Ed Burns "hasn't faced" the fact that his kids have left home yet

He told Fox News Digital: "It's funny, Christy and I were laughing that we both made sure that we were each incredibly busy this fall, so we haven't had to really face it. It's been bittersweet.

"Obviously, we're so happy that the kids are happy and off starting their journey and loving their college experiences.

"But you can't help but miss them like crazy."

But the '27 Dresses' star has managed to keep busy by writing a book and subsequent promotion tour for his debut novel 'A Kid From Marlboro Road', which charts the ups and downs of an Irish-American family living in New York in the 1970s as told by a boy in his early teens.

He said: "I had never really thought about writing a novel, other than maybe when I was a senior in high school. I had a great creative writing teacher. She read a short story of mine, and she's the one who encouraged me to be a writer. She said, 'That's what you should study in school.' But when I got to school, I started studying film. I fell in love with filmmaking and screenplays.

"For 30-plus years, I have been thinking about writing a story like this one. I thought the story I was going to write was about the last generation of latchkey kids."