Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas.

If you love reading, we've got just the present for you.

I'm Bethany Van Delft.

It's Saturday, December 25th, and this is no ordinary episode of the 10 News.

This is the 10 News Gets Extra.

Merry Christmas! 10. 9, 8, 10 News Gets Extra. Merry Christmas.

10. 9. 8, 7, 6. 5, 4, 3, 0.1.

If you are a fan of Shannon Messengers, Keeper of the Lost City series, then you'll be

excited for this extended interview.

Executive producer Tracy Leads Kaplan and her daughter Naomi sat down with the best-selling author Shannon Messenger to discuss her writing, making Malo Meltz, and when we can all

expect a book nine.

Hi, Shannon. It's so great to have you with us here today on the 10 News. We are big fans. I will say that we are even super fans and we're really excited to talk to you. Well, I'm so excited to be here. This is so much fun, especially since we don't get to go out in person as much. It's so nice to get to meet

with readers and fans and have a nice morning together. And I'm joined today by my daughter,

Naomi Kaplan, who's going to help me out with some of our questions and questions that were sent

in from our tenors. We have a good audience that loves your work. And I think where we want to

start off is hearing from you,

how did you come up with the world for Keeper of the Lost Cities? What inspired you to create this,

this epic adventure? It really came from all different places. It was not one of those instances of

just, you know, I sort of woke up and went, I know this entire story

and this entire world. It kind of happened very gradually. I knew that I wanted to write about elves

and I had from, you know, starting a short story that was actually with Fitz's character.

All right. I knew that. Yeah. I had a short story. I had created fits for a different

...