Writing Wild with Verna McKinnon

Happy Halloween! I love this time of year and Halloween has always been my favorite holidays.  You get to dress up in costumes, be silly, eat candy, tell ghost stories, and watch scary movies.  There have been many great films and books about horror, but I am going to list my current 13 favorite classic movies.   I have other favs in my contemporary & TV genres, but these are classics from the 1930's to the 1960's.  Many of these films are from Universal's great horror vault where they carved out the horror genre with class and simple artistry.  Also, wonderfully scary stars like Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Peter Cushing & Christopher Lee lead the pack in this classic list of horror greats. 1. The Mummy (1932) with Boris Karloff and Zita Johann.  One of the early greats with a mixture of lost love, reincarnation, curses, mummies, and wonderful black & white film atmosphere.  2. The Mummy (1959) with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.  There were many mum

Hello all.  Just a quick blog to let everyone know a couple things.  First, my new short story, "Snow White: My Story," will be published by Mystic Signals in their February 2012 print edition.  The quarterly fantasy fiction magazine can be bought at their websites or Amazon.com.  I am proud because Snow White has always been one of my favorite fairy tales.  Many good (and bad) writers have done versions of this classic fairy tale.  I have kept my tale in a mythical fairy age time, but have given Snow White a stronger voice and added some humor.  I have also been bothered by obvious holes in the old story-Why the demand for her bloody heart in the iron casket?  Why do bluebirds land on her shoulder?  Why the dwarfs and who were they really?  What about stepmother's past?  Why the gruesome red-hot iron slippers on stepmother?  I have answered these and more, and yes- it is still funny and still dark.   Fairy tales should be dark. But these old folk tales of magic, lost