First known for her beauty - she was the first black American Miss World entrant and is the face and spokeswoman for Revlon - Halle Berry is now acknowledged as a supremely talented actress. She got her first big break as a crack addict in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of 50s black actress Dorothy Dandridge and in 2002 became the first African-American woman to win a Best Actress Oscar for her role in Monster's Ball. She has also appeared in mainstream movies, such as X-Men, Die Another Day and is to star as Catwoman in Summer 2004. However, her personal life has often been difficult. Berry hadn't seen her abusive father for twelve years before he died, and her two marriages have been troubled. In 2000 she was involved in a hit and run accident, for which she was given three years' probation. In this biography, Frank Sanello delves into the life of Halle Berry to uncover the truth behind the abuse, the racism and the screen nudity, while also showing how one of the most beautiful and talented women in the world still finds it difficult to get the parts she wants.
"It's not as bad as it sounds."
- Mark Twain on Wagnerian opera
Internationally known author and journalist Frank Sanello has written extensively about the entertainment industry for major newspapers and magazines as well as in his books, "Spielberg: The Man, The Movies, The Mythology"; "Reel V. Real: How Hollywood Turns Fact Into Fiction"; and "Jimmy Stewart: A Wonderful Life"; among 20 other volumes.
His other credits include nonfiction historical works and books on medical issues for the lay reader, among them "The Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another," "The Knights Templars: God's Warriors, the Devil's Bankers," "Tweakers: How Crystal Meth Is Ravaging Gay America," and "Saving America: Solutions for a Nation in Crisis," which offers an ingenious plan to provide affordable health insurance created by the book's coauthor, University of Tennessee Professor Emeritus Adel N. Shenouda, M.D.
Other works in pre-production are "Why Marie Antoinette Never Said 'Let Them Eat Cake' or Why (Almost) Everything You Thought You Knew About the Past Never Happened," which debunks historical myths widely accepted as fact, "Victims and Victimizers: Gays and Lesbians in the Third Reich," "Invisible People: Why Historians Keep Prominent Gays of the Past in the Closet."
Sanello is also writing two novels, "If Nazi Germany Had Won the War," and "Murders in the Cathedral: Separation of Church and Rape," the latter fiction the novelist describes as "Charles Bronson meets Mario Puzo," and involves a crime spree in which pedophile priests and the high-ranking Catholic Church officials who protect them are being murdered by victims of pedophile priests.
During these lean, recessionary times, the author has developed an ancillary business, Frank Sanello & Associates, http://www.politicallyimpolite.com/Ghostwriting-for-the-Budget-Minded.html, a full-service ghostwriting agency that matches top authors with clients who have always dreamt of publishing a book but lacked the time or training to turn out a 500-page manuscript.
Frank Sanello & Associates offers its services affordable for almost any budget by cutting out the middlemen, ghostwriting agency executives who are not writers and whose only task is to corral gullible clients with promises that the prospective client will become the author of a bestseller, an impossible guarantee that Frank Sanello & Associates never offer, only a promise that the firm's staff writers will do their very best and increase the clients' chances of getting a book published that could become a blockbuster.
Any agency that promises to find a publisher who will turn the client's work into a bestseller are flat out lying to justify their extortionate fees, that can range from $25,000 to $250,000. After the client has been lassoed into signing on the dotted line, he is then turned over to a subcontractor, usually authors between book deals. The subcontractor does the heavy lifting of actually composing a 120,000-word book, but receive as little as 10 percent of the fee the ghostwriting agency bills the client, then pockets the remaining 90 percent, often for doing as little as making a few phone calls and responding to Internet ads posted by the agency.
Frank Sanello & Associates is owned and operated exclusively by professional writers - no account executives, no used car dealers, no snake-oil vendors welcomed or allowed. Staffers at most ghostwriting firms make great salesmen when it comes to reeling in a client with promises of an endorsement by Oprah or a sit-down with Barbara Walters. But these hucksters are less persuasive making the more important sale - the client's book to an agent, a publisher, or the film and TV industries.
After the final draft has been polished by the ghostwriter into a flawless gem, his job is only half completed. Now it's time to solicit an agent's representation and/or help the client land a book deal.
These priorities are not the biggest concern of most big ghostwriting firms, whose motto too often seems to be, "Take the client's final payment as soon as the check clears...then crawl back into the woodwork until a new victim, uh, client responds to one of the agency's ads, and the process of promising the client the world while delivering much less begins anew.
A posh Manhattan address may impress the ghostwriting client but not an agent or publisher who probably has an equally prestigious suite of offices.
Newcomers to the business who would love to see their name on the cover of a book ghostwritten by Frank Sanello or one of his associates and fellow authors rarely realize that writing the books is only the first step, and for most high-priced ghostwriting firms, it's the last step as well.
After the ghostwriter finishes a project, the client is often horrified to discover that the agency has abandoned him to navigate the scary rapids of finding an agent who will submit the manuscript to publishing houses all over the country.
Virtually all publishers refuse to read an unpublished work that hasn't been submitted by a licensed literary agent on behalf of the author. The literary agent acts as a filter and screens out hopeless literary efforts beyond the abilities of any ghostwriter unless he moonlights as a miracle worker who can turn an Area Code into the Da Vinci Code.
Unlike large ghostwriting firms, which spend more money on overhead and their executives' salaries than on marketing their clients' work to prospective agents and publishers, Frank Sanello & Associates continues to work closely with clients after the book has reached the final draft stage and client and ghostwriter begin the arduous pursuit of the Holy Grail, a book deal. In addition to the client's initial advance or upfront payment, which at major publishing houses ranges from $20,000 to $40,000, the client can expect to earn an additional 10 to 15 percent of retail sales.
Frank Sanello & Associates will provide you with an estimate of the fee it will charge you depending on what stage your book is at. A completed or nearly completed manuscript that needs just a bit of tweaking and some additional writing to bring it up to publishing standards will cost less.
A greater fee will be charged for whipping into shape disorganized notes jotted down on cocktail napkins, transcripts of the client's dictation into a tape recorder or taped phone conversations between the client and ghostwriter, and vague ideas that the client needs the guidance of a professional author to turn into a marketable product.
At no cost to the prospective client, Frank Sanello & Associates will provide a written estimate and an extensive analysis of your book, screenplay, novel, handwritten notes, and tape recorded ideas within seven business days. For an estimate, email Frank Sanello & Associates the work you've done so far on your project by emailing the firm at FSanello@aol.com. Please type SUBMISSION or FEE ESTIMATE in the Subject: box. Thank you.
A journalist for the past 35 years, Sanello has written articles for the Washington Post, the New York Times Syndicate, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, Redbook, People, US Weekly, and Penthouse. Cosmo and other magazines have excerpted his books.
Sanello was formerly a film reviewer and entertainment reporter for the Los Angeles Daily News, People, US Weekly, and the Chicago Tribune, and a business reporter for UPI.
The author graduated cum laude with a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Chicago and earned a master's degree from UCLA's film school.
Sanello's blog, PoliticallyImpolite.com, deals with such controversial issues as why gays in the military secretly love the Pentagon's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy and the real reason the U.S. Department of Defense has finally decided to repeal the ban on gays serving openly in the military.
Other columns posted on PoliticallyImpolite.com offer an alternate insight into why pedophiles commit their monstrous crimes, and the shocking revelation that the rate of new cases of HIV-infection is greater in some areas of the U.S. than in sub-Saharan Africa.
The author is a regular contributor to the on-line magazine, Suite 101.com. His articles there can be found at http://www.suite101.com/pages/article_list.cfm.
Sanello holds a purple belt in Tae Kwon Do and has volunteered at AIDS Project Los Angeles as a self-defense instructor for victims of AIDS- and fag-bashing.
The author lives in West Hollywood, California, and invites readers to contact him at FSanello@aol.com.
