Sideways Movie

When I started to write novels and had some success I really believed that the author, more akin to a playwright in the theater, would be treated with kid gloves. Try brass knuckles!

I started to believe I had written a dreadful book, that Sideways was unpublishable. Then I got a call informing me that St. Martin's Press had offered $5,000.

The Academy Awards hold a special place in my heart. I'm somehow miraculously behind two Oscars: the Best Adapted Screenplay for Sideways (based on my novel of the same title) and the writer of the 2000 Oscar for Best Live Action Short.

A year after Sideways had been pulled for submission, and the film industry had turned a deaf ear to two guys who go wine tasting in then little known Santa Ynez Valley, my life was in tatters.

In this post I will be specifically addressing what happened Sideways in the publishing world. My story, especially for aspiring authors, is not for the faint of heart.

You would think with a publishing contract, a high-powered agent, a movie in the works, that I was the most grateful writer on the planet. I was... and then I wasn't.