Romancing Your Wife

In 1996, Nicholas Sparks first book, "The Notebook" was a runaway best-seller. Since then, he has had six more best-sellers, been named "sexiest author" by People magazine and had two of novels turned into films.

His new book, "The Wedding" is a love story of a different sort - the renewal of love after 30 years of marriage. Sparks visits The Early Show on Monday to talk about it.

Some people refer to "The Wedding" as a sequel to "The Notebook." Sparks describes it as a story of love and renewal. He says, "There's a love story in all of my novels - one was first love, another everlasting love. This book is the story of what a guy can do to win his love's love back."

He notes that over time, love changes for married couples. He explains, "The key is to understand and accept it. You need to understand that you're not going to be madly in love every minute of the day. If you think it's going to be that way - you're wrong. Marriage is about commitment - being committed to the marriage and to each other. You can't just go out and get a divorce when you're having a 'down' time in the relationship."

In "The Wedding," the couple is celebrating 30 years of marriage. "The relationship was on a long-term, shallow downturn, but not so down that it destroyed the marriage. Wilson (the husband) didn't do little things - didn't let her know how much she meant to him on a regular basis. But, once the kids were gone - all they had was each other. They weren't suffering from the 'empty nest syndrome' so much as they had forgotten how to be a couple and they needed to learn how to do that again," Sparks says.

Having been married for 14 years, and claiming not to have all the answers, Sparks says in general women are the ones who end up working to keep the relationship together. But he notes, "My audience is mainly women. And I want my books to appeal to women's fantasies. On the literature side, a woman doesn't want to read about how she has to handle the relationship, the kids, the family and then on top of that, she also has to do the work to bring back the romance. Women want their husbands to be romantic and to pay attention to the relationship. If women said they would handle it - the men would say, 'Great, I'll watch the ball game and see you later.'"

Read an excerpt from Chapter One. Click here.