It is a perfect summer day, 25C, cloudless blue sky, and Puget Sound is gleaming in the distance. I am in a buzzy seafood restaurant on the top floor of Pike Place Market, Seattle’s landmark fish and farmers’ market, and it is packed.
Across the table from me, Julia Quinn is talking about sex scenes. The novelist whose books were behind the phenomenally successful Netflix series Bridgerton, about eight siblings from an aristocratic British family seeking love in the 19th century, has three decades of experience in manoeuvring her characters from hello to happily-ever-after. She is also a clear-eyed realist when it comes to the steamy encounters that keep her audience coming back for more.
“For me, sex scenes have to serve a purpose in the book other than just being there,” she explains. “If you can take the scene out and the book holds up just fine, then to me at least it’s not romance, it’s erotica.”