Jason F. Wright, author of "Christmas Jars," laughed when asked whether people ever get him confused with Richard Paul Evans, author of "The Christmas Box," the enormously successful novel about a busy father whose relationship with a lonely widow helps him to overcome his materialistic nature.

"They do," he said, "and that's a comparison I'm very proud of."

Wright, 35, largely deflects the suggestion that "Christmas Jars" -- published to strong sales in 2005 and enjoying renewed interest from readers and holiday shoppers this year -- is a "Box"-like phenomenon in the making. Evans, he said, "created the genre." Wright said that he's happy merely to have experienced a measure of the same success.

"People ask me to compare the books and I say, 'There is no comparison,' " he said. " 'The Christmas Box' is a one-of-a-kind book."

On the other hand, Wright is now represented by the same agent who works with Evans. And "Christmas Jars" could become a major motion picture as early as Christmas of 2007.

So it's not hard to understand why people who see "Christmas Jars" and think "The Christmas Box" are getting their wires crossed.

There's more to "Christmas Jars," however, than just an uplifting dose of the spirit of the season. The story focuses on a savvy news reporter whose jaded outlook is lightened by the anonymous gift of a jar filled with cash, which she soon discovers is part of an established tradition of Christmas charity.

The tradition, of saving loose change in a jar for an entire year and then secretly bestowing the jar where it can do some good, began as fiction. But now it's taken on a life of its own.

Chris Schoebinger, an executive at Shadow Mountain, the Deseret Book imprint that handles "Christmas Jars," said that transferring the concept of the jars to real life has been a big part of the book's appeal. "The idea that the spirit of giving can last all year round is very attractive to people in general," Schoebinger said. Even kids, he said, can put a few pennies in a glass jar.

And they are. Wright, who's traveled across the country to promote the book (he visited middle school kids in Provo last month), said he's been told about people who've started following the tradition in almost every place he's gone to.

One of those readers-turned-givers is Brenda Kraus of Conneaut, Ohio. An optician, Kraus discovered Wright's book at the end of 2005 -- she read it after giving her daughter a copy for Christmas -- and started her own jar soon after.

"It just gives me a really good feeling every time I open that jar and stuff some money in there," Kraus said. She hasn't decided who will be the recipient of her jar (and telling a newspaper would spoil it, after all), but she's already planning to involve more people. She's ordered five copies of the book and is giving them away as Christmas gifts this year.

Which came first, the novel or the jarsfi

There wasn't a Christmas jars tradition before "Christmas Jars," or at least not that Wright is aware of. He invented it for the book, which he wrote during the hours before and after his regular workday as a political consultant.

"I wrote it in about three months, writing a little bit every day," he said. "When I got close to the end, I was writing about three or four hours a day."

He'd put in some time in the mornings at IHOP -- "I got to know the waitresses at my local IHOP pretty well" -- and also write in the evenings at the public library in his hometown of Fairfax, Va.

Wright, who studied history at Brigham Young University after serving a proselytizing mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Brazil, said that he's always had the itch to write. ("Christmas Jars" is his second novel, after "The James Miracle," published in 2004.)

He credits his father, a civilian personnel officer for the Army, with nurturing his storytelling urge. "My dad was a creative person, maybe the most creative civilian who's ever worked for the Army."

As a young boy -- "I was, like, 12 years old" -- he wrote a story about a mouse who won the state lottery and saved Christmas for his family. The story was duly submitted to a publisher, resulting in the first rejection letter of Wright's career, which he said he still has.

Rejection was the farthest thing from the mind of Shadow Mountain, which was one of a handful of publishers to get a crack at Wright's manuscript.

As Schoebinger rather whimsically put it, publishers often rely on an internal "something special" meter when sorting through submissions. "The needle of mine went off the charts with Chapter One," he said. "I began reading the manuscript sitting on my couch and within minutes I found myself fighting back the tears."

Another reader who experienced a similar reaction is Oscar-winning director Kieth Merrill, who's written a "Christmas Jars" feature film screenplay that he may begin filming as soon as February.

Merrill said he loved the book's beginning, but what really sold him was its final 45 pages or so. "There are three climaxes," Merrill said. "The first one, I felt deeply emotional. The second one, I started to weep. The third one just overwhelmed me."

Wright, for one, is solidly behind the movie version. "If you've ever seen a Kieth Merrill movie," he said, "then you know that Kieth knows how to tell a story."

A lot of people would tell you the same thing about Wright and "Christmas Jars." The author himself is more reserved. The book, he said, "is not 'War and Peace,' by any stretch of the imagination. I don't expect anyone to read it and say, 'Wow, that's the greatest book I've ever read.' "

Rather, Wright said, he's happy just to think that people who read the book might be inspired to try something new. So far, it's working.

Cody Clark can be reached at 344-2542 or cclark@heraldextra.com.

Christmas Jars

Publisher: Shadow Mountain

Length: 122 pages

Excerpt: "Louise Jensen was sitting alone, licking her fingers two at a time and paying serious attention to her greasy chicken-leg-and-thigh platter, when she heard muffled crying from the booth behind her at Chuck's Chicken 'n' Biscuits on U.S. Highway 4. It was early Friday afternoon. It was also New Year's Eve.

"Although discovering an unattended, blue-eyed, newborn baby girl was not on her list of expectations, Louise was the faithful brand of woman who believed that everything happened for a reason. She reached down and lifted the pinkish baby into her arms."

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page C1.