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Is there a character of yours that you like the best? "Y'know, for the most part, I've tried to create, except for in novels where I have a legitimate bad guy, I tend to like most of the characters I create. And I try to make them honest and authentic, which means, they're good people, but they're flawed. All of them have flaws and regret and they wonder about the choices they've made, all of these things. And so, I really like them all, whether they're male or female." just finished explaining to me that his novels have three constants: 1. It'll be a love story. 2. It will be set in North Carolina. 3. Hopefully, you won't see the ending coming. "I have such a broad readership around the world, I'm trying to make sure that readers can find people they can relate to, no matter where they are. I'm hopeful that people will find it very romantic and they will be moved by the story." I can attest that this incredibly-romantic story moved me to tears –I literally sobbed when I read Tru and Hope's fate. Nicholas' characters make us believe that there is that one special person out there that we're meant to be with, and if we're lucky, we'll get them, but even if we don't end up with our person, we realize that true love does exist. It's not always a fairy tale –it's real, it's what life is really like, with obstacles to overcome, tough choices to make, and crushing setbacks. Despite the trials and tribulations his characters encounter, we can always count on the trusty romantic-at-heart to steer the ship —reminding us to have hope and faith, and to give love a chance. His characters pull us into their world with their nuanced actions and relatable thought process and make us invest in their story to the point that we're cheering them on, faults and all, and tearing up as though we're hearing a dear friend's story unfold. And then you have the charming backdrop of North Carolina that Nicholas paints with his words so beautifully. Strong visuals of waters –from peaceful creeks to the energetic ocean—make recurring appearances in his books. "They sat in the middle of a small lake fed by the waters of Brices Creek. It wasn't large, maybe a hundred yards across, and she was surprised at how invisible it had been just moments before. It was spectacular. Tundra swan and Canada geese literally surrounded them. Thousands of them," Nicholas wrote in The Notebook, describing what would become one of the film's most iconic scenes. "I lived on Brices Creek and just probably 75 yards down the creek there was kind of a turn where these trees had fallen over, and it was this lake. I went out there and it was just filled with these swans one day, and then they were never there again. In all the years I'd ever been there, they were never there again. I remember just seeing that and I thought, this would make a great scene. This is beautiful," he recalls. The inspiration for his novels comes from all sorts of places, he tells me. "I was blessed. I had really nice parents. And they were loving parents and I was, whether it's an innate personality thing, I'm an optimist when it comes to things like life and love. I'm definitely a glass-half-full kinda guy. [The Notebook] was a family story, it came from my wife's side of the family. Her grandparents and their story was similar in a lot of ways to what happened in The Notebook. I said, 'Well, I've had no success as a writer up till this point, but this is a story that I think I can tell. I don't know if anyone else is going to like it, but I think it's really sweet the way this guy still loves her when