Welcome to Night Vale
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We also regularly do live shows all over the world (more than one hundred shows in eleven different countries at the time of this writing). These live shows are full evenings of Night Vale storytelling, with live music and guest stars, designed so that you do not need to know anything about the podcast to enjoy.
Keep an eye on welcometonightvale.com to join us next time we pass through wherever you live. (Wherever you live is our favorite place to perform.)
See you there.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Welcome to Night Vale podcast began in 2012 as a project between friends. Almost four years later, it’s still a project between friends, although on a much bigger scale and with more friends involved.
Thanks to the cast and crew of Welcome to Night Vale: Meg Bashwiner, Jon Bernstein, Marisa Blankier, Desiree Burch, Nathalie Candel, Kevin R. Free, Mark Gagliardi, Marc Evan Jackson, Maureen Johnson, Kate Jones, Erica Livingston, Christopher Loar, Hal Lublin, Dylan Marron, Jasika Nicole, Lauren O’Niell, Flor De Liz Perez, Jackson Publick, Molly Quinn, Retta, Symphony Sanders, Annie Savage, Lauren Sharpe, James Urbaniak, Bettina Warshaw, Wil Wheaton, Mara Wilson, and, of course, the voice of Night Vale himself, Cecil Baldwin.
Also and always: Jillian Sweeney, Kathy Fink, Ellen Flood, Leann Sweeney, Jack and Lydia Bashwiner, Carolyn Cranor, Rob Wilson, Kate Leth, Jessica Hayworth, Soren Melville, Holly and Jeffrey Rowland, Zack Parsons, Ashley Lierman, Russel Swensen, Glen David Gold, Marta Rainer, Andrew Morgan, Eleanor McGuinness, John Green, Hank Green, Andrew WK, John Darnielle, Dessa Darling, Aby Wolf, Jason Webley, Danny Schmidt, Carrie Elkin, Eliza Rickman, Mary Epworth, Will Twynham, Gabriel Royal, The New York Neo-Futurists, Freesound.org, Mike Mushkin, Ben Acker and Ben Blacker of The Thrilling Adventure Hour, the Booksmith in San Francisco, Mark Flanagan and Largo at the Coronet, and, of course, the delightful Night Vale fans.
Our agent Jodi Reamer, our editor Maya Ziv, and all the folks at Harper Perennial for making this book happen.
And finally, Ron Fink, who taught Joseph almost everything he knows about being a working artist.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
JOSEPH FINK created and cowrites the Welcome to Night Vale podcast. He is from California but doesn’t live there anymore.
JEFFREY CRANOR cowrites the Welcome to Night Vale podcast. He also cocreates theater and dance pieces with choreographer/wife Jillian Sweeney. They live in New York.
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PRAISE FOR WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE
“Emotionally compelling and superbly realized. This seductive, hilarious book unfolds at the moment when certain quiet responsible people find they must risk everything on behalf of love, hope, and understanding. Not a single person who reads this book will be disappointed.”
— Deb Olin Unferth, author of Revolution and Vacation
“Welcome to Night Vale brings its eponymous desert town to vivid life. Those of us who have gotten to know Night Vale through Cecil Palmer’s biweekly radio broadcasts can finally see what it’s like to actually live there. It is as weird and surreal as I hoped it would be, and a surprisingly existential meditation on the nature of time, reality, and the Glow Cloud that watches over us. ALL HAIL THE GLOW CLOUD.”
— Wil Wheaton
“All hail the Glow Cloud as the weird and wonderful town of Night Vale brings itself to fine literature. Creators Fink and Cranor offer fans of their (oc)cult podcast Welcome to Night Vale a fantastic addition with a stand-alone tale of the mysterious desert town that also offers loyal listeners some interesting clues about the nature of the place. . . . The novel is definitely as addictive as its source material.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Take Conan’s Hyboria, teleport it to the American Southwest, dress all the warriors in business casual and hide their swords under the floorboards—that’s Night Vale: absurd, magical, wholly engrossing, and always harboring some hidden menace.”
— John Darnielle, author of Wolf in White Van
“I’ve been a fan of Welcome to Night Vale for years, and in that time writers Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink have delighted me with stories that are clever, twisted, beautiful, strange, wonderful, and sweet. This book does all of that and so much more. It’s even better than I’d hoped. I think this might be the best book I’ve read in years.”
— Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind
“This is the novel of your dreams, a hypnotic travelogue that shimmers and changes as you read. A friendly (but terrifying) and comic (but dark) and glittering (but bleak) story of misfit family life that unfolds along the side streets, back alleys, and spring-loaded trapdoors of the small town home you’ll realize you’ve always missed living in. When it says ‘welcome,’ it’s mandatory. You belong here.”
— Glen David Gold, author of Carter Beats the Devil and Sunnyside
“This small town full of hooded figures, glowing clouds, cryptically terrifying public policies, and flickering realities quickly feels more like home than home. You will want to live in Night Vale, even if that means you might be taken off in an unmarked helicopter or cross into a parallel universe by accident. There is nothing like Night Vale, in the best possible way.”
— Maureen Johnson, author of 13 Little Blue Envelopes and The Name of the Star
“They’ve done the unthinkable: merged the high weirdness and intense drama of Night Vale to the pages of a novel that is even weirder, even more intense than the podcast.”
— Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother and coeditor of Boing Boing
COPYRIGHT
WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE. Copyright © 2015 by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Title page illustration by Rob Wilson
ISBN 978-0-06-235142-5
EPub Edition October 2015 ISBN 9780062351449
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