I’m nearing the end of writing my current #WIP. It’s not done done but it’s getting there. I’ve completed the fourth draft, and I’m currently giving the manuscript (and myself) a rest for a week or two. The way things stand now, the novel will be published in 2026. As soon as I have a specific date, I’ll let you know. The manuscript needs one more go-around to make sure everything is in the right place and then some sprucing.
Oddly enough, I’m already becoming a bit nostalgic about writing this book. By the time the book is finished, I’ll have spent nearly two years writing it. That’s a long time to live in one world with the intention of bringing it to life. This is a very different kind of book for me. It’s a Gothic suspense, and it’s the first time I’ve written a murder mystery, which made piecing the story together much more challenging.
If you read my post about creating your own personal curriculum, you know that I thrive on study and learning. Gothic mysteries touch on many things I love, such as shadowy libraries, stone courtyards, and candle-lit studies. Even in our digital age, images of students poring over ancient texts and chasing knowledge to the brink of obsession feel strangely fascinating. What was it about Gothic mysteries that inspired this #WIP?
The Hallowed Halls of Learning
Dark Academia romanticizes the intellectual life—not the bright, inspirational version we often see in college brochures, but the intellectual life pushed to extremes. It revels in the messy, overwhelming pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Learning can be a transformative as well as a perilous journey. There’s an emotional intensity connected to these images. To immerse yourself so completely in ideas, to live a life of the mind, is already an act tinged with darkness because you’re shutting out the light of the rest of the world. In my #WIP, one man’s passion becomes his obsession. The Gothic atmosphere of a black brick mansion and gloomy skies amplifies everything.
Aesthetic as Emotion
It was the aesthetic of Dark Academia that first drew me in. I first heard of Dark Academia through YouTube videos and Pinterest boards, and I loved the dark, Gothic look of it. Part of Dark Academia’s power lies in its melancholy appearance, and the aesthetic is practically a mood board for introspection. Who doesn’t love rain on stone paths, knit scarves, battered books, and shadows cast by a desk lamp at midnight? But the aesthetic is not hollow decoration—it shapes the emotional landscape my characters inhabit on this fictional college campus. Atmosphere is always an important part of storytelling. Stepping into a Gothic mystery feels like stepping into a world where every detail matters and every choice carries some level of consequence. At least, that’s true for my main character.
The Shadow Side of Ambition
The characters in my #WIP often push themselves to extremes. They sacrifice sleep, relationships, sanity, and sometimes their own moral compass, all in pursuit of something transcendent. This is where the genre intersects with tragedy. There’s a haunting inevitability in these stories where secrets begin to unravel.
In a world obsessed with performance and achievement, Dark Academia speaks directly to our anxieties about what we’re willing to do to fit in or achieve our goals. It holds up a mirror to the pressure we place on ourselves and our sense that if we’re not exceptional, we’re nothing at all. Readers recognize themselves in that tension, even if their own lives are more stable than the students on a fictional Gothic campus. I’ve been an adjunct professor, and life on campus really isn’t anything like Dark Academia makes it out to be. Gothic fiction lets us imagine the what-ifs. The students on my fictional Gothic campus are driven to succeed to the point of distraction, and maybe even murder.
Found Families and Fractured Ones
Dark Academia is a genre of companionship, both good and bad. Friend groups in these stories often bond with fierce devotion—cohorts, study partners, co-conspirators, and intellectual equals. But those relationships are fragile, strained by jealousy, competition, and betrayal. We read to see who will stay loyal, who will fracture, and who will fall apart entirely. Intellectual friendship can be as intense as romance, and heartbreak isn’t only about lovers separating. It can also look like a once-trusted friend turning away. The students in my #WIP are a cohort, meaning they were placed together because they started their program at the same time. They are a group of six wildly different personalities who likely would not gravitate to each other otherwise. How they navigate the competitive world of academia is an important part of the story.
Longing for Mystery
Gothic fiction is about the unknown and the parts of life that logic can’t explain, such as intuition, desire, fear, and mortality. Even in stories without overt supernatural elements, there’s always a sense of something lurking beyond the visible world. We live in a time when we type our questions into a search engine and expect an immediate answer. Gothic suspense stories show that mysteries still exist.
When I’m writing scenes set on my fictional college with its moody campus and dark library, I try to capture the essence of found families, mystery, and ambition. Writing this Gothic mystery allows me to explore my love for learning in a deeper way, and I can examine themes like ambition, morality, and obsession through a lens that’s both familiar and heightened. I’ve been able to think about the kinds of questions we rarely speak aloud: What would I sacrifice for the life I think I want? Who am I when I’m alone with my thoughts? What truths am I afraid to uncover? These are questions most of us ask of ourselves at one time or another.
For me, the deepest allure of Gothic fiction and Dark Academia in particular is that it reminds me that the pursuit of knowledge is never without risk but it’s worth the journey. This is a darker story than I normally write, though I’ve written dark before. Down Salem Way is about the Salem Witch Trials, which highlight the darker side of human nature as well as anything. The darkness and shadows of Gothic literature remind us that storytelling can thrive in that space between light and shadow, which is where the most compelling stories are born.
