Last Friday was the busiest day!  First of all, I got to go with a group from school to hear author Nicholas Sparks speak. That was fun. Here we are together.

I just want to say my jacket looks much better in person. You know, authors on the whole…not really interesting speakers. I remember when I was in high school I got to go to this writer’s clinic and hear S.E. Hinton speak. She was so monotone and just burned out on life and writing. It did not make me think, “Yeah, writing! I want some of that!”  Though it did make me think I should buy her some anti-depressants instead of asking for her autograph.

But Nicholas Sparks was actually a good speaker. The kids (mostly girls) were very engaged and open-eared. Did you know that The Notebook is based on the story of his wife’s grandparents? Every day her grandfather would tell his wife the story of how they met.

Sparks said he got one million for his first book. His agent had been on the job six months when she signed him. Did I mention one million dollars? That makes me so jealous. My first book only got me 999 thousand and ninety nine cents. What a rip-off. And Disney has already bought the rights to the next book…which hasn’t even BEEN WRITTEN YET!!!!

N. Sparks is a pretty animated, if not theatrical speaker. This picture cracks me up.

I can’t remember what he was doing/saying, but I can think of all sorts of captions to go with the pic. None of them profound.  Or flattering.

Nicholas Sparks name dropped Miley Cyrus like a hundred times. I think he kept thinking, “THIS time when I say it, they will be impressed.” But he was speaking to a group of 9-12 graders…they were not impressed. Once he mentioned that Miley would be starring in his next movie. One of the high school girls shouts, “Why?”

“I love Miley!”

When a student asked if he’d had any crazy fan encounters, Sparks told us that the gropiest fans are always the 75 year old women. I guess free reign to pinch butts is one perk to old age.

I have two friends who LOVE Sparks and read EVERYTHING he writes. It is a joke among us that I read NOTHING he writes because someone always dies. So a few years ago, they ooh’d and ahh’d over this book and swore a person didn’t die. I’m about 60 percent into the book (and not having a good time, btw), and I suddenly KNOW how it’s going to end. The freakin’ DOG dies! Which was 100x worse!  Friday when one of our students asked Sparks for advice on ending a novel, he said, “You kill someone! That’s what I do!” It was everything I could do not to hurl my fifty pound purse at him.

I do have to give props to Sparks for saying his favorite book was the Bible, for telling the kids not to wait to write their novels until they’re adults(which goes against common advice that makes me cringe), and that everyone had gifts from God. “What you do with them honors God.”  Just as I was thinking, “Aw, that’s so nice of him.” He says, “Look, I’m the first to say I’m not the greatest writers in the English language…I’m number two.”

Friday evening, after listening to Sparks, the Tear Jerker Novel Writer, I went with my friends to Oklahoma to Fanny’s Kitchen, an Amish restaurant. It was so goooood!

But it wasn’t big on atmosphere. We all sat at long tables with plastic table cloths in this dining hall type of room. But talk about instant service. As soon as you sit down, they bring your food (which you have to preorder. The Amish do not mess around.) And these were sort of modernized Amish. You can see above we had electricity.

We had this HUGE meal. Then it was pie time. You get TWO pieces of pie here. (After eating a meal that could feed a small nation.)  Here’s my friend Kim with the chocolate.

“I really want to put this in my purse! Do you think they’ll notice?”

This is my friend Leslie on the left. We decided to forgo forks and just use the spatulas to eat with. It saved on time, and we seemed to cover more territory that way. . . . . kidding.  That quilt behind me was almost 600 dollars, and I just knew I was going to fling some meringue on it.

“We traveled 90 miles for pie!”

This isn’t a good picture, but the Amish weren’t so modern that they had a dish washer. They hand washed all the dishes. They probably fed about 50 people that night.

Isn’t that little Amish girl sweet? She’s like, “I ain’t doing your dishes. I’m gonna go walk around and be cute some more.”

So stay tuned for next time when I tell you about seeing Paula Deen and Harrison Ford on Saturday. What a weekend, eh?

Have a great Columbus Day!

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