girl and wondering like, okay,
[10:22]so what's going to happen to her now? Like, how did she not know she was an elf and now that
[10:27]she knows does she have to leave behind everything? And why would someone hide her away? And
[10:31]what is she supposed to do now that she's there? And it just, no matter how many times the story
[10:37]would frustrate me, no matter how many times I would start to feel like it was bigger and smarter
[10:42]than I was, I just, I couldn't get it out of my head. And so I stuck with it through 20 drafts. And
[10:49]then when the series was quiet and there was definitely a point where I was having to go back to my
[10:54]editor and say, could we get another book in the series? And she kind of said, well, the only way
[10:59]you can do it is if you take a pay cut. And I was already not rolling in those big flashy deals,
[11:04]like you hear about. And I had that moment of like, do I really want to stick with this or is it
[11:09]time to pivot? And I just realized I really love to the story. And I really felt like there was
[11:14]something special about it and that if I just stuck with it, that it would find its readers,
[11:20]I didn't necessarily think that we'd get where I am. But I thought it could certainly be bigger
[11:26]than where it was. But, you know, it was incredibly quiet at the beginning. So that wasn't
[11:31]that wasn't a big reach to be like, it could sell more than, you know, 10 copies a week to my
[11:36]grandmother. No. Wow. Well, that is very inspiring. Just the dedication to the story. I mean, I
[11:45]think people can get caught up in the book of it. But focusing on the story and the characters
[11:51]and wanting to follow them along. I mean, what, what better motivation is there than that?
[11:55]And that's honestly why I'm still writing the series. There's honestly a part of me
[12:00]that wouldn't mind getting to change things up a little bit because one thing that naive me
[12:05]thought was that books in a series would get easier. As you go along that, you know, the world is
[12:10]built, the characters exist, the plot is already in place. So it's surely going to get much easier
[12:16]as you go along, but it gets exponentially harder because not only are you having to keep track of
[12:22]everything, but you're trying to top yourself. And you're trying to top yourself within the limits
[12:28]of what you've already created. And so it is, it is a lot harder. And there is definitely a part
[12:34]of me that's like, you know, writing a book one again sounds awesome because writing a book 9 and a
[12:39]half and then writing a book 10 really, really, really, really hard. But again, it's I have to do
[12:45]right by the story. And I have raised all of these questions. I have all of these readers waiting for
[12:51]answers. I have characters that are in the midst of a giant mess. And I owe it to everyone to see
[12:57]this through properly. And so that's kind of even why I added this slightly unique addition to the
[13:04]series. Book 9.5 was again, because this is what the story needed. And I'm really, I'm here for
[13:09]the story. I'm trusting the story. And and we're going with it. Does this story ever end? It does.
[13:17]It definitely does. It, you know, it's a little hard for me to say exactly which book it ends in,
[13:23]because where I always start now, now that I'm deep into the series is I start with this list of
[13:29]like things I still owe my readers answers that I need to do or, you know, big reveals or things
[13:34]like that. And then I try to make a list of like, okay, so these are the ones I'm going to cover
[13:39]in this book. And these are the ones I'm going to cover in this book. And I've done that quite
[13:43]a few times. I've been like, all right. So that's how many books are left in the series. I've
[13:47]broken it up and it's going to be these, this many. And then I actually sit down to write it. And
[13:51]when I start to really see how long it takes to get some of those answers in and have them come
[13:57]out in a way that feels authentic and earned and not just, well, I needed to get this reveal. And so
[14:02]here's a chapter with that reveal go. Then it tends to be that I, you know, don't accomplish as much
[14:09]as I think I'm going to. And it gets moved to the next book. And then that's why we've announced a
[14:14]few different times like this is going to be the last book. It turns out surprise. But that list of
[14:21]things that I owe my readers is getting shorter and shorter and shorter. And so we are, there is an
[14:26]end in sight. But as far as whether it will for sure be book 10 or whether I'll have to add one
[14:32]more to the series, it's a little hard to say because I'm deep in the middle of plotting book 10.
[14:37]And so it's, you know, I may find that there's a few loose ends that it's like, nope, the only
[14:41]way to do this is to add another book to the series. But there is an end and I promise for all of
[14:47]my readers who are familiar with my cliffhangers. It's not going to be a cliffhanger. It will be a
[14:54]complete ending when we get to the last book that's, you know, where we have an ending. I swear.
[15:00]And then off on the side, you also write other books. I did in the lately, I have not been able to
[15:07]because, you know, it is just the books have gotten longer and longer and longer. But yeah, in the
[15:12]beginning, I wrote the Skyfall trilogy. And I also wrote another book that I sold and it has been
[15:19]waiting for me to do a revision on it since I think 2016. And I sadly have been so, it's funny.
[15:27]I sold it the same year that keeper hit the New York Times list. And my plan had been that I was
[15:34]going to start spacing the keeper books out a little bit just to kind of give myself some room
[15:38]to breathe. But then when keeper hit the New York Times list, there was none of that that was going
[15:43]to happen. And so that book has just been sitting on my hard drive and I love it. It's a very special
[15:48]book to me. And I hope that someday I will have time to do a revision on it. But right now it is
[15:54]sitting there waiting for me to be done with Sophie and her friends before I can move back.
[16:00]That's, I mean, that's what they say to do, right? It's like leave something in the middle. So
[16:04]it's easier to come back to versus starting something from scratch. So that's the ultimate.
[16:09]I feel like if anything, it's probably going to make it a much better book because I've had
[16:12]so much time to be distanced from it that I'm going to be able to go back and see, oh, I can make
[16:17]this better and I can make that better and all of these things. It's going to be weird to read it.
[16:21]I literally haven't read it since 2016. And it's crazy how long ago that was. Yeah, a lot has
[16:28]happened since 2016. A little bit. Just a little, just a little. Wow. So when what does your writing
[16:36]process then look like to you, like do you stay in this, are you in your office? Do you stay in there
[16:41]and do you have certain hours you write versus edit versus marketing or how did you do it?
[16:48]Yeah, I am trying to learn how to be a lot more disciplined now that I have three and a half
[16:53]year old and a one and a half year old. It's a, it's a whole other ball game than back when I used
[16:57]to just kind of be able to have the entire day. And it's been, it's been a challenge because my
[17:02]brain definitely gets its biggest creativity spurts from about like nine at night to about three
[17:08]in the morning. That's like my prime time and that is not a good writing schedule to be on when
[17:14]you have little kids. So I have been trying to train myself to write during the day. That's
[17:21]why I built an office out in my backyard so that I'm home. I'm nearby. If there are any fires
[17:26]that need to be put out, I'm here, but I also have a little bit of space that I don't immediately
[17:32]hear it. I don't, you know, I don't see it happening when I had an office in the house. It was like
[17:36]I was constantly running out the door. Like, oh no, they're crying or all they're laughing. What
[17:41]am I missing? You know? And so that's been a big part of it. And then really trying to set like,
[17:47]okay, this block of time is going to be for work emails and social media. And then we are
[17:52]shutting that down and now it's writing time. And it's still, I'm still a work in progress at
[17:58]that. I'm learning that I'm nearly as self-disciplined as I thought I was. But and I'm trying to find
[18:04]ways to hold myself accountable. One really helpful one is that I have a few friends that we kind
[18:08]of have this group chain that will text each other. Hey, I'm working right now and then we'll set
[18:14]30 minute timers and check in with each other. I don't usually write with like a word count goal
[18:19]because I'm just really good at cheating at that and writing junk just to be able to say,
[18:24]hey, I wrote 500 words. Yeah, but none of them are usable. So instead, we just kind of do
[18:30]check ins where some of them are doing word count. Some of them, it's like, hey, I fixed a page
[18:33]that was broken or hey, I added a new part to a scene or even if it's like, if I'm at a plotting
[18:39]point is like, oh, I did a few minutes of brainstorming or just something to really hold ourselves
[18:45]accountable that for that 30 minutes, we're not going to do anything else than we check in. We
[18:49]decide if we need to take a quick break and then we go back and we do another 30 minutes and I'll
[18:54]do that, you know, for several times throughout the day and it really kind of helps, you know,
[18:59]keep me going and keep me from like, what's on, you know, the internet right now or let me see if
[19:04]I need to do some online shopping or how great to have a group of friends to hold you accountable.
[19:10]And I'll find a way like self discipline during a stage of life where the self has to take a
[19:15]backseat is incredibly difficult. I mean, it does not get more in it than when you have little
[19:21]kids like that at home. And I mean, carving out anytime is a victory. So you should just give
[19:26]yourself a pat on the back even even on a tough day, you're doing a lot. Oh, thank you. It's definitely
[19:32]been a challenge. I mean, my kids this summer, I was on deadline for unraveled and I swear they
[19:37]somehow managed to pick up any virus that they possibly kind of like, you guys aren't even in
[19:41]daycare. I don't understand how this is happening. And so I ended up having to ask for a couple
[19:46]extra weeks on my deadline because it was just like, this is just not happening. I there's
[19:51]certain things you can ask an Annie to do, but, you know, holding your child while they barf all
[19:55]over them, you know, I want that back to the barf. Full of surf.
[20:00]conversation. It is a theme in my life. Do you ever find any time to read? I do, but sadly,
[20:12]the answer when everyone asks what I'm reading is usually my own books and I swear it's not
[20:16]because I'm an ego maniac. It's just because again, I'm, you know, there's such thick books
[20:22]and some of them I wrote more than 10 years ago and here I am trying to make sure I'm not
[20:27]forgetting anything that I've said and so I tend to spend my reading time either listening to
[20:33]audiobooks or rereading my own sections of my own books to try to make sure that I'm keeping
[20:38]consistency and keeping everything straight and all that kind of thing. So it is mostly my own
[20:44]books and it makes it very difficult when people are like, so what books can you recommend? I'm like,
[20:48]well keep her in the last plot. I do read occasionally for blurbs, you know, so I'm reading
[21:02]one right now for a blurb that I'm really enjoying, but it's coming up on the gun of like, I need
[21:07]back to them so I'm like, okay, we're gonna have to stay up late tonight. Oh my gosh. Oh wow. Do you have
[21:14]more of those like big ideas, something that you're like, oh, it's coming to me, but I just,
[21:19]I have to put that aside for like a while. I do. I have, I keep them as notes in my phone and so
[21:27]it helps to just kind of write them somewhere where I know I'm not gonna lose them. So I have
[21:33]some sort of little, you know, thing percolating somewhere, but then it's like, yeah, we don't have time
[21:38]to play with you right now. You're great and you're shiny and I love you and I can't wait to
[21:43]explore you someday, but right now you need to kind of go sit over there and wait while I finish
[21:48]the long to-do list of stuff still going on. Amazing. What is your biggest tip in creating a world?
[21:59]What are like the most, the top three things when you're trying to, you know, yeah, create a world?
[22:06]You know, it's funny because when I first sat down to do it, I thought, well, this is gonna be
[22:11]great. I'll just take everything I love and smash it into a world. And what I realized right
[22:15]away was I am really bad at world building. If I, if I do it that way because it doesn't have any
[22:21]sort of coherence to it, it's just a bunch of random stuff thrown together. And so the best advice
[22:27]that I can give is to try to treat it as an exercise in logic. And so make, make a big decision
[22:34]based on something that you want. Like, for example, in Keeper, I knew I wanted the world to be
[22:37]global. I knew I wanted it because I knew they were having a big problem. And it's hard sometimes
[22:43]when a story is isolated to just like one city or one school or something like that for it to feel
[22:48]like this is really a global thing that everyone is affected by when, but how come all the scenes
[22:52]take place in this one city? And so I wanted it to be a global world. And I realized, okay, well,
[22:58]then that's gonna affect how they're able to travel because, you know, if my kids are living all
[23:02]over the world and they're going to one school, how are they gonna get there without some of them
[23:06]needing like 24 hour flights to get to school every morning. And so that, you know, create this
[23:12]boy, like came up with light leaping. And then it was like, okay, well, if light leaping is a part of
[23:17]their world, then how will that affect other things? Their buildings would need to be built a
[23:20]certain way, their clothes would probably need to be built a certain way they would need gadgets.
[23:24]And I just kind of followed that logic all the way down as far as it trickled. And then
[23:30]I'd go back and make another decision trying again to keep in mind the decisions I'd already
[23:35]made. And I'd follow the logic down of that. And the really interesting thing was that sometimes
[23:40]it meant I had to put things into the world that I didn't want, you know, that it wasn't an ideal
[23:46]world. But that's kind of my second tip is you probably don't want to create a perfect world.
[23:52]Because if it's perfect, there's probably not a lot of story there. So I realized I was creating
[23:57]this world that at first glance, it looked amazing. The analogy I kind of uses like a diamond,
[24:03]you know, when you see a diamond for the first time, it just is sparkly and amazing. But if you
[24:08]have a trained eye and you know where to look, there's probably some inclusions in it, some little
[24:12]tiny imperfections that are in there. And that's kind of where the lost cities are at, is it?
[24:18]Is this beautiful glittering, shimmering, wonderful world that has a lot of flaws that a lot of them
[24:24]have not been seeing and some of them have been seeing. And that's really where my story,
[24:29]the heart of it is, is that this world, I let it have the flaws that logically it would have.
[24:35]And I didn't put in the flaws to arbitrarily say, well, this is the theme I want to explore,
[24:39]because I think it would have felt very forced and said it was just, well, given what I know about
[24:43]the creatures, given what I know about the decisions I've made, like this is where they'd be excelling
[24:49]and this is where they would be failing. And I just really try to stick to that. And I guess
[24:54]that's the third thing is you got to stick to it and try to have that consistency, because
[25:00]especially when you write for kids, they read your books over and over and over again. And the
[25:05]tiniest inconsistency, they will email you about it and point out and you'll be sitting there like,
[25:10]oh, you're right. I'm torn. So I'm trying to really be as consistent as you possibly can.
[25:21]Well, I have to say, my kids have not read your books yet. So I just got them the box series.
[25:26]So we will be, you know, diving in very soon with books all over the place. So you will be
[25:32]keeping the company in many forms around the house. Well, I hope they enjoy. I always say,
[25:37]if they don't, just don't tell me. But I hope they enjoy. I mean, I, I like them is the best
[25:45]endorsement. I hope that we meet again at the video come to my store. If you ever have any
[25:55]interest in Santa Monica, we'd love to have you. And yeah, just great to connect. Yeah. Thank you
[26:01]so much. And I promise if we do connect, I will try to talk a little bit less about toddler vomit.
[26:06]That won't be hard.
[26:07]All right. Well, I hope it was as fun as you hoped it was.
[26:14]Thank you so much. All right. Have a great day. Okay, bye bye.
[26:20]Thanks for listening to momstone have time to read books. If you love it, please leave a review
[26:25]and follow us on social at city Owens and at city readers.