Inside the book inspiring Kim Kardashian's American Horror Story season
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Pinterest boards have proven to be a recurring resource for author Danielle Valentine when mapping out her books. They help pinpoint the vibe, says the writer behind YA titles like the Merciless series (under the pseudonym Danielle Vega) and 2022's How to Survive Your Murder. "I try to get an idea of the characters, what they look like," she says.
Over the three years it took to write her new novel, Delicate Condition, a psychological horror-thriller coming out Aug. 1, five pictures of a certain actress remained at the bottom of her digital collage: Emma Roberts. Valentine was looking for inspiration for her lead character, Anna Alcott, a New York City-based actress. Thanks to a breakthrough performance in a surprise hit indie film, the character is dealing with her newfound fame while also desperately trying to conceive a child after multiple failed rounds of IVF treatments. "This is manifestation if I ever heard it," Valentine tells EW of the fact that Roberts is now starring as Anna opposite Kim Kardashian in the twelfth season of American Horror Story, which is currently filming in the Big Apple and using Delicate Condition as its inspiration — the first time the popular FX horror anthology has adapted a novel. "It has been purely thrilling to watch it happen," she adds.
Delicate Condition publisher Sourcebooks has kept information on the title light, and in truth, there are a few satisfying twists and turns that need protecting, but there's no denying the buzz surrounding the title, especially with the AHS factor. (A rep for the show's overlord Ryan Murphy declined to provide comment for this story, but Murphy previously stated to The Hollywood Reporter that scribe Halley Feiffer wrote Kardashian "a fun, stylish and ultimately terrifying role.") Ahead of an upcoming appearance at San Diego Comic-Con, Valentine sat down with EW over Zoom from the white-walled office in the attic of her New York home (her primary writing space) to preview the book that has already lured the eyes of Hollywood.
Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images; Sourcebooks; Theo Wargo/Getty Images Kim Kardashian and Emma Roberts star in 'American Horror Story' season 12, which is inspired by the novel 'Delicate Condition'
The Anna of Delicate Condition has come to suspect that someone is trying to stop her from getting pregnant. Could it be the anonymous online Tumblr user @Number1Fan, who's been dragging her on the internet? Could it be the strange lady that snuck a photo of her as she entered her doctor's office? Could it be the stranger who broke into her house one night and crept into her bed while she was sleeping? She can't be certain of anything these days. Anna finds support in her close friend Siobhan, another actress who's much more well known than she is, but her own husband doesn't even believe her half the time. Then Anna's worst fear becomes a reality: her doctor informs her that she has miscarried... except she can still feel the baby inside her. She can still see the physical effects it's having on her body. The pregnancy symptoms only grow more severe and horrifying when someone begins stalking her through the Hamptons, and no one seems to take her seriously when she insists that something is wrong.
"It is essentially a horror novel about pregnancy," Valentine says. "It's a novel exploring not just the actual physical gruesomeness of what pregnancy is, but also the medical gaslighting that even modern, very privileged women experience as they're going through their pregnancies and the symptoms that I feel we as a culture still don't talk about for strange reasons." Some of the early praise the author has received for Delicate Condition likens the book to a more modern, feminist take on Rosemary's Baby. Valentine is honored by the comparison, but says, "I was really much more inspired by Alien, which I think will also give readers an idea of where I'm taking this."
The 1979 sci-fi/horror classic starring Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley ranks among Valentine's favorite films. (Her cats are even named after characters in the movie.) She was six months pregnant with a baby girl when the topic of Alien resurfaced. Valentine had begun work on a concept for a thriller, but had to scrap it when the story started to feel cliché and the characters were falling flat. She and her husband then started talking about Alien as a reference for something else to write about.
"It's really a movie about pregnancy, but it's been written by a man who doesn't understand that that's what he's writing about," Valentine recalls. "It's what happens when a guy thinks, What's the scariest possible thing I can come up with? And it's this idea of, what if you're growing this creature inside of you and it's using your resources to get bigger and you can't control it? It has a mind of its own, and then one day it just bursts out of you in this gruesome, bloody mess. When I first saw it when I was a kid, it didn't occur to me that that's basically what pregnancy is, but at six months pregnant, I'm like, 'Oh, wow! That's just a pregnancy story without the pregnancy.' That was the seed right there."
Valentine conceived the basics of the idea for a story within an hour, and then checked them against Rosemary's Baby to make sure they hadn't been tackled before. Multiple other works would come to inform Delicate Condition. As a writer of horror, Valentine can't help but give credit to the works of Stephen King. She also credits the Sarah Michelle Gellar-led Buffy the Vampire Slayer "and that idea of using horror as a metaphor for some of these bigger moments in your life." (In the context of the novel, Anna got her start as a teen actress on a fictional show called Spellbound, which was heavily influenced by Buffy but clearly didn't reach the same level of success.) Another is Silence of the Lambs. "Much of the horror comes from this atmospheric creeping, this dread that keeps building," Valentine says of that 1991 Jodie Foster vehicle. And like Alien, the movie features "a woman surrounded by men who don't believe her," she adds.
Sourcebooks The cover of 'Delicate Condition,' by Danielle Valentine
Then there's the horror of our own reality. The author calls the 2022 repeal of Roe v. Wade, which legally guaranteed abortion access, a "horrifying" moment for the American populace. "About a year before I came up with the idea for this book, I miscarried," Valentine says. "That experience was very surreal and horrible and I think made me a little bit more aware as a woman of what it means to carry a child, how huge it is that we're asking women to do that. We're not being honest with them about the side effects and how it's going to feel and how it's going to change their bodies and their minds.
"My brain is different," she emphasizes. "I know women say that, and I didn't understand what they meant. I have anxiety that I didn't have before. I feel like a different person, physically and mentally, just from having gone through this experience. It really bothers me when I hear particularly male lawmakers and male politicians talking about how women can go through pregnancy and give the baby up for adoption or what have you, and really not giving enough weight to what it is to experience pregnancy and how life-altering that experience is."
Valentine clarifies that her later pregnancy "was about as typical as it possibly could have been," but she points to some of her close friends who have had less than ideal experiences. With Delicate Condition, she wanted to take a note from Buffy, as well as books like The Handmaid's Tale. She wanted to take all of these feelings around pregnancy and "make it a metaphor, make it bigger, make it hyperbolic in the hopes that people who never are going to experience pregnancy, who have no desire to experience pregnancy, who haven't experienced pregnancy yet will just feel it a little bit."
She's still waiting to see how American Horror Story season 12 — which includes actors Michaela Jaé Rodriguez (Pose), Cara Delevingne (Carnival Row), and AHS veteran Zachary Quinto — will adapt the material, but it's an exciting time for the author. Two of her previous books, The Merciless and Survive the Night, had been optioned for Hollywood treatments, but neither came together. Delicate Condition, however, happened very quickly after Murphy came knocking.
"I am such a fan of Ryan Murphy and that whole team that I just have utter faith that it's going to be glorious," Valentine says. "So it's been really easy for me to feel entirely excited for that."
Read EW's exclusive excerpt from Delicate Condition.
Valentine will appear alongside other horror authors Tananarive Due, CJ Leede, Meriam Metoui, and Chuck Tingle at Things Could Be Worse, a San Diego Comic-Con panel that is moderated by Maryelizabeth Yturralde and takes place on Saturday at 8 p.m. PT in Room 25ABC.
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