Nicholas Sparks on Kleenex, 'Casablanca' and proposals

MANILA, Philippines - Nicholas Sparks looks like Will Ferrell’s rugby-play-ing brother.

Striding in with the confidence of a conqueror, he’s 6’2”, with a barrel chest encased in a latte-colored polo with a chocolate-brown Philippine map over the heart.

His runaway bestsellers have sold almost 80 million books worldwide, and as many boxes of tissue. He should own stock in Kleenex, if he doesn’t already.

That reminds him of their publicity stunt for The Notebook: “I’m an unknown author, why would they read me? But we sent ours out in the press kit with… a little thing of Kleenex. So if you’re a reporter, you get this, you’re like, ‘Oh, you’ve got to be kidding.’ And it worked!”

The curious thing is how he went into romance. It’s not a genre straight men enter unless they’re Fabio.

Sparks’ first novel was nothing romantic. “The first one was a horror story,” as Stephen King is a favorite. The second novel: a murder mystery. His foray into love stories began with his own.

He used to court his wife with daily letters (a feat, pre-Skype). “Yeah, we met on spring break in Florida… if you have any concept of what college American spring breaks are like… that’s exactly what it was like! (laughs). Met her on a Monday; told her I’d marry her on a Tuesday; but at the end of the week, she went back to her university, I went back to mine.”

Several visits later, she arrived in California and gave him an ultimatum, fresh off the plane: “You have six months to propose or I’m going back home.”

She was key to his career, since her grandparents’ story inspired his third novel. He was 28 years old when he had his breakthrough.

“And there was this nice little story about my wife’s grandparents. It’s very much what happens in The Notebook. I think I can do this one, it’s kind of short. So I’ll write this one first, get this one out of the way, and I’ll write my real book next. And ever since then I’ve been writing in this genre.”

Notebook references are everywhere – from One Tree Hill to Horrible Bosses: “Some cable channel is running The Notebook. Almost every single week.” Even telecommunications company Sprint spoofed it in an ad.

But don’t call them romance novels.

“Romance novels are not what I write. There are romantic elements in my novels, and my characters do fall in love. But really, I’m writing about the emotions of life, so to speak.” His second book, Message In A Bottle, was “inspired by my father and his struggles after the death of my mom.”

Six of his novels have become movies, the latest starring Zac Efron. Disney asked him to write a film for Miley Cyrus, The Last Song. Warner Brothers tapped him for a particular actor, hence The Best of Me (as producer, he refuses to say whom). This man can honestly say: “Warner Brothers bought it before I’d written a single word.”

All novels but one are love stories set in small-town North Carolina. The difference is the characters’ ages. He chose 40-year olds for The Best of Me, since he hadn’t written about them since Nights at Rodanthe.

The Best of Me is about Dawson and Amanda, high school sweethearts who meet again at 42, when tragedy brings them back to their hometown. Dawson’s Messianic sacrifice may bring some to say: why bother?

He drinks deeply from his cappuccino. “Sometimes love does fail you. Sometimes things just can’t work for a reason — for events that sometimes go beyond your control. And what you do is you go on. Just like Dawson did.”

Tragic lovers are signature Sparks. Is there a famous tragic couple he’d like to write about? “I’d need an element of enduring love, an element of tragedy. Antony and Cleopatra, but Shakespeare already did it.”

Now that he mentions it — last year, detractors denounced Sparks for comparing himself to Shakespeare. “A romance novel is a romantic fantasy; it generally has a happy end. But it’s not what I do. I write much more along the lines of, say, Casablanca. They fall in love but they can’t be together. Dear John was essentially a remake of Casablanca. You have Casablanca, Titanic, Romeo and Juliet, so that’s where the comparison comes from. But do I think I write like Shakespeare? No.” His smile underlines his point. “(I was) trying to explain the difference between a romance novel and what I do. And what I do is closer to Romeo and Juliet than it is to Cinderella.”

His is a surprisingly pragmatic take on love. “You should hopefully fall in love with someone who shares the big values with you. I mean, if you marry someone and they don’t want kids and you do, well, this is going to be a problem. It would be great to say love overcomes anything, but the simple fact is, it can’t overcome everything. You’re kind of going to have to work through whatever it is you’re going through — you can have all the communication in the world, but if you don’t have commitment, you don’t have anything.”

For him, love still trumps fear. “To not be open to the possibility of love is to give yourself a life that really doesn’t have much meaning at all.”

But even a man who makes a living from love can flub a proposal. “I did it wrong. She came home, I had the ring. I made dinner for her, and then I got down on my knees and asked her to marry me, and she said yes. But my problem was, I did it right at the beginning of dinner. So she ended up running to the phone and calling her mom, then calling her friend, then calling her sister… then calling her mom again. And so I ended up eating alone. So when my brother asked (for advice), I said, “Propose over dessert! Or you’re going to eat alone (laughs).”