Maybe Horror is Fantasy's evil older sister.... They are definitely closely related, at least in my creative approach... Our senses tell us our world is "real", the tangible is our proof. We believe in it more than we believe in words. So, to make the fictional world (created through words!) come alive, I take care to detail the visceral experiences of the character's body and her world. Once I begin doing that, the fantastic can easily slip into the horrific. I think my narratives of the fantastic can veer readily into the horrific, because of my desire to depict an image or scene "realistically". I pull the viewer in, close, instead of casting the scene from a more distant and softer view. A romantic veneer can be stripped away by bringing something into sharper focus. The Swedish film, Let The Right One In, is my favourite vampire story. Humane, monstrous, realistic and heart-breaking, it stripped away all the glamour from the image of Hollywood vampires, and approached the trope with a realistic lens.
— Half World author Hiromi Goto, in Amazon.com's Omnivoracious blog.
Half World cover art by Jillian Tamaki.