Q&A with Maddy Mount

Why did you become an author of spicy/smutty romance novels?

A huge number of influences, really. I remember very clearly first discovering sex in the pages of a Wilbur Smith novel that my mum left lying around. That was deeply affecting to me. In turn, that led to writing insane stories with my friend at school that we thought (wrongly) were as knowing, witty and sexy as Jilly Cooper. But I think the sense of community that surrounds the readership of these books today was the thing that clinched the deal. They’re mainly women, mainly young women, who find a safe place in which to experience things that out there in the world they are told are wrong. They’re women who want to make up their own minds, who do not want to get themselves into the situations that the characters do in a book but do want to experience it, understand it and revel in it – which I find deeply inspiring.

Your heroine is Tessa Niscombe, an upper-class English girl gone wild. Where did she come from?

I suppose in relation to what a lot of people might expect from an upper-class English girl she might be ‘wild’ but in reality, I think she’s only a little bit off the rails. Girls are experimenting and precocious no matter where they are from - and thank God for that! But if you look at all the enduring characters in literature what you will find is the author in the middle of that persona and then, layered on top, are all the people and experiences who inspired them. Each makes their contribution every step of the way. I know Tessa, and some parts of Tessa are parts of me. She certainly inhabits my world.

She starts off in an all-girls academy – is that a caricature of public school life?

Tessa’s a public schoolgirl through and through but not a caricature. I always say that people who were sent off to boarding school share a sadness. Tessa herself explains the trauma of being sent away by your parents at the age of 10. Of your home transforming from a place of granite certainties and boundless parental love into somewhere that you visit. And for a lot of kids, the natural question is ‘What have I done wrong?’ swiftly followed by ‘Don’t you love me?’ and some parents, like Tessa’s, never find a way to repair that damage. Tessa’s parents certainly don’t, and that is at the heart of every single thing that happens to her.

So you’re against such places, I take it?

I’m certainly not someone who sneers at them. I am enraged by what the current government has done in 2024-25 to apply VAT to school fees because that extra 20% on the fees has priced so many children, whose parents were scrimping and saving to give them that chance, out of the public school system entirely. I think that numbers are down by more than 30% as a result, which has the knock-on effect of putting teachers out of work in public schools, while the state schools aren't getting any more money to cope with the increased intake. It is purely and simply the politics of envy, and that is wrong.

And yet you seem to be critical of fee-paying schools in the book

I was very unhappy. The bullying, in particular, was hard... but then again, bullying was always such a big part of school life for so many kids then, whether state or private, just as it is today. The difference now is that there is nowhere for kids to feel safe because they can be targeted online in their bedrooms. When it comes to boarding school, obviously, there are those who completely thrive in that environment and grow up to be somewhat entitled. But it is a polarising experience, and there are also those kids who, like Tessa, never get on top of the fear that their parents sent them away because there was something wrong with them. Both sides of that coin intrigue and frustrate me in equal measure. But no more so than the people who mock and jeer that system and hold it up as a reason for failures in the state school system. Fee-paying schools can and do provide kids with more opportunities to grow and better equipment, support and infrastructure than the state can or will provide. And now I am getting angry about the VAT again!

Does Tessa and Bonnie’s sapphic school romance just feed a particular stereotype?

I worried about that a lot while I was writing the story. There’s the risk of veering off into an exploitative ‘pretty young lesbian’ thing. Do you remember the Russian pop duo t.A.T.u.? They had a massive hit all around the world on the premise that there were two proud young lesbians who happened to be beautiful. Only it turned out that they weren’t the slightest bit gay, and it was all just a cynical marketing exercise. I didn’t want to do that to my characters or to the community. Equally, there is a rich vein of British comedy drawn from innuendo about same-sex boarding schools – I think it was the TV show Red Dwarf which talked about public schoolboys ‘beating each other on the bottom with a leather-bound copy of Winnie the Pooh’ – and again I wanted no part of that. But I passionately wanted to represent my own experience of experimentation, because I know that it is something that will always be part of the process.

Why did you take that risk of exploiting your characters, then?

I think that Tessa and Bonnie would have been an incredible match wherever I had put them. Admittedly, you’re walking a tightrope in telling that story because, on the one hand, you could be seen as pushing the whole ‘posh kids fiddling with each other’ trope. Equally, you have to be mindful of the lesbian community feeling that this was potentially exploitative or doesn’t represent them. Ultimately, I had to trust the characters and believe in their authenticity - which was very easy for me to do.

But as we find out, Tessa in particular isn’t gay

I don’t think that either of the girls is a committed lesbian, to begin with, and that they are both intrigued by the idea of heterosexual romance. That's what they love most about watching Twin Peaks religiously every week on TV. But Bonnie is definitely in love so there’s that tension of Bonnie’s strongest feelings being unseen and her desperate hope that they are requited. Tessa, in contrast, just wants to explore, and the more she explores, the further she ventures into darker territory. Bonnie is quite a different personality to Tessa: she’s not tortured about being sent away by her parents and she’s not forever looking for attention and approval to fill that void in the same way. What Bonnie wants is for someone to be her equal, to be as committed to her as she is to them. Whether or not Tessa can be or wants to be that person for Bonnie is where the tension really fizzes.

How can Tessa even think of not just accepting Bonnie

Because she’s 18! Nobody thinks straight when they’re that age. But more importantly, when I was writing the book, I became increasingly aware that there is a hole in Tessa that is so big she can’t imagine that Bonnie alone could fill it. The idea doesn’t even occur to her. Tessa wants to become an actress in order to play parts that people want to see and that they will reward her with attention and approval of the kind that she has always sought fruitlessly from her parents. To do that means having to be sexually available to those powerful, middle-aged white men who can help in advancing her career. Their power, their influence and their desire for her youth and beauty are intoxicating to Tessa – and her wonderful Bonnie has a very big job on her hands if she hopes to compete with all that.

Which brings us to the men in the story – the powerful older men

Well, they’re always there, aren’t they? Diversity, Equality and Inclusion policy isn’t really practised in the boardroom. We live in an age where great, positive initiatives are all undermined by vested interests in the same way that celebrity eco-warriors tend to travel on private jets. And in 1990-91, when the book is set, DEI wasn’t even given lip service. Least of all, in the entertainment industry. Thanks to the bravery of women who came together and called out the excesses of those powerful men in the #metoo movement, we are forming a clear picture of their modus operandi. Whether it’s Harvey Weinstein expecting favours for film roles, Jeffrey Epstein filling his world with nubile teenagers or Puff Daddy drugging and abusing ingenues. But also I think, if we were honest with ourselves, we always knew. And we also know that such behaviour isn’t limited to moguls in the entertainment world. What has changed is that we as a society are increasingly intolerant of it – but Tessa’s story is a long time before #metoo.

So when it comes to Peter Hansen – or ‘Admiral Handsome’ – is he a hero or villain?

I don’t think it’s possible to make that clear a distinction. Certainly not in Boyfriend Practice. He is supportive of Tessa and respectful of boundaries when she is practically throwing herself at him, and he is trying to big her up. But also he is what he is. If he were to turn out to be an exploitative guy, it would be just one more entertainment mogul being problematic. That would be like the parable about the frog who carried a scorpion across floodwater to save its life, only for the scorpion to sting him and drown them both. With his last breath, the frog asks why the scorpion did that, and the scorpion replies: ‘because I’m a scorpion’. Peter is a mogul who finds Tessa desirable and ultimately I think he will play his hand in the way that he sees fit to win her - even if that is coercive.

Tessa very quickly becomes aware of the dark side – drugs, coercion and essentially trading herself physically in order to win favour. And yet she continues.

As did the girls who enabled men like Weinstein, Epstein and Diddy. And it’s evident that sometimes – even most of the time – a proportion of those girls had fun playing along. Does that mean it is wrong to pursue these men now? No. But Tessa is a damaged girl who finds something that she is looking for in pleasing these powerful men. She courts their eye as a way of filling the emotional hole that exists inside her, and that is a much more nuanced story than simple exploitation.

We are using a generic image to illustrate this piece - why not you?

Because it's not about me, ultimately. It's about my books, my stories, and the characters who inhabit them. Writing spicy romance fiction carries a stigma with it, which is why I am one of many authors who do so under a nom de plume. But mainly, I love Tessa and Bonnie and all of my characters, and I want them to shine. How many people know what J.R.R. Tolkien looks like? Or Lord Byron? I will occasionally put something of me on my social media, but I am not putting my life out there to be viewed. I have written a book to be enjoyed and immersed in: no more or less.