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Sunday, Sep. 13, 2009

Read him and weep: Novelist Sparks draws 500 to Sam's Club

Some guys just have it.

Take best-selling author Nicholas Sparks, who makes millions of women cry on a regular basis and watches them line up for more.

Sparks was at the Sam’s Club discount store on Log Cabin Drive on Saturday to autograph copies of his latest novel, “The Last Song.”

Event organizers said about 500 people lined up to meet Sparks, who was scheduled to appear at noon. Most were women. About 100 fans, including some from Jacksonville, Fla., were lined up at the store’s front door at the 7 a.m. opening. By 2 p.m., the store had sold more than 600 hard-cover copies of “The Last Song” at $15.64 each.

Sparks’ 14 novels include four that have been made into movies: “The Notebook,” “Nights in Rodanthe,” “Message in a Bottle” and “A Walk to Remember.” Three more movies based on his books are scheduled for release next year.

An envious guy, looking for a chink in the armor of this super-successful author, might secretly hope that he might not be so impressive in person. No dice.

“He is wonderful, and he is just exactly like his picture — handsome,” said Pat Jackson, 75, of Wrightsville.

Jackson had driven 74 miles to Macon with her granddaughter, 29-year-old Sheree Rogers. Both Jackson and Rogers have read all of Sparks’ books up to “The Last Song.”

Rogers said her favorite Sparks novel is “The Notebook,” the story of an older woman with dementia and an older man who visits her regularly to read her his hand-written love story.

“It’s a sweet story, it’s a tear-jerker,” Rogers said. “They all make me cry.”

Sparks, 43, took a few minutes off from autographing books and posing for pictures to answer questions from this reporter.

He’s a physically fit man, as one would expect of a former Notre Dame track star and former coach for a high school track team in North Carolina, where he lives with his wife and their five children. But these days he stays in shape by doing tae kwon do, in which he has a black belt.

“This is not a runner’s body,” he said. “You have to be a little beefy to fight and do tae kwon do.”

Sparks said “The Last Song” represents a slight departure for him, in that he wrote it as a screenplay before he wrote the novel. The movie version, starring Miley Cyrus, is scheduled for release Jan. 8.

“I always try to do something different, and one way to do that is to vary the ages of the characters,” Sparks said. “My most recent books ... had characters who were 20 to 50. ... The last time I had a teenage character was “A Walk to Remember,” which was about a teenage boy, so I decided to write about a teenage girl. Coincidentally, that’s when Disney called.”

Sparks flew to Los Angeles in August 2008 to talk to Disney executives and meet Cyrus, the star of the mega-popular Hannah Montana TV, movie and music franchise. Disney and Cyrus wanted “The Last Song” for Cyrus’ first non-Hannah Montana starring role, and persuaded Sparks to write the screenplay before the novel to aid their production schedule.

Sparks predicted the movie version of “The Last Song” might introduce a new element to his career.

“Right now at this store, these are people who read me,” he said. “You don’t see many 9-year-old girls. Miley’s fans are going to come when the movie ads come out in November and December.”

Asked about the secrets of writing a successful romance novel, Sparks made a distinction.

“It’s not what I do,” he said. “This is a work of dramatic fiction. ... The goal is for the reader to experience the entire range of human emotion before they close the cover. It’s the difference between ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Romeo and Juliet.’

“To evoke genuine tears is challenging,” he said. “That’s why nobody else does exactly what I do.”

Because of the large turnout, Sparks began signing books about 45 minutes early. At 1 p.m., about 300 people were waiting in line to meet the author, who sat at a glass-topped table in the furniture department near a display of Serta Perfect Sleeper pillow two-packs for $9.98.

Some fans said they waited an hour an a half in line before they got to the front.

Robin Case, of Sylvester, fanned herself after Sparks signed her book.

“I saw him walk by me earlier and my heart skipped,” said Case, 20. “His books are so pure and true. You never know what to expect.”

She said her favorite Sparks book is “Message in a Bottle.”

“It really made me cry my eyes out,” she said.

“If a man actually exists who is like a Nicholas Sparks man, then the world would be a better place,” Case continued. “Most women want to know that that sort of true love can exist. Women want to know that people can end up happy at the end of a book and be together.”