Nicholas Sparks
Wander through the best-selling author’s palatial riverfront home in North Carolina.
Nicholas Sparks’s sprawling home in New Bern, N.C., didn’t always look like a museum.
For close to 10 years, the three-story, riverfront house was overrun with the author’s five children, who threw footballs in the living room and completed their homework at the now fully dressed dining room table custom-built for 10.
“It was an active, busy household for a long time,” Mr. Sparks said. “At one point, there were four dogs and about 13 people living here — myself, my now ex-wife, our five children, an exchange student, and friends.”
Mr. Sparks, the 58-year-old prolific American novelist who gained fame when his debut novel, “The Notebook,” was published in 1996, has lived in the Low Country-style home for the last 15 years. He has resided on the home’s picturesque property for 27 years. (He and his former wife, Catherine Sparks, divorced in 2015.)
“We tore down the house we had been living in and hired an architect and designed this one,” Mr. Sparks explained. “The first house was a modern home, and the changes that my ex-wife and I wanted to make at the time were so substantial that it didn’t make any sense to try and renovate.” The new residence is pictured in a painting by Andre Dluhos in the living room.
His current residence, built in 18 months, boasts six bedrooms, a library, a music room, a pub room, an office space, a movie theater, and an expansive open-concept living area featuring 12-foot ceilings.
Doors in the living room open into a 1,200-square-foot porch overlooking the Trent River.
“Because of the roofline and other factors, we could never put a porch on the first house,” said Mr. Sparks. “It’s a good idea to have a porch in North Carolina because it can get warm and uncomfortable.”
Paintings by North Carolina artists, including Richard Fennell’s portraits of his youngest children, Landon, Lexie and Savannah, line the stairway wall. “I had to have them painted because, of course, with the first two kids, they are photographed all of the time,” Mr. Sparks said, referring to his older children, Miles and Ryan. “But by the third, fourth and fifth kid, you’re like, ‘Eh. We will get photos next year,’ and then all of the sudden you have no pictures of the kids, and you’re like ‘Oh no. I’m a terrible parent. I have to get you all portraits.’”
Earlier in the day, before a photographer and reporter arrived at his home, Mr. Sparks spent the morning at his kitchen’s granite countertop chopping two skinless, boneless rotisserie chickens, a few stalks of celery and a Vidalia onion. He then whipped together a dressing consisting of mayonnaise, dill pickle relish, jalapeño relish, apple cider vinegar, salt, pepper, cayenne pepper and 16 packets of Splenda. “You can use real sugar, but why throw sugar in if you can use Splenda?” Mr. Sparks asked, adding that he tries to avoid carbs “most of the time.”
The opening paragraph of “The Notebook” is inscribed on a wall behind a bar in a hallway next to the foyer. Based on the real-life love story of his ex-wife’s grandparents, the book has sold more than 14 million copies worldwide.
When he isn’t making chicken salad, reading on his plush light-beige couches, or spending time with his five grown children, Mr. Sparks can likely be found in his office writing.
His oak desk is surrounded by built-in bookshelves stacked with various editions of the 24 novels he has written in the last 28 years.
The shelves include fresh copies of his latest tome, “Counting Miracles,” which will be released on Sept. 24. Like all of his books, “Counting Miracles” was inspired by the people in his life and features a love story, North Carolina and an unpredictable ending.
“The main character in the book is named Tanner Hughes. He was partly influenced by my cousin Todd, who was also an inspiration for my 2007 novel ‘Dear John.’ ”
It took him around six months to write it — similar to “The Notebook,” which he wrote over a six-month period in 1994.
At the time, Mr. Sparks lived in a 1,200-square-foot home in New Bern and made $45,000 a year as a pharmaceutical sales representative. The author moved to North Carolina from Sacramento 32 years ago because of New Bern’s small-town vibe, affable climate and coastal landscapes. The region was also financially accessible. “I couldn’t afford to buy a home in California,” Mr. Sparks said. “When I started working on ‘The Notebook,’ I had a mortgage and two kids. I started to realize that I needed to start chasing a dream.”
To realize that dream, he sent a 52,000-word manuscript titled “Winter for Two” to 25 literary agents. One, Theresa Park, got back to him. “Theresa convinced me that ‘The Notebook’ was (a title) that was more resonant, catchy, memorable and meaningful,” recalled Mr. Sparks, who keeps a framed photo of Ms. Park holding her newborn baby in his office.
In the back corner of the room, a bookshelf is stacked with every edition of the novel and a gold box. “This box was sent out to the critics,” explained Mr. Sparks. “It came with the advanced reader edition of the book, a note and a tissue.”
Earlier this year, the musical adaptation of “The Notebook” opened on Broadway and received three Tony nominations. It was the first time a Nicholas Sparks novel came to life onstage.
“When the idea for the musical was brought to my attention, I think I said, ‘Doesn’t everyone already know the story?’” Mr. Sparks quipped before adding that the show is “truly beautiful.”
Mr. Sparks wrote his first novel, “The Passing,” during his freshman year at Notre Dame on a track scholarship. His mother, Jill Emma Marie Thoene, who died in 1989, told her 19-year-old son to “write a book to keep busy” after he suffered a sports injury, a strained Achilles' tendon.
The book, which was never published, was a horror novel inspired by his literary hero, Stephen King. Just after “The Notebook” was released in 1996, Mr. Sparks wanted to give Mr. King a signed copy of the book during a visit to Bangor, Maine. “I pulled up to the front of his house, and there was a low-hanging chain across the driveway to keep people out. I remember pacing back and forth, thinking, ‘I’m a best-selling author now. too. Does this chain apply to me?’”
Mr. Sparks decided to bypass the chain and leave a copy of his book outside Mr. King’s front door. He didn’t hear from Mr. King until a decade later, when a publisher reached out to request a blurb for the horror novelist’s 2006 tome, “Lisey’s Story.” Without hesitation, Mr. Sparks said yes. A hardcover edition of “Lisey’s Story,” with a note from Mr. King and his editor Nan Graham, is placed neatly on a bookshelf in Mr. Sparks’s pub room that houses first editions of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” and Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five.”
“He only asked one more person for a blurb. It was Michael Chabon. So, it’s Stephen King, Michael Chabon and me. Whenever I think about it, I hear that ‘Sesame Street’ song, ‘One Of These Things (Is Not Like The Others). “One of these things is not like the others,” sang Mr. Sparks. “One of these things just doesn’t belong.” (He’s a decent singer.)
In Mr. Sparks’s upstairs library, books of all genres cover the walls. “These are some of the books I have read over the years. Actually, I have read three times this many. I have to purge my library every so often.”
The room also features an Hermès backgammon board, made of mahogany and swift calfskin, one of four sets on display throughout the house. Nine more boards are neatly tucked away in various drawers, closets, and cabinets. “One day, perhaps, I will go to the backgammon world championships,” Mr. Sparks deadpanned. “I play for an hour and a half to two hours every day against a computer that plays perfectly mathematically. I’m at the 2200 level. The top is 2254.”(Mr. Sparks’s rating is unofficial.)
John Beerman is the artist behind this painting that is displayed on an easel in the library. Mr. Sparks said he likes Mr. Beerman’s “colors and dreamy landscapes.”
The author also has an affinity for globes. “My book tours would take me all over the world. So, I would use the globes to show my children, when they were little, where I was going.”
The novelist’s nonprofit, the Nicholas Sparks Foundation, is dedicated to global education. Since 2006, Mr. Sparks said, he has helped fund international travel excursions for several hundred children.
In all, 11 of Mr. Sparks’s novels have been adapted into Hollywood films, including Nick Cassavetes’s cult classic “The Notebook,” that was released in 2004 and starred Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams. Framed film posters from all his novels that have been adapted into motion pictures, including “The Last Song,” adorn the walls of Mr. Sparks’s second-floor movie theater.
While he has produced six of those movies, the author has earned just one screenplay credit, for “The Last Song.” Because of timing, Mr. Sparks wrote the screenplay before he wrote the 2009 book by the same name. He used the screenplay as the outline for the novel.
“The movies have certainly been beneficial to my career,” Mr. Sparks said. “Only a certain percentage of people read novels, and then a smaller percentage read mine. The movies have been a wonderful way to introduce people to the stories that I thought were worth telling.”