Columbus follows Rowling inspiration and writes teen book series

Moviemaker Chris Columbus appears to have been heavily inspired by J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books - he has penned his own children's novel.

The Home Alone director, who stepped behind the camera for the first two Potter adaptations, will release a three-book series published by Harper-Collins.

The middle-grade books, titled House of Secrets, will be co-authored by writer Ned Vizzini. They are expected to hit bookstores and the Internet next year (13).

According to EW.com, Columbus' books will be set in San Francisco, California and chronicle the adventures of the Pagett kids who are forced to live in a creepy, rundown old house, built by a troubled fantasy writer, after their father loses his job.

The director tells the website, "I started it as a screenplay, so there were about 50 pages of a screenplay that would become the first seven or eight chapters of the book... Then I put it away and I didn’t think about it, but it was always coming back to me at some point or another.

"Finally, I thought, 'Maybe this would work as a young adult novel', for no other reason except I really wanted to see it to its conclusion.

"The thing that Ned and I both wanted (was) to do anything we can do to get kids back into reading and make it really, really fun. I’m not presumptuous enough to say, 'We’re going to take over the Potter series,' but I got to see firsthand how that series affected kids and how it got so many hundreds of thousands of kids into reading. You hope for just a section of that in terms of being able to inspire kids to read."