Sparks's Love Affair With Romance

Nicholas Sparks is giddy.

The movie rights to his next book were just sold to Disney, which plans to use the film as not-a-girl, not-yet-a-woman transition project for Miley Cyrus. (Remember how that kinda-sorta worked for Mandy Moore in "A Walk to Remember"?)

The name of the new book?

"I don't have a title," the 42-year-old author giggles from his perch on a Ritz-Carlton couch in Georgetown. "I don't have a title -- it's okay."

Forget the title; Sparks doesn't have a book yet. Not a first chapter, first paragraph, not a first letter of a first sentence.

Disney bought a blank page, an idea and a pledge from Sparks that he'll spend a few months working his swooning magic for Ms. Cyrus.

Anyway, consider it done!

You probably know the drill as well as he does by now: earnest characters, feverish love, inevitable heartache. A pack of tissues, plus a gallon of sweet, syrupy romance.

It worked in "The Notebook" and "Message in the Bottle." And it's the same formula Sparks mixes in "Nights in Rodanthe," his latest novel to be splashed onto the big screen, this time concocting a middle-age affair starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane.

Film critics might hate it. The literary sort often despise his books, when they bother to pick them up at all.

And that couldn't matter any less to Sparks, who has penned 14 works in 13 years; who has created for himself a direct line from New Bern, N.C., to Hollywood; whose fans drool at the prospect of a new release and happily wait hours to meet him at book signings. (They'll have their next fix with "The Lucky One," which hits stores Tuesday.)

Sappy sells, and Sparks is its biggest, most compelling peddler.