[the_faery_queen]

i consider myself a dark fantasy writer, not a horror writer because:
myu story is in a fantasy setting, not this world (and i consider horror something set in this world)
and because, while dark stuff happens in my story, it's not the main point of it. i think of horror as written to shock and scare. that's the point, my stories have a lot of dark stuff in it, my novel in particular (human sacrifce, people torn apart) but it's not that frequent and it's part of the story, not THE point of it. im not trying to scare people, im not trying to horrify them, it just happens my hero sees a lot of bad stuff.

i also think that dark fantasy is often more creepy/supernatural, while horror is more gorey. i have demons and monsters and things that lurk and the odd bit of blood and death, but the horror i've read/seen tends to have a lot more gore and so on.

i guess i would say that the ringu, original, (for example) is dark fantasy (cos it's scarey and creepy as hell, but not all the way through)
while something like saw or house on haunted hill or some cannibal film is horror because it's a more constant fear with more gore

so yeah, i guess that's how i define it. horror is constant and the main purpose is to scare
dark fantasy is macabre and creepy, with the horrofic bits sporadic and part of the story, rather than the point of it