Diversion Books asked Seth Margolis:

Hi Seth! The Semper Sonnet alternates between Elizabethan London and contemporary New York, among other places. But it all revolves around a newly-discovered Shakespeare sonnet. Were you intimidated by having to write a supposedly long-lost sonnet by the Bard?

Seth Margolis Intimidated is an understatement. First, I had to write a sonnet sufficiently “authentic” to allow readers to suspend their disbelief long enough to finish the novel. I never considered for a moment that “my” Shakespeare sonnet would be confused with a real one. It just had to work within the context of a thriller. My task was even tougher because each line in the sonnet had to contain an embedded clue that would advance the plot. The only small bit of comfort came from the formal structure of a sonnet: fourteen lines of iambic pentameter divided into three quatrains of four lines each followed by a two- line couplet, all with a prescribed rhyme pattern.

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