Nicholas Charles Sparks (born December 31, 1965) is an American romance novelist and screenwriter. He has published nineteen novels and two non-fiction books. Several of his novels have become international bestsellers, and eleven of his romantic-drama novels have been adapted to film all with multimillion-dollar box office grosses. Sparks was born in Omaha, Nebraska and wrote his first novel, The Passing, in 1985, while a student at the University of Notre Dame. His first published work came in 1990, when he co-wrote with Billy Mills Wokini: A Lakota Journey to Happiness and Self-Understanding, which sold approximately 50,000 copies in its first year. In 1993, Sparks wrote his breakthrough novel The Notebook in his spare time while selling pharmaceuticals in Washington, D.C.. Two years later, his novel was discovered by literary agent Theresa Park who offered to represent him. The novel was published in October 1996 and made the New York Times best-seller list in its first week of release. Nicholas Sparks was born on December 31, 1965 in Omaha, Nebraska to Patrick Michael Sparks, a future professor of business, and Jill Emma Marie Sparks (née Thoene), a homemaker and an optometrist's assistant. Nicholas was the second of three children, with an older brother, Michael Earl "Micah" Sparks (born 1964), and a younger sister, Danielle "Dana" Sparks (1966–2000), who died at the age of 33 from a brain tumor. Sparks has said that she was the inspiration for the main character in his novel A Walk to Remember. Sparks was raised in the Roman Catholic faith,and is of German, Czech, English, and Irish ancestry. He and his ex-wife are Catholics and are raising their children in the Catholic faith. His father pursued graduate studies at University of Minnesota and University of Southern California, one reason for his family's frequent moves. By the time Sparks was eight, he had lived in Watertown, Minnesota; Inglewood, California; Playa Del Rey, California and his mother's hometown of Grand Island, Nebraska for a year, during which his parents were separated. By 1974 his father became a professor of business at California State University, Sacramento, and the family settled in Fair Oaks, California. The family remained there through Sparks' high school days, and in 1984, he graduated as the valedictorian of Bella Vista High School. After being offered a full sports scholarship for track and field, at the University of Notre Dame, Sparks accepted and enrolled, majoring in business finance. In 1988, while on spring break, he met his future wife, Cathy Cote of New Hampshire, and then concluded his early academic work by graduating from Notre Dame with honors. Sparks and Cote would be married on July 22, 1989, and they moved to New Bern, North Carolina. Prior to those milestones, however, Sparks had begun writing in his early college years.

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