How do you write a love story where the central characters can’t touch? Well, if anybody can, it’s Nicholas Sparks. “This is a difficult love story to pull off,” Sparks told Newsweek’s H. Alan Scott about his new novel Remain, which he collaborated on with director M. Night Shyamalan, who is adapting the book into a feature film. “One of the reasons we're doing this, of course, is, hey, maybe some of my readers who don't see M. Night films will go see Remain. Maybe some of his fans who would never think of reading something that I write, maybe they will give that a shot.” And they should, because Remain is a haunting love story that is both tonally very much a Nicholas Sparks novel, but also wholly different. It also helps to visualize the actors playing the characters in the film adaptation. “If someone picks it up and they say, ‘Tate, I wonder what he looks like.’ Well, Google Jake Gyllenhaal, that'll help.” While the impact of Spark’s work is “something I very seldom think about,” he does like when he’ll hear a passing reference to one of his books in pop culture. “I'm the first to giggle when The Notebook comes up on Big Bang Theory or wherever it comes up. It's a lot of fun. It makes me smile.”

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