I briefly covered this horror anthology before but I'll dig a little deeper.
The Slit started off as a horror film I was going to shoot myself. I was hoping to cast my brother as the pale, razor blade wielding killer. It never came to fruition of course and not many people at all knew about it. Originally titled 'Slit', I had struggled with changing it when years later I found a horror movie or two come out with the title. The Slitting, Slitting, etc. Eventually, I just settled on The Slit. I grew up on 80s slashers and this was basically me doing that. I had written it as a screenplay some time ago and quickly realized it wasn't exactly working in that format - mainly due to my inability to write for film correctly. Like most of my stuff, it just sat there for the longest time. I always loved writing in a script format - comics, plays, screenplays - but I always had trouble writing short stories. I would get a little bit into them before I'd become discouraged. But it all changed. I honestly don't remember what I was working on when it hit me, but I was working on yet another failed screenplay when I had noticed it was so detailed and more novel-like and it hit me, 'Maybe I could actually write this kind of style'. I simply adapted the screenplay which is why it reads as it does. If I had the time to go back and flesh it all out more (and this goes for the others) I'm not sure if I would because that was the writer I was when I wrote it. Like a snapshot in time. After adapting it to story form it, of course, remained on its lonesome, waiting.
All in a Day's Work I wrote originally as a really short story, about 8 pages, but more of a layout. I wrote it as a screenplay to the same feeling I had with the others. Much like The Slit was my take on the slasher subgenre, this was in part my take on the simple mild mannered man who snaps. In another part it was me taking my frustrations out after being unfairly fired from a previous job. I'm a writer. If I can't make a big (or absurd) change and if I can't take out an animal-like aggression in real life, I'll simply write it all out - create a world and an avatar of myself to do the things I'd never do in the real world. Another one that sat around for years before doing something with it. Much like wanting to do a slasher story, I've always liked the idea of the normal man who loses it so I decided to do it.
Big Prizes is probably my favorite of the three. It's the least slasher of the three as it's more of an abduction story. My wife and I were walking in the park and kicking around ideas for a movie that would eventually come to the idea of this. Like the others, it started off as a screenplay but changed. The idea of people being lured into a game leading to abduction became the basis. Though it's not as violent as the previous two, it's probably more tense, more suspenseful.
I wrestled for a while of what to do with these three before I decided to put them in a little anthology, an unapologetic, violent, slasher-heavy collection. Of everything of mine, I felt these three had that common violent theme so I put them together. All three of them have something personal in them, something from me or my life. When I was still kicking around what I was going to do with said anthology, I sent it to my aunt, Wanda Hoffman, to edit it. She frequently commented on how gross and violent it is but whipped it into shape. Originally titled Sharp Objects, I found that it was already a book. Though there's no rules against using similar or even the same titles, I'm not a fan of doing so. So I changed it to Sharp Items & Bad Intentions. I thought it summed it up well.
I kept the cover simple. It went through different variations before settling on this. There's a power in minimalist art. I could've gotten an artist to do it for me but I just wanted to do it regardless of my lack of art prowess. Maybe it's controlling nature but I just want to be involved in all of it.
This is my first foray into self-publishing. It's an ebook and I really doubt it ever gets to print. Who knows. I'm interested in doing more with some of these things I've had lying around while I push forward. Dennis Magnant and I are still hard at work on various comic book projects. I'm working on things for Supposed Crimes (beyond the upcoming Last Rites of the Capacitance). And I'm writing a lot more to send out to other publishers. If you read my poetry and want to see something different from me (before the release of Last Rites) then I hope you check out this straight forward horror collection.
You can get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Sharp-Intentions-Christopher-Michael-Carter-ebook/dp/B075TJ6YY7/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1507393973&sr=8-1&keywords=sharp+items+and+bad+intentions
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