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"I enjoy Miami —I'm probably down in Miami two or three times a year. I have friends there, and I, of course, go down for the weather. Sometimes they have some really neat city things going on, whether it's Art Basel or things like that. But Miami is one of my first choices to go if the weather gets me down in North Carolina. It's option A. It's either there or the Bahamas," he laughs, "Or something like that." At the time, Nicholas was reading a lot of Stephen King, so his first book, The Passing, ended up being a horror novel. He enjoyed the writing process and realized he had what it takes to see a novel through fruition, but he didn't see it as a lucrative career, so he majored in business finance. Once Nicholas graduated, he still wasn't sure what he wanted to do with his life and worked various jobs, from real estate to sales. He got married, had kids, and at 28, he had what he calls an early mid-life crisis. "'What am I doing? What's my purpose?!'" he asks theatrically. "I said, 'I know, I'll try writing again. So, I wrote in the evenings while I kept my day job, and that was the book that became The Notebook [1996]. So, it was very strange. It's not as though I wrote really much of any thing in between any of these things." Did you know The Notebook would be as well-received as it has been? "Man, I had hopes! I thought it was a good book." He laughs. "I said, 'Man, if people don't like this book, they don't know what –right?' But I think every author thinks that about their book, right? I worked very hard to make sure every word was exactly what I wanted it to be, and I did a lot of editing before I even solicited an agent, so I had hopes that it would succeed. I dreamt about it. Boy, what if? So many other things have to go just right for that to work and I certainly was very blessed in that regard." The next book he wrote was Message in a Bottle. "It was a love story, but it had a different type of ending: It wasn't bittersweet; it was more tragic; it was longer; it was from a woman's perspective; it was third person, instead of first. So, there were all these very significant structural and character –it was more complex, all these other issues." This is when he decided to put those previously- mentioned constants in place. "I'm trying to do every thing different, except for three things," he says with a smile. It surprised me to hear that Nicholas still finds writing incredibly challenging. "If you're changing every thing from the structure to the point of view to the voice to the perspective to the ages of the characters to the time periods with every book, it feels as though you're reinventing the wheel all from scratch. You don't know what to do on Chapter One because it's all going to be different. I've been writing for a long time and I still find writing as much of a challenge I did the very first time." Are any of your other books slated to be made into movies? "Uh." He sighs. "That's always a maybe... My thought on that has always been, until the camera starts rolling, I don't really say any thing because you never know. But yeah, there are some in various stages always." Do you ever get to help choose the characters? "Always." So, you chose Ryan Gosling? "Generally, I'm a voice in the room, and I think that's the best way to say it. In the end, you have directors who have input, you have other stars who have input —depending on who they are. Kevin Costner, for instance, had a say in who he wanted to work with. Producers, the studio, and then sometimes everyone wants someone, but they're not available. So, there's a lot of factors that go into it… To see how they bring them to life, it's always, it's really amazing to watch. I've been very fortunate with the talent that have been in my films." Even though Nicholas has ranked among the best romance authors of all time and is no stranger to hobnobbing in Hollywood, he claims to lead a pretty simple life. When he's not writing, he spends his time brainstorming ideas for a story and catches up on the things that fell by the wayside due to writing. "I'll go on a book tour or I'll do Hollywood stuff or I'll think of my new book. Most of my days, I workout a couple of hours, I read probably a couple of hours. Of course, I have family, I have kids. I have a lot of friends, so I spend a lot of time on the phone talking to my friends —I live in a very small town, so I have friends all over. I like to cook. Then there's always some little passion that has me interested for a while, it's varied over the years. I was a coach for a while. I got really into investing for a while. Right now, I'm kind of into colored diamonds and designing jewelry, so I'm doing that. When I'm writing, it's a little bit along those terms, except all those other things a little bit less." ML Keep up with the best-selling author on Instagram and Twitter @NicholasSparks and www.nicholassparks.com