Howdy, all it is, Jeffrey Crane, or letting you know that while Cecil is the ...
Night Vale, Sukrabil is the smell of Night Vale.
“We partnered with Independent Fragrance Maker, Sukrabil, to create a signature scent called”
mostly void partially stars. It's so beautiful, it smells like desert sage, ghoul sand and crisp night air. Go to Sukrabil.com or just click the link in the show notes to get your sampler or collectors edition bottle today, we're really proud of how this thing came out. Also, if you want regular Night Vale merch, we have a new Night Vale sticker pack plus,
a new t-shirt designed by Jessica Hayworth that details every single type of cat. There's tons of other cool things like sweaters, beach towels, puzzles, tumblers, etc. etc to get as well. Just go to welcome to NightVille.com and click on the store, final two things. In Night Vale, co-writer Joseph think wrote a horror novel called The Nudge, and it's very,
very good, and it comes out September 1, that's like two weeks. Pre-order that thing now, if you get the book, you get scary illustrations by Jessica Hayworth, and if you get the audiobook version, you get scary narration by both Cecil Baldwin and Kevin R. Free, there are lots of choices, maybe just to both. There's a link in the show notes to, for in-store events where you can meet and talk with Joseph
about the Nudge. We wrap it up now with a reminder that the final performances of our live show murder night in Blood Forest are happening December 3rd through the 8th, 2026, up in the northeast. Go to welcome to NightVille.com/live to see those dates and get your tickets now. And hey, thanks.
Hi there. This is Joseph think creator of Alice isn't dead co-creator of Welcome to Night Vale.
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 Night Vale 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 Lange Day, I'm doing an event at Vroomans and Pasadena with Marlos.
And 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 to a CFMT chair.
“So if you're in that place and you're like, should I go?”
You should go. If you're not 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 audio book performed by Cecil Baldwin and Kevin R. 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?”
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 for 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 worlds, 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 wholeways, 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 ...
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. The board was hastily formed, professor's 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's 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. 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, but 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 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 praddled 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.
