SOPHIE Gravia had just finished a gruelling 12 hour shift on her ward when she was messaged by new celebrity fan Michelle Keegan – who was reading her latest book thousands of miles away on a sun soaked beach.
The single mum of two has insisted on keeping her day job as an NHS nurse in Lanarkshire despite becoming a bestselling author.
But as she was heading home after a particularly taxing day she found out that Our Girl star Michelle, 37, was enjoying Meet Me in Milan from her sunlounger in Dubai last October.
She says: “I had actually met her husband Mark Wright at an event in Ingliston last year and told him I was an author.
“Then about three weeks later Micheel was holidaying in Dubai when she slid into my DMs when I was leaving work after a long day – I couldn’t believe it.
“Michelle just messaged saying, ‘I love your book’ and how it was hilarious. At first I was thinking, ‘This can’t be THE Michelle Keegan’ then I checked and she had over seven million followers on Instagram.
“I messaged my editor about it and she told me the sales had gone sky high since Michelle had posted my book on her socials.”
Michelle’s career has also skyrocketed after the success of the Netflix series Fool Me Once, where she plays widowed mum Maya Stern who is left disturbed by an image of her late husband captured on her toddler’s nanny cam.
But Sophie had a chance to join Michelle on the streaming network when they wanted her to take part in their reality hit dating series Love is Blind – where single men and women get engaged before meeting their future spouses in person.
She laughs: “They wanted me to be a contestant but I have bad enough time on dates never mind going in blind.
“So it wasn’t my cuppa tea but it was nice to be asked.”
Sophie, from Bellshill, Lanarkshire, decided to write about the dating game during lockdown after splitting with the father of her two daughters.
Her real surname is Grant, but she came up with the pen name Gravia by combining her daughter’s names Grace, 12, and Olivia, 14.
Sophie’s first self-published racy book A Glasgow Kiss came out in 2020 and shot straight to number one in Amazon’s erotic charts overnight which saw her snapped up on a four book deal publishing giants Orion.
She followed it up with another chart topper What Happens in Dubai then Meet Me in Milan while her latest Hot Girl Summer hits the shops next week.
Their success has allowed Sophie to buy a new home and a sleek Mercedes while she has been on holiday four times this year alone.
The 32-year-old says: “My life has changed, in as much as I’m a lot more comfortable financially.
“It means I can spend more time with the kids and I’m just about to take five weeks off work to promote my latest book. There’s no way I’d have never been able to do that before.”
And despite moving into a new detached house with a dedicated office, Sophie still tends to write how she did when starting out.
She says: “I always write in bed. I’ve tried sitting up at my desk but it’s too formal for me. It has a lovely desktop Mac but I’ve only opened that twice. My kids use it more to play Robots on it.
“I prefer to be more relaxed lying in bed in my pyjamas, surrounded by clutter, a can of Diet Irn-Bru and a mega bag of pickled onion Monster Munch and gummy laces.
“That’s when I’m in the zone. It’s how I wrote my first book A Glasgow Kiss and it just feels strange trying anything else.”
However she churns them out , her army of readers just can’t get enough of the outrageous adventures of her main character – aesthetics nurse Zara Smith.
Sophie’s new book Hot Girl Summer is already on sale at airports before it’s officially launched and the last time her publisher’s did the same it led to her fans snapping up cheap flights.
She explains: “I was getting posts from people saying they’d bought a £25 one way ticket just to get through security and buy my book.
“It actually sold out at Glasgow airport. I couldn’t believe the lengths people were going to, just to read an early copy.”
However it’s not just the airports and beaches where her books keep popping up – as her patients have been reading them while she’s at work too.
She says: “It is embarrassing when you’re trying to be professional and deal with a situation and then someone is like, ‘Did that really happen in that book, hen?’
“I always warn them that my books are very racy but they just go ‘Uch that’s nothing – I could tell you more stuff than that.’ I’ve also had requests from their families to sign books. It’s nice.”
But internet sleuths have also been busy trying to work out who is the real Dr Tom Adams – known as the Sugar Daddy in her first three books.
She says: “There’s one particular doctor at work who I know really well, who hasn’t read any of my books so he doesn’t know who much of a d**k this character is.
“But he says to me, ‘I love it – I’ve had all these women contacting me asking if it’s really me.’ And I’m trying to tell him, ‘That’s not a good thing.’ But he doesn’t tell them it’s not him.”
So since becoming a bestselling author has the standard of Sophie’s own dates dramatically improved?
She laughs: “They have certainly been a lot nicer. I haven’t had any terrible ones recently – no panty sniffers or anything like that for a while.
“But I have enough people telling me about their bad dates to fill several more books.”
However Sophie still has plenty of “creepy men” messaging her online.
SOPHIE reveals that one of the best parts of becoming a bestselling author is being able to travel for research.
The writer had a break in Italy before writing Meet Me In Milan while she also visited London before penning her latest novel Hot Girl Summer.
Although she feared that after a boozy pub crawl she may have forgotten more than she learned.
She explains: “This one is based in London and for research I went down there for the weekend with one of my friends – not that I can remember much of it.
“We were researching all the pubs, which was great for the book, but not so good when it came to recalling all the details. I’m just lucky I took loads of photos.”
She adds: “But the new book is about three girls who live in London with two of them Glaswegians.
“They realise their lives are not going to plan so they meet up for a High School reunion and decide to get together and have a Hot Girl Summer.
“They want to sort out their jobs, their sex lives, the lot as when they made all their plans together when they were younger, life was going great. So they’re just trying to get everything back on track.”
She says: “I once had a request for my worn trainers. I was in work at the time and one of the girls was like, ‘Can I reply?’ So she wrote back ‘How much are we talking about?’
“This guy said,‘The more worn, the more money.’ My colleague reckoned we could set this up as a business. I guess if things take a downward turn it’s always another revenue stream.”
But the good news for followers including Michelle Keegan is it looks like Zara – and Sophie – will entertain them with many more singleton antics for the foreseeable future.
She says: “I always get asked if I’ve found someone yet. Readers are more interested in my love life than Zara’s.
“The parts of the book where Zara is in a relationship I actually struggle to write because I have been single for so long.
“But I don’t think my relationship status is going to be changing any time soon.”
*Hot Girl Summer is out on July 18, published by Orion priced £7.99 for paperback.
