According to Gaiman, "American Gods" is not based on Diana Wynne Jones's "Eight Days of Luke", "although they bear an odd relationship, like second cousins once removed or something". When working on the structure of a story linking gods and days of the week, he realised that this idea had already been used in "Eight Days of Luke". He abandoned the story, but later used the idea when writing "American Gods" to depict Wednesday and Shadow meeting on the god's namesake day.