Welcome to Night Vale - Excerpt from The Nudge, by Night Vale co-creator Joseph Fink

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

Please consider preordering wherever you buy books. Preorders make a HUGE difference for authors. If you're in LA, please come join us on September 1st a the launch event at Vroman's in Pasadena with Mara Wilson. https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-09-01/joseph-fink For more information, to preorder, and to see the book tour schedule, please check out: https://podiumentertainment.com/c/thenudge Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey friends, it's Jeffrey Craneer. You've heard of Nightvale, but have you ever smelled of Nightvale? Well, now you can. We partnered with independent fragrance maker, sucrebeal, to create a night veil cologne, perfume, fragrance is the non-binary term. Let's go with that. The fragrance is called mostly void, partially stars. It smells like desert sage, cool sand, and crisp night air. Go to sucrabeal.com or just click the link in the show notes to get your sampler or collector's edition bottle today. Also, in our regular Nightville store, we have new sticker packs and a brand new t-shirt about cats that you can get. Fun fact, artist Jessica Hayworth modeled some of her cat drawings on my cats. I'll let you guess which ones. Just go to Welcome to Nightville.com and click on store.

Final two things. My Nightville co-writer Joseph Fink wrote a horror novel called The Nudge, and it comes out September 1st. Pre-order that thing now. If you get the printed book, you get scary illustrations by Jessica. And if you get the audiobook, you get scary narration. by both Cecil Baldwin and Kevin R. Free. So many choices. There's a link in the show notes, too, for in-store events where you can meet and talk with

Joseph about the Nudge. And we wrap it up with a reminder that the final performances of our live show, Murder Night in Blood Forest are happening December 3rd through the 8th, 2026th, up in the Northeast. Go to Welcome to Nightville.com slash live to see those dates and get your tickets. And hey, thanks. Hi there. This is Joseph Finn creator of Alice Isn't Dead. co-creator of Welcome to Nightvale. And I have my first new novel in five years coming out on

September 1st. It's called The Nudge. It's a scary little story. If you are a fan of Nightvale or Alice isn't dead, I promise you, it will be up your alley. I'm doing a short book tour in California going to San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, San Diego. And on September 1st, on launch day, I'm doing an event at Romans and Pasadena with Mario Wilson. If you're in one of those cities, please come out to the book event. It's so scary doing a book event and worrying you're going to just show up a sea of empty chair. So if you're in that place and you're like, should I go? You should go. If you're not in one of those cities, please buy The Nudge wherever you get your books. It's available as a hardcover illustrated by Jessica Hayworth or as an audiobook performed by Cecil

Baldwin and Kevin are free. And today I'd like to give you a little excerpt from the book. It's hard to find part of this story that doesn't spoil anything. So this is a fun little bit performed by Cecil in which an employee of a hotel gives the history of that hotel. enjoy this and please pre-order the Nudge wherever you buy books. Thank you so much. Unfortunately, this elevator takes quite a while to arrive. We've had the mechanism examined many times, but no technician has been able to find issue with it. It just moves at its own pace, and we in the hotel have gotten used to it. The only stairs are a long walk away, so why don't we just set your luggage here and get comfortable?

While we wait, and I apologize for the loud sounds of the gears, related somehow to the slowness of the elevator, but every technician has assured me it is perfectly safe within normal parameters of risk, but while we wait, I thought I could offer you a brief history of this place. As you may have picked up from my tidbits here and there, it is quite an eventful one.

This hotel was originally a house. I believe it started out as a simple home, as far as these things go, for the wealthy. Their idea of what is simple does not always align with the rest of the world, but it was not an ostentatious place, a country home, I believe, only used in the summer and over Christmas. And then the original owner's husband died. The circumstances are unknown to me. It was kept quiet by the family, but it seems that the trauma of it never quite left her,

as in the aftermath she began to build. She added on more and more to the house, long, looping hallways, lounges for parties she never threw, staircases that led to nowhere. You have noticed, I'm sure, that our trek to your room has been both lengthy and a bit baffling, and this is primarily the result of her building mania. She built like she was trying to hide herself within the very design of the house,

like if she built enough, she would build her way right out of her grief. Eventually, well, the expense got too much for her, or perhaps it was the loneliness. Perhaps she built a maze so big that she no longer felt protected by it, but more like the monster trapped at the heart of it. And so she gave the house away, to an institution of higher learning, one that would put her now sprawling edifice to better use. A board was hastily formed. Professors desperate for work due to questionable research or untidy behavior rounded up from campuses all over the country that were happy to get rid of them.

I think even a few years' worth of students were taught. The building was utterly unsuited for a university, of course. First of all, as you must have noticed, we are hopelessly remote. Not in a part of the country that anyone ever thought to visit. The sprawling building is impossible to navigate, especially if you are a young person away from home and drunk for the first time in your life. I think one student might have been lost permanently.

A problem in an elevator shaft. The door opened, and there was nothing there, you see. But the student did not see, stepped right through those open doors. Not this elevator, I assure you. That elevator was closed down after the incident. I'm almost certain of it. But it became apparent that the university was unsustainable.

And the owner, she was frustrated that none of the academics she invited could solve her problem. She had a specific problem, you see, an obsession, almost. She believed that her husband's death had been a message. that something maybe God had needed to speak with her and that the message was so urgent and inscrutable that only a human life could be an adequate vessel. And she wanted these professors, this entire institution of learning, to tell her what the message had meant.

None of them could, of course. There is no message to a human death. except that life is not a stable place within which to be, that a void is under all of us, and most of us choose to never look down. So, she withdrew funding for the university, put the place up for sale, which is when the current owner, the manager of this hotel, bought it. He believed that all of the reasons that it hadn't worked as a home or as a university might work quite well in a hotel.

After all, people appreciate a bit of the strange and memorable in a hotel. We are used to them being alienating, maybe even creepy. The investment paid off. We have been a hotel for some years now, and while we don't ever have as many guests as some hotels, we have loyal customers who return to us again and again. Quality over quantity. That is the secret of a long, sustaining small hotel.

Ah, but the elevator is finally here. Don't worry. It somehow feels much faster when you're in it. Please, I've prattled on quite long enough. Continue with your story. It is so much more interesting than any of mine. That's it. Please pre-order the Nudge.

Wherever you buy books, there is a link in the show notes for more information. Thank you so much.