Next week I’ll be back with #Ask Me Anything: The Professor of Eventide edition. This week, I wanted to share my interview with ManyBooks. You can see it on their website here.

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Meredith Allard is an award-winning novelist dedicated to exploring the intricate intersections of history, memory, and the human psyche. She is the creator of the bestselling Loving Husband Trilogy and the acclaimed Victorian drama When It Rained at Hembry Castle, an IndieReader Best Historical Novel. Her prequel, Down Salem Way, further cemented her reputation, earning a B.R.A.G. Medallion and a semi-finalist spot for the Chaucer Award.

With over two decades of experience as a mentor, she balances a career of empowering fellow writers with her own practice of weaving meticulous research into haunting, atmospheric prose. Meredith currently lives in the hills of Southern Nevada, where she enjoys the company of her cats and a steady supply of coffee. As our Author of the Day, she tells us all about her recently released book, The Professor of Eventide.

1. Dark Academia often utilizes the classroom as a site for obsession. In The Professor of Eventide, how does Jonathan Ferrars’ intellectual expertise specifically become his greatest vulnerability?

Jonathan’s greatest vulnerability is his concern for his students, and three of them are murdered during his first term at Eventide College. Obsession is an important part of The Professor of Eventide because Jonathan’s students are obsessed with doing well in academia, and the professors are obsessed with maintaining their fragile hold on their place in the pecking order in the English department. Then there’s the issue with how Jonathan’s students are being murdered. The murders are orchestrated in a way that mimics the stories they are reading in their graduate seminar that fateful term. The murderer also has an obsession, but that comes later in the story…

2. Your narratives often explore how the past refuses to stay buried. When crafting this specific mystery, did you start with the “secret” itself or with the emotional toll that secret has taken on the characters?

Writing The Professor of Eventide was such a trip for me. My original inspiration was The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I loved that story so much, I read it three times in the space of one year. I wanted to write something similar, so I started with what turned out to be a very vague idea for The Professor of Eventide. I had the title almost immediately, but nearly everything else changed over the course of the writing. So the “secret” changed several times as I figured out what this story wanted to be. I’ve been writing long enough to know that I need to let the story do what it wants to. What ended up staying the same is the emotional toll that the story would have on Jonathan. Oddly enough, I knew the ending very early on. That’s one of the few things that stayed the same throughout the writing process. 

3. As a writing educator, you’ve guided many through the tropes of Gothic fiction. What is the one “staple” of the genre you felt most compelled to dismantle or reinvent in this book?

There’s definitely no damsel in distress in this story. The female characters are just as strong as the male characters. In some ways, they’re stronger. Maeve Lang, the main female character, starts to piece together the puzzle of the murders before Jonathan does. In many ways, she’s braver than Jonathan.

4. “Eventide” suggests a threshold – a transition between light and dark. Does this story view redemption as a move toward the light, or an acceptance of the twilight?

This is very much a story of acceptance of the darkness that we all have inside us. Darkness, madness, and obsession–these are all elements of the stories that Jonathan covers with his English graduate students at Eventide College. In fact, the entire story takes place over the course of one autumn semester, and every scene takes place at night. Eventide refers both to the name of the college and the time that the novel takes place.

5. While many Dark Academia protagonists are students, you chose a Professor. How does the weight of authority and the role of a mentor change the moral stakes of the story’s central dilemmas?

I have a PhD and I spent six years teaching at the university level, so I’m at the point where I see things as a professor. As a result, I knew from my earliest conception of this story that it would be from the professor’s point of view. Originally, since my inspiration was The Secret History, the story was going to focus on the students but it would be written from the point of view of what the professor saw happening around him. As the story started coming together, I realized that Jonathan was actually the focus of the story. His students are involved since they’re the ones who are being murdered, but the story is about how the darkness, madness, and obsession affect Jonathan as he tries to figure out what is happening to his students. I think it raises the stakes because Jonathan is the authority figure and he feels responsible for what is happening. Also, he seems like a suspect because of his proximity to his students.

6. The ritualistic elements of the plot feel both ancient and deeply personal. How did you bridge the gap between “mythic” mystery and the very modern, grounded reality of trauma?

The Professor of Eventide is a dual timeline. Most of the story takes place in coastal Maine in 2010, but part of the story takes place in the 1840s. There is an underground library with ancient knowledge hidden near Eventide Manor, so that’s pretty mythic. But most of the story, and the story that mainly concerns Jonathan, happens on a college campus in coastal Maine in the 21st century. The way the murders affect the students and faculty at Eventide College definitely play into the grounded reality of trauma.

7. The atmosphere in your writing is often described as “visceral.” What specific sensory details did you lean on to ensure the setting feels like a living trap rather than just a backdrop?

I loved leaning into the Dark Academia atmosphere in The Professor of Eventide. I wanted readers to feel as if they’re standing on the shore in coastal Maine beside Jonathan. I wanted readers to see Eventide College as clearly as I see it. I love describing things. I love using all senses–sight, hearing, taste, touch, and even smell. I was big on leaning into the autumn and early winter scenes. When I’m writing, I see the scenes playing out in my head as if I’m watching a movie, and then I feel like my job is to bring the reader along so they see it as clearly as I do. One of the classes Jonathan teaches that term is a graduate seminar about Edgar Allan Poe, so using elements from Poe’s stories went a long way in helping to set the scene as a trap that Jonathan is lured into. In fact, Poe himself is a character in the story. I have an entire notebook of research I did into Poe in order to try to bring him to life in a way that felt realistic. I also read Poe’s stories and poems, over and over, for months, in an attempt to try to catch the diction and rhythm of Poe’s language. That part was simply fun for me. That’s why I love writing fiction. I get to challenge my writing in unique ways.

8. Writing a mystery requires a “contract” with the reader. How did you determine the precise moment to reveal key truths without breaking the sustained Gothic tension?

Because of the Poe influence, the Gothic tension is baked into the story. When I originally sat down to write The Professor of Eventide, I knew it wasn’t going to be a traditional mystery with a detective, a murderer, several suspects, clues, and a grand reveal at the end. The Professor of Eventide is more of a psychological mystery than a straight mystery. The Secret History is an inverted mystery because we know who was murdered and who murdered him from the first page. The suspense comes from seeing how it all played out. It’s a similar situation for The Professor of Eventide. Jonathan reveals the students who are murdered on the first page (well, he names two of the three). I wrote it so that readers should catch onto the murderer before Jonathan, so the suspense comes from seeing how he finally pieces the puzzle together. It’s definitely fair play. The clues are there for the reader to find, so it’s a traditional mystery in that sense. But really it’s about Jonathan’s psychology as he tries to make sense of the madness happening around him.