Novelist and film and television writer Alan Sharp has died. Sharp passed away on February 8 in Los Angeles after a long illness, CAA said in a statement. He was 79. Sharp, a Scotland native, launched his writing career in 1965 with A Green Tree In Gedde. The acclaimed novel, initially banned in Scotland for its sexual content, won the 1967 Scottish Arts Council Award and was the first of a proposed trilogy. The second novel in the trilogy, The Wind Shifts, was published in 1968. The third, Don’t Cry, It’s Only A Picture Show, was left incomplete when Sharp relocated to Hollywood to focus on screenwriting for film and television. Sharp went on to pen screenplays for as many as 20 feature films, including Rob Roy, Night Moves, The Osterman Weekend, Little Treasure, and Dean Spanley. Sharp also wrote the screenplay for the mini-series Ben-Hur, which aired on CBC in Canada and ABC in the U.S. in 2010, among multiple other TV projects. His 1993 television screenplay he co-wrote with Walter Klenhard for The Last Hit was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best TV feature or miniseries.