Why I’m Leaving Substack (And Where to Find Me Instead)
au revoir!
I’ve been sitting on this post for a couple of weeks now, mostly because announcements make me itchy. I’d rather just quietly become a different thing and let you all discover it like finding a good thrift store chair, no fanfare, just suddenly there. But this one needs a little explaining, so here we are.
I’m moving my home base from Substack to my own website, harlomalone.com.
The short version
Everything I’ve been writing here, the process updates, the Jolene sightings, the occasional overshare about my thrifting habits, is moving to a site I actually own. Same me. Same nonsense. New address.
The slightly longer version
I like Substack. I like the community here, and I like that it made starting a newsletter feel possible when the idea of “building a website” sounded like a whole second job I didn’t have time for on top of the one where I invent vampires for a living. But the longer I’ve done this, the more I’ve wanted a space that’s fully mine, one where I control the shape of things instead of working inside someone else’s format.
harlomalone.com is that space. It’s where my books already live, so now the writing about the books gets to live there too. One address instead of three. One home instead of a scattered little archipelago of links.
What happens to you, the subscriber
This is the part I actually want you to read carefully, because I know newsletter migrations can feel like a threat to your inbox peace.
If you’re subscribed to this Substack right now, you don’t need to do anything. Substack has a feature that lets me bring the whole subscriber list over with me, so you’ll keep getting posts delivered the same way you do today. No re-subscribing, no new sign-up form, no risk of falling through the cracks. You’re coming with me whether you lift a finger or not.
What might get weird for a bit
I’d love to tell you this transition will be seamless, but I’ve built enough of my own systems by now to know better. There may be a stretch where formatting looks a little off, or a link points somewhere it shouldn’t, or a post shows up twice because two platforms briefly forgot they were supposed to be talking to each other. If that happens, please just laugh at it with me rather than at me, and know it’s temporary.
I’m asking for a little grace here. Not forever, just for the length of one slightly bumpy move.
Where to find me going forward
harlomalone.com. That’s it, that’s the whole instruction. Bookmark it, or don’t, since your subscription should follow you there automatically anyway.
Thank you for reading this newsletter, for sticking around through however many storage units, ghosts, and vampires I’ve thrown at you, and for being patient with me while I figure out how to be a person with a website instead of just a person with a Substack. Jolene sends her regards, mostly in the form of walking across my keyboard while I wrote this.
More soon, from the new place.
Harlo