Let me share a little something that I have found out about my favorite author.

Nicholas Charles Sparks was born in Omaha, Nebraska on December 31, 1965, the second son of Patrick Michael and Jill Emma Marie (Thoene) Sparks. His siblings are Michael Earl Sparks, and Danielle Sparks . As a child, he lived in Minnesota, Los Angeles, and Grand Island, Nebraska, finally settling in Fair Oaks, California at the age of eight. His father was a professor, his mother a homemaker, then optometrist's assistant. He lived in Fair Oaks through high school, graduated valedictorian in 1984, and received a full track scholarship to the University of Notre Dame.

After breaking the Notre Dame school record as part of a relay team in 1985 as a freshman, he was injured and spent the summer recovering. During that summer, he wrote his first novel, though it was never published. He majored in Business Finance and graduated with high honors in 1988.

He and his wife Catherine, who met on spring break in 1988, were married in July, 1989. While living in Sacramento, he wrote his second novel that same year, though again, it wasn't published. He worked a variety of jobs over the next three years, including real estate appraisal, waiting tables, selling dental products by phone, and started his own small manufacturing business which struggled from the beginning. In 1990, he collaborated on a book with Billy Mills, the Olympic Gold Medallist and it was published by Feather Publishing before later being picked up by Random House. (It was recently reissued by Hay House Books.) Though it received scant publicity, sales topped 50,000 copies in the first year of release.

He began selling pharmaceuticals and moved from Sacramento, California to North Carolina in 1992. In 1994, at the age of 28, he wrote The Notebook over a period of six months. In October, 1995, rights to The Notebook were sold to Warner Books. It was published in October, 1996, and he followed that with Message in a Bottle (1998), A Walk to Remember (1999), The Rescue (2000), A Bend in the Road (2001), and Nights in Rodanthe (2002), The Guardian (2003),
The Wedding (2003), Three Weeks with my Brother (2004), True Believer (2005) and At First Sight (2005) all with Warner Books. All were domestic and international best sellers and were translated into more than 35 languages. The movie version of Message in a Bottle was released in 1999, A Walk to Remember was released in 2002, and The Notebook was released in 2004. The average domestic box office gross per film was $56 million with another $100
million in DVD sales making the novels by Nicholas Sparks one of the most successfully franchises in Hollywood.

The film rights to Nights in Rodanthe, True Believer and At First Sight have been sold, and Nicholas Sparks has written the screenplay for The Guardian, though he has not offered it for sale at this point.

He now has five children: Miles, Ryan, Landon, Lexie, and Savannah. He lives in North Carolina with his wife and children.

His ancestry is German, Czech, English, and Irish, he's 5'10" and weighs 180 lbs. He is an avid athlete who runs daily, lifts weights regularly, and competes in Tae Kwon Do. He attends church regularly and reads approximately 125 books a year. He contributes to a variety of local and national charities, and is a major contributor to the Creative Writing Program (MFA) at the University of Notre Dame, where he provides scholarships, internships, and a fellowship annually.

To Mr. Nicholas Sparks: I hope you continue to write books that will change people throughout the world. I wish you would touch the hearts of more people.

The #1 best selling author, Nicholas Sparks has a new novel, The Last Song, to be released this September 8, 2009.

Seventeen year old Veronica "Ronnie" Miller's life was turned upside-down when her parents divorced and her father moved from New York City to Wilmington, North Carolina. Three years later, she remains angry and alientated from her parents, especially her father...until her mother decides it would be in everyone's best interest if she spent the summer in Wilmington with him. Ronnie's father, a former concert pianist and teacher, is living a quiet life in the beach town, immersed in creating a work of art that will become the centerpiece of a local church.

The tale that unfolds is an unforgettable story of love on many levels--first love, love between parents and children -- that demonstrates, as only a Nicholas Sparks novel can, the many ways that love can break our hearts...and heal them.

My favorite author has created another masterpiece to capture the hearts of people around the world. Hopefully, it will be released soon here in the Philippines. I can't wait to read it!

Still, I haven't been able to finish The Luxe, so let me tell something i've read about the second book in my wishlist: A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson.

Eighteen-year-old Ellen never expected the Hallendorf school to be, well, quite so unusual. After all, her life back in England with her suffragette mother and liberated aunts certainly couldn’t be called normal. But buried deep in the beautiful Austrian countryside, Ellen discovers an eccentric world occupied by wild children and even wilder teachers, experimental dancers and a tortoise on wheels. And then there is the particularly intriguing, enigmatic, and very handsome Marek, part-time gardener and fencing teacher. Ellen is instantly attracted to the mysterious gardener, but Hitler’s Reich is already threatening their peaceful world. Only when she discovers Marek’s true identity and his dangerous mission does Ellen realize the depth of her feelings for him—and the danger their newfound love faces in the shadow of war.

I've only read about this book in a website, and i'm very much intrigued with this story because i can feel that there are a lot of secrets to be revealed. I haven't seen this book in my favorite bookshop yet, but i'll keep looking.

Yay! I finally got the chance to buy one of the books in my wishllist! The Luxe by Anna Godbersen. I've already seen this at Natinal Bookstore for the past few months, but never got the chance to read the plot at the back because i've been focusing on other books. So when I visited the National Bookstore website, I read the glimpse to the story and I've been intrigued, because i never thought that the people of Manhattan during the 1980's were scandalous too. Keep reading for updates!