We are delighted to welcome back author Seth Margolis to Omnimystery News today.
In April Seth provided us with an excerpt to share from his new suspense thriller The Semper Sonnet (Diversion Books; April 2016 trade paperback and ebook formats) and we recently had the chance to catch up with him to talk more about it.
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Omnimystery News: Introduce us to Lee Nicholson, the lead character of The Semper Sonnet. What was the inspiration for her?
Photo provided courtesy of
Seth Margolis
Seth Margolis: Lee is a Ph.D. candidate in English literature at Columbia University in New York. A big part of The Semper Sonnet takes place in Elizabethan England, and I thought it would be interesting to have my 21st century protagonist be a woman. Both Lee and Elizabeth are fiercely independent women who are reluctant to hitch their fate to men. Both grew up without a mother. Elizabeth was a monarch but her choices in life were still somewhat circumscribed by her gender. Lee, though from a middle class family, has all the opportunities and choices that a woman in contemporary America enjoys … but were denied even to a queen in the 16th century.
OMN: How would you treat a summary of The Semper Sonnet?
SM: A newly discovered Shakespeare sonnet may contain clues to a long-hidden secret about Elizabeth I, and the key to a potentially lethal power.
OMN: The Semper Sonnet is a departure from some of your other works, like Losing Isaiah. What made you decide to write a thriller set in both the past and the present-day?
SM: I write the way I read — all over the map. I love mainstream literary novels, political thrillers, historical suspense, mysteries. I've always loved the Tudor period in English history. It's one of those epochs, like late-18th century America, that seems preternaturally crowded with larger-than-life characters: Henry VIII, Elizabeth, Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Cromwell … and many others. The intersection of history and personal drama was quite intense in 16th century England — catnip for a novelist. So I'd always wanted to write about the period, but through the lens of our own time, and in the context of a suspense novel.
In researching the novel, I came across a marvelous book, Elizabeth's London by Liza Picard. It is so well researched and so energetically written, you can practically smell London in the 16th century. There's also fascinating information about Elizabethan childbirth, which was very useful.
This book, along with a couple of biographies of Elizabeth and some strategic Googling, gave me the confidence to get started. But pretty soon I realized that secondary research just didn't provide what I needed to set scenes in sixteenth and seventeenth century England. I wanted readers to see, hear and even smell what it was like to live in Elizabeth's England. So I booked a flight to London.
My first destination was Hatfield, Elizabeth's childhood home. After a short train ride from London, I walked from the station up the hill to the palace, having made an appointment with Hatfield's publicity manager. I was able to walk the same walk my current-day character would walk as she investigated the meaning hidden in the sonnet, which gave me invaluable perspective. I was given a private tour of the "old palace," where Elizabeth was essentially imprisoned by her half-sister, "Bloody" Mary. This is where a pivotal — and invented — scene in my novel occurs, and standing in the great hall gave me the information I needed to write it with confidence.
My second research visit was to Westminster Abbey, specifically Henry VII's Lady Chapel, considered last great masterpiece of English medieval architecture. More relevant to my novel, it's where Elizabeth is entombed. In a great irony of history, her tomb was placed directly on top of her hated half-sister's. I was planning to set a climactic scene in the Lady Chapel, so I spent several hours there as groups of tourists came and went. I took notes on the architecture, the various memorials lining the walls, the points of access where my characters could enter and leave.
OMN: Suppose Lee were to interview you. What would she ask you?
SM: I think she'd want to know if I believed her to be innocent of murder … and if I thought the sonnet she'd found was really by Shakespeare. If our relationship developed, she'd want to make sure I was measured up to her ideal of what a man should be, which for Lee was embodied in the focus of her dissertation, Phillip Sidney, the English poet, courtier, scholar, and soldier — a man of action as well as intellect. I'm afraid I'd disappoint her!
OMN: Are you a fan of Shakespeare? What is your favorite work of his?
SM: Of course. I was force-fed him in high school but fell in love with his work in college. I've since seen many of his plays performed on the stage, including at least one a year in the Shakespeare in the Park festival in New York's Central Park.
Othello has always been my favorite of Shakespeare's tragedies. I read it in college and I've seen it performed at least twice. I think I was drawn to the rawness of the impulses and desires that drive the Moor and Iago to inevitable tragedy. You spend half the play wanting to shout at both Desdemona and Othello, "Can't you see what's happening? Open your eyes!" I've been working on a novel that retells (very loosely) the Othello story, set in contemporary New York.
OMN: Tell us a little more about your writing process.
SM: I have a hard time starting a novel without some idea of how it will progress and how it will end. But I continually revise the outline as I go. I don't create written biographies of my characters, but as I work through the first draft I jot down personality traits that I realize I want to develop. Sometimes these traits come out of the story itself, as if the characters are trying to assert themselves. The Semper Sonnet has a surprise ending that a lot of readers have found startling. I have to be honest: it startled me! I had not seen it coming — it was in none of my outlines — but as I approached the end of the novel there it was, waiting to be written with a sense of inevitability.
OMN: How do you go about researching the plot points of the stories?
SM: Since this is fiction, I don't really need to fact check it in the traditional sense. It just needs to be plausible enough to encourage readers to "suspend disbelief" long enough to read the book. That said, Elizabeth has legions of fans who pounce on any hint of inaccuracy, so I was careful to ground the story in as many facts as possible. But, starting with the first chapter, I took extraordinary liberties with historical truth (or historical assumptions).
OMN: Word puzzles play a large role in The Semper Sonnet. Have you always been a fan of word puzzles? How did this aspect of the story come to you?
SM: I'm obsessed with word puzzles. Addicted. I've done The New York Times crossword just about every day since I was a teenager, as well as the Times acrostic on weekends. For about ten years I've done the daily puzzle in The Guardian, which is available on the Internet. English crosswords are cryptic, full of anagrams and buried clues and misdirection. The clues embedded in the "lost" Shakespeare sonnet of my novel are very much inspired by English cryptic puzzles. I've always wanted to integrate my love of cryptic puzzles into my writing, and this book seemed the perfect opportunity. The Elizabethans, including Shakespeare, were very fond of puns and double entendres.
OMN: If we could send you anywhere in the world to research the setting for a story, where would it be?
SM: India. I've never been and have long wanted to go. I think I'm most drawn to places with cultures that have developed as a blend of multiple influences. In India you have the unique Indian culture mixed with the British imperial influence. It creates a kind of tension but also a beautiful hybrid. Or maybe it's just that I love the food …
OMN: What are some of your outside interests? And have any of these found their way into your books?
SM: Reading, of course. I play piano, though not well. I love taking long walks in New York, a great walking city. Travel. All of these have found their way into my books, or soon will.
OMN: What is the best advice you've received as an author?
SM: The best "advice" I ever received can from a writer I never met, Graham Greene. The advice came in the form of an anecdote from Michael Korda, the well-known editor and a member of an illustrious Hollywood family. Korda described a Mediterranean cruise on his uncle's yacht that included Greene. Each morning, Greene would sit on a deck chair and write precisely two pages of fiction, in long-hand, on a notepad. Not a line less, not a line more. He'd go over it a few times, then call it a day and get down to the business of enjoying the cruise. Writing just two pages a day, every day, he turned out 25 novels, and much more. What I learned from this, and what I tell aspiring authors, is to get the words down on paper, even if it's just a page or two a day. You can do this and hold down a job (I do), raise a family, cruise on yachts, if you're lucky. Just pick a target amount to write, nothing too ambitious, and write it. Every day. No excuses.
OMN: What kinds of books did you read when you were young?
SM: I read everything I could get my hands on. But I do remember reading Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time the year it came out. It's possible my mother read it to me, because I was quite young and I still associate the book very closely with her. I was completely swept up in the magic of that book, and I think it may have instilled in me the notion that writing was something I wanted to do professionally.
OMN: An adaptation of Losing Isaiah was filmed. How involved were you in the process? Are there any other adaptations in the works?
SM: Other than cashing a very large check, I had nothing to do with the film. It was moved from New York, where I had set the novel, to Chicago (for budgetary reasons) so I didn't even get to visit the set. The most frequent question I get, when people learn who I am and what I've written, is "Did you meet Halle Berry?" Alas, the answer is no.
Three other novels have been optioned by filmmakers, but not have yet make it through the labyrinthine development process.
OMN: Create a Top 5 list for us on any topic.
SM: Top 5 places I like to write:
1. On a yacht in the Mediterranean (a la Graham Green — see above, though I haven't actually experienced this yet).
2. In hotels (because that means I'm traveling, which I love to do).
3. On a beach (because everything is better on a beach, including writing).
4. On an airplane (because I'm going somewhere and find it easy to focus in the air).
5. In a comfortable chair in my living room (because I'm a near-lifelong New Yorker and I'm still in love with the city).
OMN: What's next for you?
SM: I have a deep-rooted reluctance to talk about what I'm writing, or thinking of writing. This month my wife and I are traveling to Prague and Budapest, which I'm looking forward to. And yes, I will be writing my two daily pages while we're there.
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Seth Margolis received a BA in English from the University of Rochester and an MBA in marketing from New York University's Stern School of Business Administration. When not writing fiction, he is a branding consultant for a wide range of companies, primarily in the financial services, technology and pharmaceutical industries. He and his wife live in New York City.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at SethMargolis.com and his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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The Semper Sonnet by Seth Margolis
A Suspense Thriller
Publisher: Diversion Books
Lee Nicholson is ready to take the academic world by storm, having discovered a sonnet she believes was written by William Shakespeare. When she reads the poem on the air, the words put her life in peril and trigger a violent chase, with stakes that reach far beyond the cloistered walls of academia.
Buried in the language of the sonnet, in its allusions and wordplay, are secrets that have been hidden since Elizabethan times, secrets known only to the queen and her trusted doctor, but guessed at by men who seek the crown and others who seek the world. If the riddles are solved, it could explode what the world knows of the great Elizabeth I. And it could release a pandemic more deadly than the world has ever imagined.
Lee's quest for the answers buried in the sonnet keeps her one step ahead of an international hunt — from the police who want her for murder, to a group of men who will stop at nothing to end her quest, to a madman who pursues the answers for destructive reasons of his own.
— The Semper Sonnet by Seth Margolis. Click here to take a Look Inside the book.
