PopHorror Let's Get Scared
A few months ago, I stumbled upon a book called How to Survive Your Murder by Danielle Valentine (pen name for author Danielle Vega) and hot damn. It was so fucking good. So when I got an offer for her latest book, Delicate Condition – which is being called the “A fiercely feminist Millennial heir to Rosemary’s Baby” by Publishers Weekly – I said, “Hell yeah!” and immediately asked for an interview.
The Push meets The Silent Patient in a gripping thriller that follows a woman convinced a sinister figure is going to great lengths to make sure her pregnancy never happens―while the men in her life refuse to believe a word she says.
Delicate Condition, which will be released on August 1, 2023, is the inspiration for season 12 of American Horror Story, Delicate. I, for one, cannot wait to see it on the small screen. To celebrate the release of her new book – which is her first adult novel – I chatted with Danielle about the inspiration for Delicate Condition, her writing creative process, what’s up next, and more!
PopHorror: I read that you were pregnant when you started writing Delicate Condition. What was the inspiration for the story?
Danielle Valentine: Yes, I was six months pregnant! I had been working on a totally different project for about a year before coming up with the idea for Delicate Condition. It was an adult thriller that was coming out sort of flat and boring, and I’d just that morning made the decision to shelf it, which is just a really disappointing day for any writer. So I was in a bad mood and I was pregnant and just overall really very cranky and not in a good place.
Part of the problem with the project I’d had to shelve was that it needed a lot of work, and I didn’t have a strong connection to any of the themes. I don’t mind putting in a lot of hard work, but it can be difficult to show up for a project day in and day out when you don’t have a good “why” for writing it. I felt really disconnected from the first project, and I could tell I was going to burn out before I put in the level of work it needed. So I was sort of asking myself what sort of project would I be willing to put the work into? What would I be passionate about writing right now? I’d always written body horror. It was how I made a name for myself in YA. And it occurred to me that even the most typical uncomplicated pregnancy was essentially a body horror story. So that’s where I got the seed for the story. As soon as I started thinking about how I would work pregnancy into a horror novel, I knew I had something I’d be happy to work on for a while. Which was good because this book took a very long time to complete!
PopHorror: What did you edit out of the book? Was there anything you were adamant about keeping in the final product, no matter what?
Danielle Valentine: This book took over three years to write so many things were edited out of the final version. The vast, overwhelming majority of what has been edited out was for the better. Like a lot of writers, I have a tendency to hang out too long in Anna’s head, to offer up too much backstory or to dwindle in scenes that I like for slightly too long, so a lot of the cuts where necessary to keep the story feeling fast paced and I’m forever grateful to both my brilliant agent and incredible editor for helping me find the story beneath all the fluff.
There are two big scary scenes (for those of you who’ve already read, I’m talking about the raccoon scene and the talon scene) that have been in the book since the very first draft and which have mostly stayed the same. I had to very slightly tone down some bits around the raccoon scene because my agent told me it was making her nauseous, which is a fair critique!
The only scene which I was adamant about including despite some pushback was the early miscarriage scene (I don’t think this is a spoiler since it’s in the back copy and trigger warning.) I had suffered a miscarriage about a year before starting to work on this book and it really angered me that the miscarriages I’d read in books or seen in TV shows and movies all seemed to follow the same script, which was nothing like what I went through. I wanted to write something that felt truer to my experience.
PopHorror: Delicate Condition hasn’t been released yet but it’s already being used as the inspiration for the new season of American Horror Story, Delicate. How does that feel?
Danielle Valentine: I am so thrilled to see my book in the hands of such a talented team. I’m a longtime American Horror Story fan, and I was beyond overjoyed to receive the news that Delicate Condition would be the inspiration for the next season. I can’t wait to watch alongside everyone else!
PopHorror: What’s your creative process when you start a new draft?
Danielle Valentine: I am a die-hard outliner. I’ll often spend a few months just working out the story and the characters before I write a word of the actual draft. I like to have an idea of where the twists are going to go, of what the characters are working toward and who’s holding them back as well as a general idea of the narrative before I get started. Often these outlines will be twenty to thirty pages long and even include bits of dialogue!
As tight and well thought out as an outline is, however, all bets are off when it comes to the draft itself. I tend to work in pomodoros (for those of you not in the know, these are twenty-thirty minute writing sprints followed by short breaks) where I set a timer and focus only on writing as fast as I can. I do this until I hit my word count for the day, and then I move on to a different project or do some social media. If I spend too much time with an early draft of the manuscript, I’ll start to edit and that’s never good for the project. I see the first draft as a kind of exploratory draft. I’m just trying to see where the manuscript goes. Anything can be cut or altered at this stage, so it doesn’t make sense to make the writing too pretty.
PopHorror: If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
Danielle Valentine: Oh man, this is hard! I think my instinct would be to go back and tell her to slow down, that just because she’s not getting everything she wants immediately doesn’t mean it’s not coming. But, honestly, I think that the fire I had as a young writer is what has sustained me for so long in this career, so I don’t know if I would really want to change that. Maybe I would just tell her that it’s going to be okay, keep going.
PopHorror: What’s up next for you?
Danielle Valentine: So many fun things! I have a new YA novel coming out next year called Two Sides to Every Murder, which is a sort of mash up of The Parent Trap and Friday the Thirteenth. I’m also in the middle of working on a new adult project. It’s super early stages on that one, but it’s about cooking and murder and missing husbands, and it’s set in a gorgeous farmhouse up in the Catskills, so it’s been so fun to write.
PopHorror: What is your favorite scary movie?
Danielle Valentine: My favorite movie of all time is Silence of the Lambs. I could watch that thing over and over again.
Thank you so much to Danielle for taking the time to speak with us. Delicate Condition will be released on August 1, 2023.
