In my interview today, I am talking to Dan Melson, author of The Fountains of Aescalon.

Give us an insight into your main character. What does she do that is so special?
I've written more about Grace than my other main characters. Her distinguishing characteristic is that she figures out a way to get things accomplished. She's not the biggest bad-ass around - she's good but not nearly the best - but she figures out a way to get what she needs despite there being bigger and badder out there. In the process, she ends up saving a planet from itself, changing life for the Great Houses of the Empire forever, and she's just getting started.

Have any of your characters ever disobeyed you?
Out of my twelve novels thus far, only two got completed without a character hijacking the original story. I have this nice plot all outlined and in progress, and suddenly someone stands up and says "I thought of something better." And they've been right, every time.
I write about intelligent, motivated, competent people. I consider it a sign that I've done something right when one of them does this.

What are you working on at the minute?
Right now, I'm working on the third book in Politics of Empire, which will be the seventh novel with Grace as a main character. In order to finish it correctly, I'm going to have to also write Moving the Pieces, the fourth and final book of Preparations for War. Her nephew Joe is the viewpoint character for those.

How do you think you’ve evolved creatively?
My first novel, The Man From Empire, has a lot of world-building in it. I thought it was unavoidable at the time, but it constitutes what economists call something of a barrier to entry for the series. If I were to do it today, I'd intentionally hit some topics even heavier that critics of it insist upon misinterpreting to fit their prejudices, but I'd also move a lot of the world-building to the second and third books of that trilogy, keeping them from being deposited in one massive dose.

What was the hardest thing about writing your latest book?
My latest book is The Monad Trap. It's the book following The Fountains of Aescalon, and the power level made it extremely hard to write a lot of it. The viewpoint character is very powerful and damned intelligent; his main opposition is as well. This gives them a lot of options, and coming to a good resolution with both of them working as smart people can towards making things go their way was exceedingly difficult, even by the standards of some of my other stories. Future books of Connected Realms (the series they're in) will most likely focus on other, less powerful characters around the main protagonists of the first two novels.
Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.

Dan Melson has had a rich and varied life, with many eclectic interests. Math, physics, history - particularly military history - economics and many other subjects. He lives in Southern California with The World's Only Perfect Woman, two daughters he is preparing for world domination, and a variable number of dachshunds.