Zibby is joined by New York Times bestselling author Shannon Messenger to discuss UNRAVELED, the newest installment (book number 9.5!) of her stunning, imaginative, award-winning middle-grade series, KEEPER OF THE LOST CITIES. Shannon delves into her creative journey, explaining how a college broadcast writing class helped her shift from artist to writer. She also reflects on the perseverance it took to find and build her readership, crediting the support of teachers, librarians, and fans across the globe. Finally, she shares what it’s like to balance a writing career with parenting two young children!

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Shannon. Thanks so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Keeper of the Lost Cities Unraveled. Congratulations. 

Shannon: Thank you. And thank you so much for having me. This is going to be so much fun.

Zibby: Oh, well, now there's all this pressure. 

Shannon: I mean, I live my day, you know, with, with toddlers that don't sleep and throw up on me a lot. I, I, I have become a pro at scrubbing toddler vomit. So, you know, I mean, it's a low bar for what I define as fun. Don't worry. There's not too much pressure after all. 

Zibby: So maybe the Febreze spill, which we just talked about before we started, is counteracting that, all of that. 

Shannon: Yeah. Yeah. I maybe, I mean, my house is, uh, it is, I have become a master at toddler stains who knew that that would become like a mom skill. But, you know, it's, it's amazing the messes that they can make and that I, and sleep Deprived State can make, oh yeah. 

Zibby: I once wanted to start a talk show, 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 that you earn as a mom that like there's basically no utility for, like how fast can you close a stroller, and like how many things can you carry at once, and I thought that would be so funny as a show, but anyway.

I let it go. 

Shannon: I always want to know at what point, like I want to measure at what point is it that your reaction to vomit instead of jumping away is to cup your hands and try to catch it? Because I have definitely like entered that zone where that's what I do. And I'm just like, when did that happen?

Because I feel like that was not my natural instinct. It was like, here, let me grab a handful of this, but at some point it sort of subconsciously clicks in your brain that like, I could catch it and just wash my hands or I could spend hours scrubbing the carpet so you kind of. Do that dive. 

Zibby: Yeah, I think it's all about the brand of carpet you have really is what it comes down to.

Yeah, you need the stain guard and 

Shannon: But yep, there's there's that I do that move all the time of like catch this and then you stand there going. Well now I have a handful of toddler barf So i'm sure this is exactly what everyone wants us to talk about. Welcome to the races today, ladies and gentlemen. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh, I mean, I think people feel good knowing that they're not the only ones in whatever mess is in their lives, whether it's toddler or aging parents or whatever, and how, you know, books can really help us through.

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. Why don't you, before we talk about the latest book, 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, and you wanted to be an illustrator, and then you realized you weren't good enough and you went into film and just give us like the little backstory and how you became an author who has sold like 7 million copies of something insanely ridiculous.

Oh my gosh. 

Shannon: I know. I mean, it's been a wild ride. Yeah. Like it says on my website, I was really focused on art when I was younger. That was just what I thought I was best at 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.

But what I didn't realize was that they were actually stories. And you know, that was the skill that I just don't have as an artist. Like I'm pretty good at rendering if I can say that. see something, I can draw it pretty well. But if it's just in my imagination and there's no like actual source material to help me, I can't do it.

No matter how hard I tried, I kept thinking if I just take enough art classes, if I practice enough, I'll get there and what I came to realize from watching other students that could just do that instantly is that's a different thing. So I was just getting so frustrated because I felt like I never achieved on the paper, what I was trying to achieve.

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. And I had also started college really young. I was like 16 when I started college and so I had this like existential crisis of like, what am I going to do if it's not art?

And my mom was like, deep breath. You are 16 and in college, you know, you can, you've got time to figure this out. How about you just Take some classes that sound fun and see what happens and so I signed up for a class called broadcast writing and production kind of on a whim it mostly because it kind of sounded like a class where I might get college credit for watching TV And it was but we did was right. And we actually were creating pilots for shows and writing episodes.

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. It just, I had to use words instead of trying to draw it. And suddenly I was hooked on writing. But because it was a broadcast class, I kind of, and living in Southern California, you just kind of naturally get Hollywood, 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.

It's very, very collaborative because movies are, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars to make. They're not going to just give one person that and say, you "Go do it". It's a scheme and apparently I'm a control freak and I wanted to be more in control of a project than Hollywood was ever going to allow me to be.

And so I kind of had, again, another one of those crises of like, how did I get here? I hate this so much. And I realized what was cause I liked writing and you know, there's those lots of other things that I could write. Like maybe those book things, maybe I could try those instead. 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 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. And that's why the published version of Keeper Book 1 is actually Draft 20, uh, because I had a lot of learning to do, a lot of, uh, a lot of different habits to pick up and other habits to drop and, and really to kind of find my own voice as a writer of books.

But suddenly here we are, you know, fast forward to Keeper came out in 2012 and the series was definitely, uh, a quiet launch into the world. It was the heyday of Hunger Games and Twilight and everything was about YA. And here I was with this little middle grade coming out saying like, pay attention to me.

I'm not Percy Jackson. I'm not Harry Potter, but I'm still here. And it took, you know, I, I think it was book five that finally hit the New York times list. So it was, it was a, it was a journey, 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, buy my book.

And people are like, yeah, no, of course you want me to buy your book. You wrote it, you know? And so it really was booksellers, teachers, librarians, and my readers, the, the some that had given it a chance telling their friends like, Oh my gosh, you need to read this book so I can talk to you about it. And slowly the series grew.

Suddenly here we are, you know, with 7 million copies in print and a movie deal with Warner Brothers and all kinds of craziness. I think we're in like 20 territories worldwide and I've hit international bestseller lists and I'm just like, wow. I still vividly remember those days of showing up for events and having nobody there and making a fort out of unsold books.

Zibby: 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. 

Shannon: 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.

Um, 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. Cause I kept doing that. And a lot of writers in the beginning, you, you, you do that, you get that shiny new idea, which seems so much better than the book that you're working on.

And 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, I need to learn how to finish a book. Like, let's do this. And I got stuck on it and I was trying to find a way to get unstuck.

And I remembered a writing exercise from my screenwriting classes that said, Hey, Get to know your side characters. And I had created Fitz as a side character for that book. And so I went to write a short story with him. I have absolutely no idea why, but for some reason I decided that the plot of that story was going to be that he was going to meet a little girl and realize that she was an elf.

And, um, it proves that I'm really bad at short fiction because my brilliant end for the short story was, Hey, guess what? You're an elf. Isn't that just the most satisfying ending ever? But I couldn't stop thinking about that little girl and wondering like, okay, so what's going to happen to her now? Like, how did she not know she was an elf?

And now that she knows, does she have to leave behind everything? And why would someone hide her away? And what is she supposed to do now that she's there? And it just, it's so hard. No matter how many times the story would frustrate me, no matter how many times I would start to feel like it was bigger and smarter than I was, I just, I couldn't get it out of my head.

And so I stuck with it through 20 drafts. And then when the series was quiet and we, there was definitely a point where I was having to go back to my editor and say, could we get another book in the series? And she kind of said, Well, the only way you can do it is if you take a pay cut and I was already not rolling in those big flashy deals like you hear about and I had that moment of like, do I really want to stick with this?

Or is it time to pivot? And I just realized I really loved this story and I really felt like there was something special about it and that if I just stuck with it . that it would find its readers. I didn't necessarily think that we'd get where I am, but I thought it could certainly be bigger than where it was.

But, you know, it was incredibly quiet in the beginning, so that wasn't, that wasn't a big reach to be like, it could sell more than, you know, 10 copies a week to my grandmother. No.

Zibby: Wow. Well, that is very inspiring. Just the, the dedication to the story. I mean, I think people can get caught up in the book of it, but focusing on the story and the characters and wanting to follow them along. I mean, what, what better motivation is there than that? 

Shannon: And that's honestly why I'm still writing the series.

There's honestly a part of me that wouldn't mind getting to change things up a little bit, because one thing that naive me thought was that books in a series would get easier as you go along, but you know, the world is built, the characters exist, the plot is already in place, so it's surely going to get much easier as you go along, but it gets exponentially harder, because not only are you having to keep track of everything, but you're trying to top yourself and you're trying to top yourself within the limits of what you've already created.

And so it is, it is a lot harder. And there is definitely a part of me that's like, you know, writing a book one again sounds awesome because writing a book nine and a half and then writing a book 10 really, really, really, really hard. But again, it's I have to do right by the story, and I have raised all of these questions, I have all of these readers waiting for answers, I have characters that are in the midst of a giant mess, and I owe it to everyone to see this through properly, and so that's kind of, even why I added this slightly unique, um, addition to the series book 9.

5 was again because this is what the story needed and I'm really, I'm here for the story, I'm trusting the story and, and we're going with it. Does this story ever end? It does. It definitely does. It, you know, it's, a little hard for me to say exactly which book it ends in, because where I always start now, now that I'm deep into the series, is I start with this list of, like, things I still owe my readers, answers that I need to do, or, you know, big reveals or things like that.

And then I try to make a list of like, okay, so these are the ones I'm going to cover in this book, and these are the ones I'm going to cover in this book, and I've done that quite a few times and been like, So that's how many books are left in the series. I've broken it up and it's gonna be these, this many, and then I actually sit down to write it.

And when I start to really see how long it takes to get some of those answers in and have them come out in a way that feels authentic and earned and not just, well, I needed to get this reveal in, so here's a chapter with that reveal go, then it tends to be that I, you know. Don't accomplish as much as I think I'm going to and it gets moved to the next book and and then that's why we've announced a few different times like this is going to be the last book.

Turns out, surprise, but that list of things that I owe my readers is getting shorter and shorter and shorter and so we are, there is an end in sight, but as far as whether it will for sure be book 10 or whether I'll have to add one more to the series, it's a little hard to say because I'm deep in the middle of plotting book 10.

And so it's, you know, I may find that there's a few loose ends that it's like, nope, the only way to do this is to, to add another book to the series, but there is an end and I promise for all of my readers who are familiar with my cliffhangers, it's not going to be a cliffhanger. It will be a complete ending when we get to the last book.

That's, you know, where we have an ending, I swear. 

Zibby: And then off on the side, you also write other books. 

Shannon: I did in the, lately, I have not been able to because, you know, it is just the books have gotten longer and longer and longer. But yeah, in the beginning, I wrote the Skyfall trilogy. And I also wrote another book that I sold and it has been waiting for me to do a revision on it since I think 2016.

And I sold it. Sadly have been so it's funny I sold it the same year that Keeper hit the New York Times list and my plan had been that I was going to start spacing the Keeper books out a little bit just to kind of give myself some room to breathe but then when Keeper hit the New York Times list there was none of that that was going to happen and so that book has just been sitting on my hard drive and I love it it's it's a very special book to me and I I hope that someday I will have time to do revision on it but right now it is sitting there waiting for me to be done with Sophie and her friends before I can, uh, move back.

Zibby: That's, I mean, that's what they say to do, right? It's like, leave something in the middle so it's easier to come back to versus starting something from scratch. So that's the, that's the ultimate. 

Shannon: I feel like, if anything, it's probably going to make it a much better book because I've had so much time to be distanced from it that I'm going to be able to go back and see, oh, I can make this better and I can make that better and, and all of these things.

It's going to be weird to read it. I literally haven't read it since 2016. And it's crazy how long ago that was. 

Zibby: Yeah. A lot has happened since 2016. 

Shannon: Little bit. Just a little. 

Zibby: Just a little. Yeah. 

Wow. So when, what does your writing process then look like to you? Like, do you stay in this, are you in your office?

Do you stay in there and do, do you have certain hours you write versus edit versus marketing or how does, how do you do it? 

Shannon: Yeah, I am trying to learn how to be a lot more disciplined now that I have a three and a half 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 to just kind of be able to have the entire day.

And it's been, it's been a challenge because my brain definitely gets its biggest creativity spurts. from about like nine at night to about three in the morning. That's like my prime time and that is not a good writing schedule to be on when you have little kids. So I have been trying to train myself to write during the day.

That's why I built an office out in my backyard so that I'm home, I'm nearby. If there are any fires that need to be put out, I'm here. But I also have a little bit of space so that I don't immediately hear it. I don't, you know, I don't see it happening. When I had an office in the house, it was like I was constantly running out the door like, Oh no, they're, they're crying or oh, they're laughing.

What am I missing? You know, and so that's been a big part of it. And then really trying to set. Like, okay, this block of time is going to be for work emails and social media, and then we are shutting that down, and now it's writing time. And it's still, I'm still a work in progress at that. I'm learning that I'm not nearly as self disciplined as I thought I was.

But, and I'm trying to find ways to hold myself accountable one really helpful one is that I have a few friends that we kind of have this group chain that will text each other. Hey, I'm working right now. And then we'll set 30 minute timers and check in with each other. I don't usually write with like a word count goal because I'm just really good at cheating at that and writing really fast.

junk just to be able to say, Hey, I wrote 500 words. Yeah, but none of them are usable. So instead, we just kind of do check ins where some of them are doing word count. Some of them, it's like, Hey, I fixed a page 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 point, it's like, Oh, I, I, I did a few minutes of brainstorming or just something to really hold ourselves accountable that.

for that 30 minutes, we're not going to do anything else. Then we check in, we decide if we need to take a quick break, and then we go back and we do another 30 minutes. And we'll, I'll do that, you know, for several times throughout the day. And it really kind of helps. you know, keep me going and keep me from like, oh, what's on, you know, the internet right now?

Or let me see if I need to do some online shopping or.. 

Zibby: How great to have a group of friends to hold you accountable. And by the way, like self discipline during a stage of life where the self has to take a back seat is incredibly difficult. I mean, it does not get better, more in it than when you have little kids like that at home.

And I mean, carving out any time is a victory. So you should just give yourself a pat on the back. Even, even on a tough day, you're doing a lot. 

Shannon: Oh, thank you. It's definitely been a challenge. I mean, my kids this summer, I was on deadline for Unraveled and I still am. I swear they somehow managed to pick up any virus that they possibly could.

I'm like, you guys aren't even in daycare. I don't understand how this is happening. And so I ended up having to ask for a couple extra weeks on my deadline because it was just like, this is just not happening. I, there's certain things you can ask a nanny to do, but you know, holding your child while they barf all over them is not one of them.

Zibby: Back to the barf. Full circle of conversation. 

Shannon: It is a theme in my life, you know? 

Zibby: Do you ever find any time to read? 

Shannon: I do, but sadly, the answer when everyone asks what I'm reading is usually my own books. And I swear, it's not because I'm an egomaniac, it's just because, again, I'm, you know, there's such thick books.

And some of them I wrote more than 10 years ago, and here I am trying to make sure I'm not overdoing it. Forgetting anything that I've said and so I tend to spend my reading time either listening to audiobooks or rereading my own sections of my own books to try to make sure that I'm keeping consistency and keeping everything straight and all that kind of thing.

So it, it is mostly my own books and it makes it very difficult when people are like, so what books can you recommend? I'm like, well, ..

Zibby: Keeper of the lost plot. 

Shannon: Keeper of the retired author, yeah. I do read occasionally four blurbs, you know, so I'm, I'm reading one right now for a blurb that I'm really enjoying, but it's coming up on the gun of like, I need to get back to them.

So I'm like, okay, we're gonna have to stay up late tonight. 

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. Oh, wow. Do you have more of those like. big ideas, something that you're like, Oh, it's coming to me, but I just, I have to put that aside for like a while. 

Shannon: I do. I have, uh, I keep them as notes in my phone. And so I, it's, it helps to just kind of write them somewhere where I know I'm not going to lose them.

So that I have some sort of little, you thing percolating somewhere, but then it's like, yeah, we don't have time to play with you right now. You're, you're great and you're shiny and I love you and I can't wait to explore you someday, but right now you need to kind of go sit over there and, and wait while I finish the, the long to do list of, uh, stuff still going on.

Zibby: Amazing. What is your biggest tip in creating a world? What are like the most, the top three things when you're trying to you know, yeah. Create a world. 

Shannon: You know, it's funny because when I first sat down to do it, I thought, well, this is going to be great. I'll just take everything I love and smash it into a world.

And what I realized right away was I am really bad at world building if I, if I, if I do it that way, because it doesn't have any sort of coherence to it. It's just a bunch of random stuff thrown together. And so the best advice that I can give is to try to treat it as an exercise in logic and make. make a big decision based on something that you want.

Like, for example, in Keeper, I knew I wanted the world to be global. I knew I wanted it because I, I knew they were having a big problem. And it's hard sometimes when a story is isolated to just like one city or one school or something like that for it to feel like this is really a global thing that everyone is affected by when you.

But how come all the scenes take place in this one city? Um, and so I wanted it to be a global world and I realized, okay, well, then that's going to affect how they're able to travel because, you know, if my kids are living all over the world and they're going to one school, how are they going to get there without some of them needing, like, 24 hour flights to get to school every morning?

And so that, you know, create is where I created it. came up with light leaping. And then it was like, okay, well, if light leaping is a part of their world, then how will that affect other things? Their buildings would need to be built a certain way. Their clothes would probably need to be built a certain way.

They would need gadgets. And I just kind of followed that logic all the way down as far as it trickled. And then I'd go back and make another decision, trying again to keep in mind the decisions I'd already made. And I'd follow the logic down of that. And. The really interesting thing was that sometimes it meant I had to put things into the world that I didn't want, you know, that it wasn't an ideal world, but that's kind of my second tip is you probably don't want to create a perfect world because if it's perfect, there's probably not a lot of story there.

So I realized I was creating this world that. At first glance, it looked amazing. Um, the analogy I kind of use is like a diamond. You know, when you see a diamond for the first time, it just is sparkly and amazing. But if you have a trained eye, and you know where to look, there's probably some inclusions in it.

Some little tiny imperfections that are in there. And that's kind of where The Lost Cities are at. It is this beautiful, glittering, shimmering, wonderful world that has a lot of flaws that a lot of them have not been seeing, and some of them have been seeing. And that's really where my story, the heart of it is, is that this world, I let it have the flaws that logically it would have.

And I didn't put in the flaws to arbitrarily say, well, this is the theme I want to explore, because I think it would have felt very forced. Instead, it was just, well, given what I know about the creatures, given what I know about the decisions I've made, like, this is. Where they'd be excelling and this is where they would be failing and I just really try to stick stick to that and I guess that's the third thing is you got to stick to it and and try to have that consistency because especially when you write for kids they read your books over and over and over again and the tiniest inconsistency. They will email you about. And point out and you'll be sitting there like oh you're right

Darn. So don't try to really, uh, be as consistent as you possibly can. 

Zibby: Wow. Well, I have to say, my kids have not read your books yet, so I just got them the box series. So we will be, uh, you know, diving in very soon with books all over the place. So you will be keeping me company in, in many forms around the house.

Shannon: Well, I hope they enjoy. I always say if they don't, just don't tell me. I won't. But I hope they enjoy, I mean, I, I like them, is the best endorsement I can give. 

Zibby: Oh, that's awesome. Well, Shannon, thank you so much, and I hope that we meet again, I'd love you to come to my store if you ever have any interest in Santa Monica, we'd love to have you, and yeah, just stay safe.

Great to connect. 

Shannon: Yeah, thank you so much. And I promise if we do connect, I will try to talk a little bit less about toddler vomit. 

Zibby: That won't be hard. Well, I hope it was as fun as you hoped. 

Shannon: It was. Thank you so much. 

Zibby: Have a great day. Okay. Bye bye.