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Loose Gravel Press - Rex Pickett

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273 pages

English

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The follow-up novel to the blockbuster Sideways tracks the continuing story of Miles Raymond and his buddy Jack. It's seven years later. Miles has written a novel that has been made into a wildly successful movie, and the movie has changed his life. Jack, contrarily, is divorced, has a kid, and is on the skids. Phyllis, Miles's mom, has suffered a stroke that's left her wheelchair-bound and wasting away in assisted-living. She desperately wants to live with her sister in Wisconsin. When Miles gets invited to be master of ceremonies at a Pinot Noir festival in Oregon, he hatches a harebrained road trip. With Jack as his co-pilot, he leases a handicapped-equipped rampvan, hires a pot-smoking Filipina caretaker and, with his mother's rascally Yorkie in tow, they take off for Wisconsin via Oregon's fabled Willamette Valley, where Miles is Master of ceremonies of the International Pinot Festival. It is a road novel for the smart set and wine lover, and anything but predictable.

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Humour

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Publié par	Loose Gravel Press
Date de parution	01 septembre 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780983143406
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0450€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Vertical. Copyright Loose Gravel Press, Ltd. September 2011. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America by U.S. printers drinking Pinot Noir. For more information on Vertical, please go to www.verticalthenovel.com .
Loose Gravel Press, Ltd. is a wholly independent publishing house owned by Rex Pickett and Tim Moore.
www.loosegravelpress.com . www.milesandjack.com
To learn more about Miles and Jack, Sideways , Vertical , and the author Rex Pickett, go to www.MilesandJack.com .
Title page art by Kraftwerk Design, Inc., San Luis Obispo
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pickett, Rex.
Vertical by Rex Pickett
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-9831434-0-6
1. Automobile travel-Fiction. 2. Man-woman relationships-Fiction.
3. Male friendship-Fiction. 4. Divorced men-Fiction 5. California –Fiction.
1. Title
PS3566.1316 S55 2010
813 ..6-dc22 2003027209
Also by Rex Pickett:
Sideways
20 19 18 17 16 15 14
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I’d like to extend my appreciation and respect to the energetic and risk-taking Tim Moore for making this self-imprint a reality. There wouldn’t be a book without his hard work, business acumen, and bottomless belief in the project.
I’d also like to heartily thank attorney Krista Carlson and veterinarian Dr. Shiri Hoshen for their indefatigable, and scrupulous, work on the manuscript. I want to doubly thank Krista for her legal counsel and Shiri for her detailed input on all matters relating to veterinary medicine. Not to mention their unwavering support and close, valued friendship.
Also, on the manuscript, I want to commend Jess Taylor for his sparkling line edit. And Todd Doty for his final proofing.
The entire team at Kraftwerk Design, who created the book cover, the Web site, and were involved in all the advertising artwork.
For advice on wine and the Willamette Valley I want to single out writer Katherine Cole and Fred Gunton. For her medical expertise on stroke and heart failure, Dr. Jen Vakharia. And on all legal matters regarding the LLC, our tireless attorney Scott Creasman.
My support group of friends and representatives: David Saunders and Steve Fisher at Agency for the Performing Arts; my generous brother Hack; Barbara Schock, as ever; Wade Lawson; and my caring, always-there-for-me, manager Peter Meyer.
And, I can’t forget, Pamela Smith, for her sage advice in too many matters to enumerate. Without her friendship, creative input – everything from reading of the manuscript to overseeing all the art work – I would be rudderless.
Anything that involves Miles and Jack, I would be utterly remiss if I didn’t thank Alexander Payne – and everyone responsible for the making of Sideways – who made them come to life on the big screen.
For my Mother
(1921 - 2000)
I got up on my feet and it took character. It took will power. It took a lot out of me. And there wasn’t as much to spare as there once had been.
– Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
Introduction by Gary Vaynerchuk
W hen people ask me about Wine Library TV I often like to say that what makes me most proud is that it is one of the few things in the wine industry that I think has shifted the culture, that has created wine drinkers.
I often say that Wine Library TV is one of the few properties that has actually gone out and taken beer drinkers and turned them into wine drinkers.
I think there has only been two other phenomenons in the last decade in the wine world that have done that, both more successfully than Wine Library TV – so it makes me sad that I am in third, but I will take it.
Number two is Two Buck Chuck , a phenomenon from Trader Joe’s of creating a three dollar wine that a lot of people got to taste and turned them into wine drinkers and made them realize that there is something out here besides beer and vodka.
But nothing, in the last decade and maybe not since white zinfandel was first introduced in this country, has brought more attention and created more pop culture and relevance than the writing by Rex Pickett of his first book a decade ago, Sideways .
Sideways created more buzz for the wine industry and created more wine drinkers in America than any other institution, situation, personality or publication we’ve ever seen in this country. And for that I believe every single person in the wine industry should be grateful and thankful for what it has done.
Sure it raised the prices of Pinot Noir; sure it turned wine into Hollywood and the wine snobs didn’t like the newcomers in the game. But what it has done for the culture of wine drinking in America, is in my opinion, is underrated, and should be reexamined by historians over the next several decades.
Now, almost 8 years later, Rex Pickett gives us Vertical , finding Miles and Jack in new circumstances, ones that reflect changes in our industry and in our country. An amazing second act. Savor and enjoy: this road trip is going to take you places you’ve never been before.
Gary Vaynerchuk Springfield, New Jersey July 2011

chapter 1
T he surf crashed thunderously against the cliffs outside my spacious seaside hotel room in Shell Beach. Golden sunlight filtered in through the white curtains. Stretched out on a bed big enough for three, I absently watched a golf tournament. I was at a wine festival, incongruously, to promote a book. Though it had been published, not that anyone could have noticed, a year earlier, the movie adapted from it had recently come out. So I was back on the promotional trail. Critics–and real people–had gone wild for the film. The story was a week in the life of me and my friend Jack, on a carousing two-man bachelor party rampage through some world-class yet little-known wine and golf country. My mom had appeared in a cameo role in both versions, and garnered a serious fan base of her own.
Thanks to the movie, my fortunes had changed. Jack, sadly, was, as I had long ago predicted, divorced and having trouble finding work. My poor mother had suffered a massive stroke that left her wheelchair-bound and sequestered in an assisted-living facility.
But I had my own problems to focus on: What was I going to say as the keynote speaker at the kickoff dinner? I had nothing prepared. Should I regale them with stories of the destitute existence that led me to Shameless ? That would have them all in stitches. Should I deliver a rote speech about how my book had felicitously impacted the wine world, and how delighted I was to see them all beneficiaries of its success and... hey, where are my royalties? Nah, too self-serving.
Maybe just go extemporaneous. Wing it.
The surf went on pounding the cliffs, sending spray high enough that I could actually see it beyond my balcony every time a wave crashed. I poured a half glass of a David Family wine ‘09 Pinot that the owner had been so generous as to send me to sample. Shameless had celebrated my love for that unique grape variety and made Pinot producers and distributors want to celebrate me. Maybe a little too much. I glanced over at the dresser where stood dozens of bottles, wines I couldn’t afford until just a few months before. I’d thought about re-gifting them, chortled I should peddle them on eBay for a little reserve cash in case this gust of fame ended and I was back to my former penniless life. But the gust didn’t seem inclined to abate any time soon. I had a new publishing agent who was arm-twisting me into a deal if I could come up with as little as a concept. “Just a couple pages! That’s all!” I couldn’t, but that didn’t stop her pestering. I had new movie/TV agents sending me out on meetings to pitch projects and hawk myself for assignments.
Life was good. Too good? No. But I still felt, acutely, the absence of a woman to share my life. Good fortune’s not as much fun as a solo act. I needed that special someone I could vent my frustrations to, negotiate life’s vicissitudes with and all the rest. Oh, there were women aplenty, but I had not found my soulmate, and I wondered–still licking the wounds of my divorce–whether I ever would.
Maybe that was what I should talk about, it occurred to me, as I sipped the David Pinot and exulted in its glories. No, too personal, too self-indulgent, and though I was accustomed to wearing my heart on my sleeve–hell, my book’s story couldn’t have been more personal!–the subject of my solitude would be a buzzkill. The crowd, estimate nearly five hundred, would want humor. I could do humor. The protagonist of my book, whom I was here to play, got a lot of laughs out of the life of a failed writer, a broken middle-aged man who couldn’t figure out where the front door was.
Done. Now I just had to come up with an opening line.
There was a determined knock at my door.
“Come in,” I called from my sprawl.
Marcie, my somewhat zaftig publicist–yep, I had one of those, too!–blustered in. All hips and limbs and curves and loose body parts, especially her disorganized mouth. A walking stereotype. She pulled up a chair. “How’re you doing, Miles?”
I muted the TV. “Trying to think of what to say.”
“Just be yourself.”
“If I’m myself, there’s no telling what might come out of my mouth. I’m not used to giving speeches. Except to the walls.”
“They just want you , Miles. They just want to hear your rags-toriches story.”
“They want Martin.” I looked at her, but she was suddenly captivated by the stupendous view. “I should have a basic speech prepared or something, but I’d come off like a politician. Besides, I’m lousy at reading from prepared text. Even when I do readings from them I sound like some academic bore.”
She patted me on the knee. “You’ll be fine. You changed the world of wine, Miles.”
“The movie did,” I chopped her off.
“Okay, but it was your book. You created the world.”
“God created the world. I just wrote a book.”
She laughed her throaty laugh. “And that’s why they’re here to hear you. You’re playing for an audience that loves you already.”
“I just got lucky. Nobo