Whenever I begin a new novel, I do a lot of reading around that project. Whether I’m researching a certain historical aspect or I’m looking to see what other authors have done with that topic, I enjoy learning as much as I can. While not everything I read ends up in the novel (in fact, most things don’t end up in the novel) it all serves as background information that I use to help me bring my story to life.
When I began writing The Professor of Eventide, I knew I wanted to create something that blended Gothic fiction, literary fiction, mystery, Dark Academia, and psychological suspense. Most importantly, I wanted the novel to be character-driven and I wanted it to be mysterious without losing sight of the mystery at the center of the story.
Some of the books I read left a heavier fingerprint on The Professor of Eventide than others. It would take too long to name everything I read as I brought Jonathan’s story to life, but here are a few of the most important books.
The Secret History: The Atmosphere of Academia
Surprised, right?
It was reading The Secret History that gave me the idea to write The Professor of Eventide. A few weeks after The Professor of Eventide was published, I received an email from a reader who said, hey, your book isn’t just like The Secret History! Well, no, it isn’t. I didn’t need to rewrite The Secret History because it was already written by Donna Tartt, and she did quite a good job of it too. When a book is inspired by another book, the intention isn’t to write a copycat story–at least not for me. I was inspired by the psychology of Tartt’s novel as Richard grapples with his complicity in the events, and by how Tartt retained the suspense even though we know on the first page who was killed and who killed him. I found the murder at the center of the story less fascinating than the atmosphere. Tartt understands how intellectual obsession can become seductive and how academic environments can take on an almost mythological quality.
I was inspired to write a campus novel because of The Secret History, but my intention was always to put my own spin on it. While The Professor of Eventide travels in a different direction, The Secret History reminded me that a campus can be more than a setting. It can become a psychological landscape.
Edgar Allan Poe: The Power of Gothic Unease
Again, I know. You’re so surprised.
During the writing process, I spent considerable time with the Penguin Classics edition of the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe. When I first began writing The Professor of Eventide, after I decided that Poe’s works would be studied by Jonathan and his students that fateful term, I thought that would be the extent of Poe’s influence on the story.
The more I delved into the writing process, the more I started to realize that what was happening to Jonathan was itself a Poe story. Jonathan was like one of Poe’s unnamed narrators descending into madness. Once I made that connection, the whole tone of the story changed so that now, as Jonathan and his students study Poe, it’s as if Jonathan is living inside his own Poe-like nightmare. I read Poe’s stories over and over again trying to catch Poe’s diction and rhythm so that The Professor of Eventide itself would read like a Poe story.
Poe’s influence on Gothic literature is so profound that we take it for granted. Many of the techniques modern writers use—psychological tension, unreliable perception, symbolic settings, the blending of horror and beauty—owe something to him. What I admire most about Poe is his ability to create unease, and that’s what I attempted to do in this story. The atmosphere of dread was something I hoped to capture in The Professor of Eventide. Not through overt horror because the murders take place off stage, but through a lingering sense that there may be more beneath the surface than first appears. Which there is.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell: The Power of Hidden Histories
Few novels have influenced my imagination more than Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. There is so much that I love about that story, but one of the things I love most is its relationship with history. Susanna Clarke creates a world that feels layered, as though centuries of forgotten lore are waiting just beyond the edges of the narrative.
One of the things I learned from tis book is that mystery doesn’t always come from a crime or a secret. Sometimes mystery comes from the existence of an entire hidden history. That idea became important while creating Eventide College and the world surrounding it. I wanted readers to feel that the story existed within a larger web of forgotten knowledge, lost traditions, and buried truths. Also, I love awesome libraries.
The Shadow of the Wind: For the Love of Books
When I first read The Shadow of the Wind, I felt as though I had discovered a novel written specifically for readers who love books. I learned about this book from Cath at Cups and Thoughts, and it’s one of the best book recommendations I’ve had from a BookTuber. The novel possesses a rare quality in that it treats literature itself as a source of mystery and wonder.
Its atmosphere is lush, melancholic, and deeply romantic. Books become gateways to hidden lives and forgotten histories. While The Professor of Eventide is very different in tone, The Shadow of the Wind reinforced my belief that intellectual curiosity could drive a narrative just as effectively as action.It also reminded me that libraries are among the most magical places in literature, and, like Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, there is most definitely a library in my story.
Ninth House: Dark Academia Meets the Supernatural
One of the more important influences on the novel was Ninth House. I loved Ninth House so much that I read it in two days, and then I jumped right into Hell Bent, the sequel. I just saw on Amazon that the third book is coming out this fall, and I can’t wait to see what happens next to Alex and Darlington.
There’s a lot that I learned from this book. Bardugo demonstrates how secret societies, academic institutions, and occult traditions could coexist within a modern literary framework. What interested me most was not the fantasy itself but the way the supernatural elements interacted with questions of power, privilege, and institutional history. Also, I loved how the supernatural elements existed within the framework of the real world. Alex is a student at the real Yale, but the supernatural societies exist within that. That intersection helped me think more deeply about how supernatural hidden knowledge, and a supernatural being or two, might function within an otherwise normal academic environment.
Agatha Christie: The Art of Misdirection
Because The Professor of Eventide contains a series of murders, I spent time reading some of the great mystery novels. I knew fairly early in the writing process that I would not be writing a traditional mystery with a detective, suspects, clues, and a final revelation, but I still wanted to remind myself how well-written murder mysteries were constructed on the page.
I read several of Christie’s stories, among them The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and And Then There Were None. What always amazes me about Christie is her understanding of reader expectations. She knew how to guide readers toward one conclusion while quietly preparing another. She understood pacing, revelation, and surprise at a level few writers have matched. Although my novel is ultimately less concerned with puzzle-solving than traditional mysteries, Christie’s work taught me important lessons about managing information and sustaining suspense. Every mystery writer, I suspect, studies Christie at some point.
P. D. James: The Psychological Mystery
I saw the recent TV version of James’s Adam Dalgliesh novels, and I liked the TV adaptations, so I decided to read the novels. I enjoyed the novels so much that I binged all 14 in something like six weeks. The novels aren’t perfect, and some are more dated than others (the first book was published in 1962 or somewhere around there), but there’s still a lot I liked.
If Agatha Christie influenced the mystery structure, then P. D. James influenced the emotional depth. I like the Dalgliesh novels because they operate both as mysteries and literary novels. James was deeply interested in character, morality, grief, ambition, and human complexity, and through the course of the 14 books, Dalgliesh grows as a person. There’s a multi-dimensionality to his character that I find lacking in, say, Christie’s Poirot books. The Poirot in the last book is pretty much the same as the Poirot in the first books.
In James’s mysteries, the crimes matter, but the people matter more. That idea resonated with me while I was writing The Professor of Eventide. I didn’t want the murders to become the focus of the story. Yes, the mystery of who the murderer is exists, but it serves a larger exploration of the secrets people hide from one another, as well as the memories we don’t want to face.
Each of these books gave me ideas that helped me think more clearly about my own novel. There were some lingering questions, and as I was able to answer them, I was able to see the story I wanted to write more clearly. What creates atmosphere? How do secrets shape a narrative? How much should a mystery reveal, and when? While there are no concrete answers to any of those questions, I was able to answer them in my own way in the form of The Professor of Eventide.