Meet the Author: Nick, Creator of Witch Bolt

Today’s interview is a testament to taking a risk and reaching out to a creative person you admire. I have been listening to Witch Bolt's music for over a year and, after attending a live virtual album release, I sent a message asking if I could conduct an interview for Word to the Wise.

I figured a reply would be a long shot, but Nick generously made time for a wide-ranging conversation about the Witch Bolt project, which includes music, poetry, visual art, and so much more.

Nick has so much great advice for writers (and all creatives) on leaning into your intuition as part of your creative practice. Read on to learn more!

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Nick, who writes and performs as Witch Bolt, is a Kentucky-based dungeon synth and ambient musician, author, and visual artist. Blending fantasy, folklore, and natural imagery, he brings to life an original fictional world called The Valley. His work explores themes of contradiction, morality, and the weight of obligation.

You can find Witch Bolt on YouTube and Bandcamp. Check out Witch Bolt merch on the website and follow along on Instagram.

How did you start writing music for Witch Bolt, along with the stories and poems that accompany this project?

I have played music just about my entire life. I grew up in a household where music was a big, big part of the background. I grew up playing in punk bands and metal bands and stuff. I did a couple tours, up the East Coast the first year with a band that was on our label from Texas, and then the second year we did the Midwest down to Texas and got to see those guys again.

I finished school, and we all kind of moved away and went our own separate directions. I didn't really think that I was going to have the opportunity to play with other people again. I did here and there, but I’d started my career.

A few years ago, my wife suggested, like, just put something out there, because I've been making visual art and music and a little bit of writing, though I was never comfortable enough to share it with anyone.

The first couple of releases got about as much attention as I expected—I didn't have expectations. I didn't have high hopes of getting any kind of major, major attention. But then the third release that I put out, the full length album, Bellow, just really took off.

From there, I continued to release stuff, and I've had people ask, “Is there lore behind it?” I never really responded, because I was never super comfortable saying yes. But at some point I did, and then people were interested. I was like, “All right, I'm going to write something. Not just crazy person notes in my Google Sheets.”

How did you get over that hurdle of discomfort and decide to share it with people?

It was because of talking to people and working on it for so long, and how supportive the dungeon synth community is. I got desensitized to the fear of judgment.

You know, creatives are sensitive, and so criticism is challenging, but I guess just thinking about it long enough and working so hard on it at some point, it stopped being uncomfortable.

What writing strategies do you find helpful as you're working on this world that you've built?

I mentioned this briefly in some of our early emails back and forth—it’s not always the most healthy. There’s a lot of isolation. I wait for inspiration, though it's always kind of floating around in there. I've always got ideas, and so I'm always writing stuff down or taking breaks to punch something in on Garage Band or whatever.

I'll make sure I've got two or three days free and just shut off my phone and write notes. I'll get 11 by 17” sheets of paper and just scribble down everything. That's when creative Nick is present. Then I go back into normal Nick mode.

I read that Bob Dylan does this with songs a lot. I'll take all the pieces and put them together and be like, “Okay, no, this is contradictory,” or “This idea is crazy,” or whatever. It just, I don't know, it comes into my head, and so I try to prepare the space to receive that message and organize it.

Honestly, it sounds like a good process. It seems to work!

I've made life decisions to make sure that I have a lot of free time. It's important to me.

Your practice includes music, you have writing, you have visual art. How do you approach integrating all of those different types of creation?

It's just what I'm feeling inspired to do at the time. A lot of things for me, I might know I need to do this thing in order to proceed, but I'm really hung up on the timeline I'm creating that no one's going to see.

Once I break myself away, I'm okay doing it. Unlike everything else in my life, I've intentionally tried to avoid being rigid with this. I do let my emotions, my intuition guide me on it. There are many spreadsheets still, but there's no hard timelines or anything like that.

If I realize, “Okay, well, in order to proceed on this, I need a little bit more of the narrative, or no one's going to know what I'm talking about, so I need a YouTube video, or I need to make a post, or visual art”—which is the hardest for me and the most time-consuming—then I'll force myself to do it. Once I get into it, I’m okay.

You're totally speaking my language with that blend of spreadsheets and intuition. I watched the launch of Marigold live, and I loved realizing you could get a chapbook and ebook of the poetry. How did you decide to launch in that way?

I did a couple shows with someone that runs a dungeon synth zine. When I was writing it, I thought I’d definitely do something digital. I didn't really have intentions of releasing a physical copy. But then just talking to him and kind of looking at his zine. I was like, “What, you get these published?”

He told me about a site and I checked it out just to see what they looked like and what the quality was. I definitely wanted to have a physical copy for myself as a keepsake, you know? I started speaking to some people about it, and they were like, “Well, I want one.”

I ordered the minimum order, and then continued to get more interest. I kept ordering, and people keep buying them.

What is your process for publishing? The chapbook isn't the only physical artifact. What's your process for the live premiere and having it be interactive?

I feel embarrassed saying this, because it's the total opposite of how I do everything, but in terms of identifying what people want, I'll usually try to react to specific requests that people have, if it's not content. If it’s like, “Oh, I'd love to have a shirt of the blue Thistleburr hoodie” or something like that, yeah, totally, I can do that. I'll try to respond to individual requests if I get them.

But broadly speaking, it's been based on my intuition and what I think. I've said it jokingly to people before, but they're like, “Where do you get these ideas?,” particularly in conversations around the visuals.

It’s also a little embarrassing to admit but I think, “What would 11-year-old Nick look at and be like, ‘That's badass?’” That's what I tend to go with.

Our kid selves knew what was cool.

Swords, knights. On a little bit more of a serious note, the symbolism is so ingrained in our culture and particularly our childhoods, that it does speak to us on a certain level beyond just silly fantasy.

There's a lot embedded in those symbols. But on a gut level, it's just badass.

What are ways that you market your work? How do people find you? How do you get new readers, new listeners? Where are people encountering your work?

I started out mostly on some of the dungeon synth forums, small communities, and started branching out from there. Kind of the DIY community.

The word marketing makes me shiver a little bit, but it is what it is. It's something I'm interested in learning a little bit more about, the marketing side of it.

There’s another word, and I’m just going to say it: networking. Playing shows, things like that.

There hasn't really been one particular way. YouTube and researching tags—I don't know how well or how much this applies to the other authors, but the tags have been key for me, and making sure that what I'm producing is reaching the right audience. I noticed a big, a big difference there.

Then, finding other artists that are willing to support me, and particularly artists that have some reach, and partnering with them. I have tried to do the same for other artists that I find that I like.

Networking can be really skeevy, but networking is also finding cool people and doing stuff with them. That's a journey I'm on too. For people who are not familiar with dungeon synth, can you talk a little bit about what that is, what the community is like, and how you see yourself fitting into that space?

Dungeon synth is interesting. It grew out of black metal, which is a music genre that was created to be in all sincerity. Their genuine aim was to create the most evil music that they could. In Northern Europe, they actually burned churches, some of the original people that founded it. Not the greatest guys, but they created this music genre.

Over time, and particularly through the ‘90s, this kind of medieval visual language developed and they would have interludes in between some of their tracks. From those interludes, you had a handful of sort of breakaway artists that were like, “I'm just going to do this.” And from those artists, that's where the music genre kind of spawned.

In the early 2000s it really was made more concrete and became its own genre. It's a pretty fascinating journey to what we have now. It's just so tame and soft, which is good.

Hopefully nobody's out there burning down buildings now.

Yeah, it's pretty wild.

What comes next for you creatively? Is there anything that you're working on currently?

It's a four-part narrative, the Marigold saga, and I'm currently working on one and a half. There's one that's sort of a transition between one and two, and it's her botanical journal.

In the margins you're going to have some notes, some unusual things that she's noticing in The Valley that will transition us to the second half of the story.

I've also been working on something day and night. I don't know what to call it. It's a mix between a game and an ereader, but I want it to be the hub of the universe. You are in Marigold’s cabin.

It’s all played online, so you don't have to actually download any software, but you can stream the albums by selecting books. It's called Marigold’s Bookshelf, and you can stream the albums by selecting certain books.

There's an ereader in there and you can read the books and things, sort of like in Skyrim where a book is like 10 pages, but they expand the universe. I just finished an almanac, which was interesting. I read a bunch of almanacs from the 1700s.

If you were going to offer a piece of advice to another writer, another creative, what would you tell them?

This is speaking as someone who, this is not my livelihood. I would probably feel a little bit differently, I would be a little more risk-averse, if it were. But go with your gut. Whatever you are enjoying.

My primary motivator has been driven by this. I want to consume this media, and it's not there. I can't find it, and so I'm just going to do it, which is what I did for years before ever sharing it with anyone.

Find a gap. Find something that you want to see that no one else is doing, and if you identify that, then go that direction, make that thing that you want to see.

What's the best book that you've read recently?

I’m still in the process of reading it, but I put it off for years, and I'm finally reading House of Leaves (affiliate link*). I really love it.

Meet the Author interviews are lightly edited for clarity.

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Nick's wide-ranging creativity and his willingness to partner with his intuition has led to some amazing work. I'm so grateful that Nick took the time to chat with me, and I'd love to know what you learned from this interview!