Check Out Adam Matthew Smith’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Adam Matthew Smith.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My childhood dream was to be a comic book artist. I practiced every day. The characters from my debut book, SHADOWS, were created back in the 90s when I was between the ages of 10 to 15.

When I was 15, I got really into music. I received a guitar for Christmas and didn’t look back, with a new dream of having a band and playing shows. And, for a little over 15 years, I did.

I wrote about 200 songs, which I copyrighted in the DC office. Some of the songs were written for other people, but most were for my projects. I headlined lots of shows and a handful of festivals.

I was asked to showcase some of my songs for WB Records out in LA with the possibility of getting signed to the Warner Bros Record label. We played our hearts out in front of some big industry people and had the experience of a lifetime, a fully paid trip, stocked with rockstar-esque treatment and luxuries. Alas! We weren’t signed, but what a crazy, unforgettable ride!

In 2016, I released an EP, “A Beautiful Day for Bad Feelings,” which I recorded in my bedroom. At this point, I just wasn’t feeling the same love and passion I previously felt for songwriting and making music. It was time for a change!

This was the moment I read the Stan Lee graphic autobiography I had gotten for Christmas. Stan’s story and words inspired me! I immediately revisited my old drawings and stories and began weaving character backgrounds together to pay homage to my childhood dream. This became SHADOWS, which put me on the map as a published author, and is the first installment in the world I’m currently building.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I didn’t keep up with my drawing skills, so I reached out to artists to help with the visual aspect. I spoke with several different people, who were all great, but finding the right artist for the aesthetic in mind was harder than I thought it would be.

I finally landed on JC Grande. JC and I have a very similar taste in what we loved from sci-fi and fantasy growing up, so we saw eye to eye on the execution of things, overall.

I ran a successful Kickstarter campaign that was “fully funded” for what we were asking but it turned out that it wasn’t enough. JC was game to do both the inking and coloring for the whole book; however, this was a bigger feat than he realized. Since I was a “new” writer, I don’t think he believed that I actually had a 200-page story in my hands. People in the comic world kept saying that starting with a book/story that size is virtually impossible.

The main challenge was that, due to time and money, the story had to be trimmed down to what now is a 140-page story. I cut a whole character/arc out and reworked the rest to make sure it still made sense. On top of that, the pandemic hit which, of course, shut the world down. Lots of delays followed, pushing the release date back almost two years.