I believe the most intricate plot won't matter much to readers if they don't care about the characters, especially in a series. So I try to focus hard on making each character, whether villain or hero, have an interesting flaw that readers can relate to.
“My family was very supportive of whatever I wanted because my grandfather was an opera singer. My dad's dad. So my dad has an appreciation for the arts, and he let me choose my own path.”
“I've never been convinced that experience is linear, circular, or even random. It just is. I try to put it in some kind of order to extract meaning from it, to bring meaning to it.”