The first platform decision I made was to buy a domain.
ALECHARROW.com — named for the protagonist of my novel. I bought it without knowing exactly what I would do with it. I knew I would need it eventually. I knew that eventually was not now. So it sits, parked and waiting, while I figure out the rest.
That decision — to acquire the asset and leave it alone — turns out to be the most useful instinct I’ve had in this process. I’ll come back to it.
I’m writing a debut novel. Literary espionage, set in Nassau in 1942, concerning a British intelligence officer sent to protect the Duke of Windsor from a German extraction attempt. It is the first book in a planned trilogy. It is currently in late draft, not yet submitted to agents.
This blog is about building a platform for that novel — specifically, about what platform-building looks like for debut historical fiction, before you have a book deal, before you have an agent, before you have anything except the manuscript and the conviction that it’s worth the work.
I’m not writing this as someone who has figured it out. I’m writing it as someone doing it in real time. If that’s useful to you, read on.
The first practical question I had to answer was the one most writers hit early and answer badly: where do I put my content?
The options, as I saw them: Substack, a blog, both, or neither.
Neither was always wrong. A debut novelist with no public presence is invisible to agents and readers alike. Some form of consistent, public writing is not optional if you’re serious about building toward publication.
The question is where and what.
Substack has genuine advantages for writers. It delivers content directly to subscribers’ inboxes. It has a recommendation network that can grow your readership without paid promotion. It is simple to use, which matters when your primary energy should be going into the manuscript. And it positions you, from the first post, as a writer rather than a blogger — a distinction that sounds trivial and isn’t.
But Substack has a specific character. It rewards consistent, direct communication with a defined audience. It is not a website. It is not an archive in the traditional sense. It does not give you control over your own digital presence. And for historical fiction specifically, it works best when it is anchored to a subject — a period, a place, a set of historical questions — rather than to personality alone.
A blog, hosted on your own domain, gives you something Substack doesn’t: ownership. The content is yours, the platform is yours, and the first impression a reader or agent gets when they search your name is yours to control. A blog is slower to build an audience than Substack. It requires more technical maintenance. But it is a permanent home in a way that Substack is not.
My answer was both — but with a clear division of purpose.
Substack carries my craft and research writing: how the novel was built, what the historical record actually says, and the decisions that shaped the story. That content is aimed at readers of historical fiction and literary espionage — people who might eventually want to read the book.
This blog carries my platform-building writing: the decisions I’m making, the tools I’m using, what’s working and what isn’t. That content is aimed at debut writers navigating the same questions — people who are where I was six months ago.
Same writer, two audiences, two distinct purposes. The separation matters. Content that tries to serve both audiences at once ends up serving neither.
Which brings me back to ALECHARROW.com.
I bought the domain because I knew I would need an author website. Every published novelist needs one. It is the permanent home — the place where the book lives, where readers find you, where the press kit sits, where the next book gets announced. It is the asset that matters most after publication.
Before publication, it is an asset with no anchor.
An author website built around a novel that doesn’t yet exist in the world is a half-built house. It signals ambition without substance. It invites visitors and has nothing to show them. Worse, it spends the domain’s first impression — the moment a reader or agent types the URL for the first time — on something unfinished.
I don’t know exactly what ALECHARROW.com will look like when I build it. I know it will be built around the book and that it will go live when the book has a publication date behind it. Everything before that is preparation, not construction.
Buying the domain now was the right move — good domains go, and this one is specific enough to be worth protecting. But building on it now would be the wrong move. The discipline is knowing the difference.
That’s the framework I’m working with. Substack for readers. Blog for writers. The author’s website is on hold until it has something real to hold.
Over the next six months, I’ll be documenting every decision in this process — what I tried, what worked, what I’d do differently. The next post is about what platform actually means for historical fiction specifically, and why it’s a different problem than platform for almost any other genre.
If you’re writing historical fiction and building toward your first submission, this is written for you.
If you’re interested in the novel itself — the research, the craft, the history — that’s on my Substack: Writing the Dark.