With a lot of hints and a little research I figured out how to get my SATA DVD burner to work. The biggest clue was in the Nero for Linux documentation which stated that the /dev/scd* device was only used for READING from the drive, that writing is done via the /dev/sg* device. A quick look showed that the /dev/sg devices did not exist on my system. After doing a 'modprobe sg' they did exist and both cdrecord and growisofs work just fine.
In order to make this fix permanent I added the following line to /etc/modprobe.conf:
install sr_mod /sbin/modprobe sg ; /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install sr_mod
When the system detects a SCSI (or in this case SATA) CD device it automatically loads the sr_mod module to service the /dev/scd* device. This addition forces the sg (Generic SCSI) module to be loaded whenever the sr_mod gets loaded.
Hope that helps the next guy!