by Joseph Fink
Also and always: Jillian Sweeney; Kathy and Ron Fink; Ellen Flood; Leann Sweeney; Jack and Lydia Bashwiner; the Pows; the Zambaranos; Rob Wilson; Kate Leth; Jessica Hayworth; Holly and Jeffrey Rowland; Andrew Morgan; Eleanor McGuinness; Hank Green; John Green; Griffin, Travis, and Justin McElroy; Cory Doctorow; John Darnielle; Aby Wolf; Jason Webley; Danny Schmidt; Carrie Elkin; Eliza Rickman; Mary Epworth; Will Twynham; Erin McKeown; Mal Blum; the New York Neo-Futurists; Janina Matthewson; Christy Gressman; Adam Cecil; Julian Koster; Gennifer Hutchison; Kassie Evashevski; Chris Parnell; Amy Suh; the Booksmith in San Francisco; and, of course, the delightful Night Vale fans.
Our agent, Jodi Reamer; our editor, Amy Baker; and all the good people at Harper Perennial.
About the Authors
JOSEPH FINKcreated the Welcome to Night Vale and Alice Isn’t Dead podcasts. He lives with his wife in New York.
JEFFREY CRANORcowrites the Welcome to Night Vale and Within the Wires podcasts. He also cocreates theater and dance pieces with choreographer/wife, Jillian Sweeney. They live in New York.
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About the Contributors
CECIL BALDWINis the narrator of the hit podcast Welcome to Night Vale. He is an alumnus of the New York Neo-Futurists, performing in their late-night show Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, as well as Drama Desk–nominated The Complete and Condensed Stage Directions of Eugene O’Neill, Vol. 2. Cecil has performed at the Shakespeare Theatre DC, Studio Theatre (including the world premiere production of Neil Labute’s Autobahn), the Kennedy Center, the National Players, LaMaMa E.T.C., Emerging Artists Theatre, and the Upright Citizens Brigade. Film/TV credits include Braden in The Outs (Vimeo), the voice of Tad Strange in Gravity Falls (Disney XD), The Fool in Lear (with Paul Sorvino), and Billie Joe Bob. Cecil has been featured on podcasts such as Ask Me Another (NPR), Selected Shorts (PRI), Shipwreck, Big Data, and Our Fair City.
MEG BASHWINER is a writer, performer, and producer. She plays the role of “Deb” and “Proverb Lady” on the hit podcast Welcome to Night Vale. She is the emcee and tour manager of the Welcome to Night Vale live show and has brought the live show to seventeen countries and almost all of the fifty states. She is the producer and cohost of the podcast Good Morning Night Vale. She is an ensemble member at-large for the New York Neo-Futurists, known for their popular weekly show The Infinite Wrench. She has toured productions of the New York Neo-Futurists’ previous late-night show Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Providence Improv Festival, and headlined the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival in Austin, Texas.
KEVIN R. FREEis a multidisciplinary artist whose work as an actor, writer, director, and producer has been showcased and developed in many places, including The Moth Radio Hour, Project Y Theater, Flux Theater Ensemble, the Queerly Festival (of which he is now the curator), and the Fire This Time Festival, where he served as producing artistic director, winning an Obie for his work in 2015. Recent directing credits include Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill and The Last Five Years (both at Portland Stage) and Topdog/Underdog (University of Arkansas). New York City directing includes the Fire This Time Season 10 World Premiere 10-minute Play Festival; Okello Kelo Sam’s Forged in Fire; Renita L. Martin’s Blue Fire in the Water (Fresh Fruit Festival); The First Time; Standing Up: Bathroom Talk and Other Stuff We Learn from Dad; and Poor Posturing, all by Tracey Conyer Lee; Michelle T. Johnson’s Wiccans in the ’Hood; and Legislative Acts, a sketch comedy show performed by New York City legislators. His full-length plays include Night of the Living N-Word!! (Overall Excellence in Playwriting, FringeNYC 2016); A Raisin in the Salad: Black Plays for White People (New Black Fest Fellowship 2012; Eugene O’Neill Semi-Finalist 2013); Face Value (Henry Street Settlement Playwrights’ Project Grant, 2000), and The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, or Triple Consciousness. His webseries, “Gemma & The Bear!,” was an Official Selection of the New York Television Festival in 2016; and his latest webseries, “Beckys through History,” received a creative engagement grant from Lower Manhattan Cultural Center in 2018 (more at www. MyCarl.org). He has worked as an actor across the United States and internationally, most recently appearing in New York City as Michael Curtiz in Reid and Sara Farrington’s Drama Desk–nominated CasblancaBox (HERE) and as the Narrator of Lisa Clair’s The Making of King Kong (Target Margin Theater). He is an accomplished voice actor as well as having recorded more than 300 audiobooks, and is the voice of Kevin from Desert Bluffs on Welcome to Night Vale. Twitter: @kevinrfree; www.kevinrfree.com.
JESSICA HAYWORTHis an illustrator and fine artist. She has produced a variety of illustrated works for the Welcome to Night Vale podcast since 2013, including posters for the touring live show. Her other works include the graphic novels Monster and I Will Kill You with My Bare Hands, as well as various solo and group exhibitions. She received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and lives and works in Detroit.
ZACK PARSONSis a Chicago-based humorist and author of nonfiction (My Tank is Fight!) and fiction (Liminal States). In addition to Welcome to Night Vale, he has worked with Joseph Fink on the website Something Awful and can also be found writing for his own site, The Bad Guys Win (thebadguyswin.com). You can call him a weird idiot on Twitter at @sexyfacts4u.
KATE JONESis a writer, performer, and wedding officiant from Howell, New Jersey. She is an alum of the New York Neo-Futurists and Degenerate Fox (UK). She plays Michelle Nguyen on Welcome to Night Vale and currently lives in Switzerland where she can often be found performing stand-up comedy, whether or not there is an audience. www.katekatekate.com or @QTPiK8 on Twitter.
ASHLEY LIERMANis a professional university librarian and an occasional writer. Apart from contributing guest episodes to Welcome to Night Vale, she has written several stories for the chat fiction app Cliffhanger, contributed to two short-story anthologies by independent genre fiction press the Sockdolager (www.sockdolager.net), and has appeared as a guest on the podcast I Haven’t Seen That (www.ihaventseenthat.com).
ERICA LIVINGSTONis a writer, artist, and full spectrum doula living in Brooklyn. She has two sons, a garden, and a deep belief in plants and people. She likes laughing above most things. She is an alumna of the New York Neo-Futurists, which is really the origin of how this bio even came to be here. At one point she was making lots of puppets and at another point she was more interested in handmade zines. These days she supports birthing people as they cross the threshold into parenthood. You can find her at birdsongbrooklyn.com.
One of the creators and cohosts of We Got This with Mark and Hal on the Maximum Fun Network, HAL LUBLIN also cohosts the popular podcasts Tights & Fights and Good Morning Night Vale. Best known for his work as one of the core WorkJuice players in The Thrilling Adventure Hour and as Steve Carlsberg on Welcome to Night Vale, Hal plays Wide Wale, Manolo and others on The Venture Brothers and several characters on Cartoon Network’s Mighty Magiswords. His work runs the gamut from animated films and television programs to radio shows and video games for CBS, Happy Madison, Disney, SyFy, JibJab, Wired, and more.
DYLAN MARRONis an IFP Gotham Award and Drama Desk-nominated writer, performer, and video maker. He is the voice of Carlos on the hit podcast Welcome to Night Vale, an alum of the New York Neo-Futurists, and the creator of Every Single Word (Tumblr’s “Most Viral Blog” of 2015; Shorty Award Nominee), a video series that edits down popular films to only feature the words spoken by people of color. As a writer and correspondent at Seriously.tv Dylan created, hosted, and produced Sitting in Bathrooms with Trans People, Shutting Down Bullsh*t, and the Unboxing series. He currently hosts and produces Conversations with People Who Hate Me, a podcast where he calls up the people behind negative comments on the internet. It was selected as a Podcast Pick by USA Today and The Guardian, named “the timeliest podcast” by FastCompany, and won a Webby Award.
DESSAis a rapper, singer, essayist, and proud member of the Doomtree hip-hop crew. She’s performed around the w
orld at opera houses, rock clubs, and while standing on barroom tables. Her imaginative writing and ferocious stage presence have been praised by NPR, Billboard, Forbes, the Chicago Tribune, and the LA Times. As a musician, she’s landed on the Billboard Top 200 as a solo artist (Parts of Speech; Chime); as a Doomtree member (All Hands); and as a contributor to The Hamilton Mixtape. She’s been published by the New York Times, MPR, the Star Tribune (Minneapolis), literary journals across the country, and has written two short collections of poetry and essays. Her book of literary nonfiction, My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love (Dutton Books, Penguin Random House), is available now.
JAMES URBANIAKis an actor and writer based in Los Angeles. TV credits include the role of Arthur on Hulu’s Difficult People, Grant on Comedy Central’s Review, and the voice of Dr. Venture on Adult Swim’s long-running animated series The Venture Bros. Films include American Splendor (role of Robert Crumb), You Don’t Know Jack with Al Pacino, Todd Haynes’s Wonderstruck, Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, and the Hal Hartley trilogy Henry Fool, Fay Grim, and Ned Rifle. On stage he originated the title role in the original New York production of Will Eno’s play Thom Pain (based on nothing) (Drama Desk nomination for Performance) and won an Obie Award for his role in Richard Foreman’s The Universe. He created the scripted podcasts Getting On with James Urbaniak and A Night Called Tomorrow (cowritten with Brie Williams).
MARA WILSONis a writer, storyteller, and voice actress. Her voice can be heard on BoJack Horseman and Big Hero 6, and she both wrote for and voiced characters in the audio drama Passenger List. Her writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, The Guardian, McSweeney’s, Reductress, Cracked, the New York Times and on Elle.com. She writes a weekly newsletter, Shan’t We Tell the Vicar?, available on Mara.substack.com, and her first book, Where Am I Now?: True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame is available from Penguin Random House.
Praise for Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel
“This is a splendid, weird, moving novel about families, the difficulties of growing up, and the deep-seated vulnerabilities involved in raising children. It manages beautifully that trick of embracing the surreal in order to underscore and emphasize the real—not as allegory, but as affirmation of emotional truths that don’t conform to the neat and tidy boxes in which we’re encouraged to house them.”
–NPR.org
“Welcome to Night Vale lives up to the podcast hype in every way. It is a singularly inventive visit to an otherworldly town that’s the stuff of nightmares and daydreams.”
—BookPage
“Fink and Cranor’s prose hints there’s an empathetic humanity underscoring their well of darkly fantastic situations. . . . the book builds toward a satisfyingly strange exploration of the strange town’s intersection with an unsuspecting real world.”
—Los Angeles Times
“The charms of Welcome to Night Vale are nearly impossible to quantify. That applies to the podcast, structured as community radio dispatches from a particularly surreal desert town, as well as this novel.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“The book is charming and absurd—think This American Life meets Alice in Wonderland.”
—Washington Post
Praise for It Devours!: A Welcome to Night Vale Novel
“Different from other mystery novels . . . as captivating and light as any mystery novel can be but explores one of the most complex issues: the conflict between science and reason on the one hand and, on the other hand, religion and cult.”
—Washington Book Review
“Compelling . . . A confident supernatural comedy from writers who can turn from laughter to tears on a dime.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“(A) smart exploration of the divide—and overlap—of science and religion . . . A thrilling adventure and a fascinating argument that science and belief aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.”
—Tor.com
“Very clever. . . . With a gripping mystery, a very smartly built world (a place similar to our own world but at the same time distinctly other), and a cast of offbeat characters, the novel is a welcome addition.”
—Booklist
“A mysterious, must-read exploration of the Great Unknowns, with a touch of Carl Sagan and Agatha Christie.”
—Marisha Pessl, New York Times bestselling author of Night Film and Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Also by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor
Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel
It Devours! A Welcome to Night Vale Novel
Mostly Void, Partially Stars: Welcome to Night Vale Episodes, Volume 1
The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe: Welcome to Night Vale Episodes, Volume 2
Who’s a Good Boy?: Welcome to Night Vale Episodes, Volume 4
Also by Joseph Fink
Alice Isn’t Dead: A Novel
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE BUYING OF LOT 37. Copyright © 2019 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.
FIRST EDITION
Cover design by Milan Bozic
Cover and interior illustrations by Jessica Hayworth
Digital Edition MAY 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-279810-7
Version 04172019
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-279809-1
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*By “Boom. Done.” I mean we spent weeks trying to write a script that was seventy minutes long and was fun for a live audience, in a way that a podcast cannot be. In “The Librarian,” at the end of this volume, note that the segment just before the Weather about the escaped librarian entering a theater was the first scene we wrote. Joseph was inspired by William Castle’s The Tingler to instill a euphoric thrill among the audience, a stirring anticipation that something, indeed, was lurking under their seats. I loved this scene live. It never failed to cause audiences to shift in their chairs, laughing uncomfortably through the whole bit.
*The most notable learn-about-each-other moment ca
me in our drive to Vegas when the four of us each took a 150-question Sorting Hat quiz to figure out which Hogwarts house we belong to. Each of the four landed in a different house—Joseph: Gryffindor; Meg: Ravenclaw; Cecil: Slytherin; and to the surprise of no one, me: Hufflepuff.