Katey Lovell

Laura from popular book blog  Blabbering about Books shares the moment she met her partner... There’s a slight stigma that comes with meeting someone online and before I met my partner over the internet I would have held some sort of prejudice towards online relationships. I joined a dating website on a complete whim after an author friend wanted some really funny online dating stories to include in her next novel. I decided to join the dating website, sure that it would just be an exercise in demonstrating how silly online relationships really were. But, what I didn’t expect was to find someone who I very quickly fell for.   From the first message I sent him, I felt like I’d known Mike forever. It felt so natural and normal to be talking to him and despite the fact I’d never met him and knew very little about him, I still was keen to meet him. The first time we met (he was late by about half an hour!!!) was the best ‘first date’ I’ve ever had. I didn’t feel any nerves...

I can't quite believe the day's arrived, but The Boy in the Bookshop started landing on ereaders all over the world at midnight!  It's a very strange feeling to think people are reading Jade and Marwan's story, a story which I never dared to dream would be published. Thank you so, so much to everyone who's bought a copy, tweeted about it, messaged me about it and been so incredibly supportive.  Readers and writers really are wonderful people, and that's why there are so many of them singled out in the acknowledgements (and there could have been many more, but as these stories were written eighteen months ago I deliberately named those who'd been generous with advice from the very start)! But this one is dedicated to David and Zachary, my favourite boys.  I hope I've made them proud. Have you read The Boy in the Bookshop?  If so, I'd be incredibly grateful if you'd leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads....

To celebrate the release later this week of The Boy in the Bookshop , the first story in the Meet Cute series, I'm sharing the moment I met my husband... Way back in October 1997 (which I've just realised is literally half my life ago -gulp) I was at college studying for my A levels.  The college was around twenty miles from my home, so I'd leave early in the morning and not go back until teatime. I had a good group of friends but their free periods didn't match up with mine and as a result I spent a lot of time in the library, both studying and 'surfing the net'.  The internet was still a real novelty back then and I'd go online to find out football news, particularly about Sheffield United.  It was on a now defunct forum on the official club site that I started talking to 'Deadbat' - the username for the man who is now my husband, David.  We started off talking in the open threads then progressed to se...