If you love films based on author Nicholas Sparks's best-selling novels, such as The Notebook, Message in a Bottle and A Walk to Remember, get ready for Nights in Rodanthe, the upcoming feature film based on the author's book! Gayle talks with Nicholas about the film, which stars Richard Gere and Diane Lane and is scheduled to be released September 26, 2008, and his career as a successful contemporary author.

Nights in Rodanthe was Nicholas's first book to debut at number one and he says the story—which takes place in a small North Carolina coastal town—is his most romantic book yet. "I find something very romantic in an isolated environment," he says. Most of his novels are romances that are know for unpredictable endings. Nicholas says Nights in Rodanthe is no different. "It's one of the elements that I try to do in my novels, you want to surprise the reader," he says.

Readers have latched on to Nicholas's style of writing and he now turns out one novel a year. "Novels take less time then you would probably think to write," he says. "In five or six months I am usually done." But, before he starts writing, he knows the basics of the story he is going to tell. "I have to know how it begins, how it ends, and the major elements about the characters," Nicholas says.
 
If he needs inspiration for a love story, Nicholas can turn to his own wife, who he met on spring break as a college student and fell in love with at first sight. "We've been married 19 years, we have five kids, she's the greatest thing that has ever happened to me and I knew it immediately," he says.