We take that seriously. Straw Dogs builds the one people are still quoting two years later—the one that fills speaking calendars, and opens doors you didn't know existed.
There are two ways. Most of what's published is the first kind. We make the second.
01—The Book Most Experts Write
Fill the pages with what you already know. Outline from the bullet points of your talk. Hire someone to "polish" your existing thinking. The book ships quickly, sells modestly, and disappears from the conversation way too fast. The author is briefly proud. The publisher is briefly disappointed. The reader, mostly, is briefly bored.
02—The Book We Build With You
An argument the reader can't refute, a transformation the reader can feel, and a framework the reader can carry into their own life or work. This book takes longer and asks more of its author. It's also the one people are still quoting two years later, the one that fills speaking calendars, and the one that opens doors you didn't know existed.
AI is about to create the greatest sea of sameness we've ever experienced. How do you rise above that and stand out? You engage the Four Narrative Engines.
Without a gap between what is and what should be, the reader's brain never engages. We open with tension, not information.
The reader must see themselves in the protagonist's position before transformation—or they observe the book instead of entering it.
Not new information. A new answer to who am I. The books that change people make the old version of the reader impossible to return to.
Without felt consequence, a book is an anecdote. With it, the book becomes an argument the reader makes to themselves about why they have to act.
Over thirty trade nonfiction titles across leadership, sales, marketing, sports performance, behavioral change, and memoir. A representative selection below—multiple FranklinCovey co-authorships, several forthcoming 2026 titles, and a memoir from one of the most quoted attorneys in the country.
FranklinCovey
Pamela Fuller · Mark Murphy · Anne Chow
Former CEO, AT&T Business · Wall Street Journal Bestseller
FranklinCovey
Todd Davis
Chief People Officer, FranklinCovey · Fifteen practices for relationships at work
FranklinCovey
Scott Jeffrey Miller
Sixty transformative insights from leading minds
FranklinCovey
Sandy Rogers · Leena Rinne · Shawn Moon
Cracking the code to customer devotion
Memoir
Diana Cannon Ragsdale
A literary family memoir
Sports · Mental Performance
Luke Falk
Former NFL Quarterback · Mental-Strength Coach
Forthcoming · 2026
Jay Schwedelson
Marketing truths, career moves, and life advice for doers
Forthcoming · 2026
Jason Stacy
Performance coach to Aryna Sabalenka and the WTA tour
Memoir
John Morgan
Founder, Morgan & Morgan · America's largest plaintiffs' firm
Other recent and ongoing work includes Automating Thoughtfulness (Jay O'Brien & Jeff Jackel, co-founders of Client Giant); Management Mess to Leadership Success, Marketing Mess to Brand Success, Career on Course, and Parenting Wrong Turns, Right Lessons (Scott Jeffrey Miller, FranklinCovey); Who Rocked the Boat and Change (Curtis Bateman, FranklinCovey); The Entrepreneur's Paradox (Curtis Morley); Deliver (Hill, Jones, Corbridge); The Ultimate Guide to Great Mentorship (Scott Jeffrey Miller); Hidden Value (Dr. Keith Keating); and additional 2026 titles in development.
Some authors finish in three months; others take a year and a half. Some hire us to architect a manuscript and walk away. Others stay through publication, the podcast tour, and the second book. You decide—and we stay with you all the way.
The Engagement
We accelerate when you need us to. We slow down when you need us to. We bill by the hour and invoice weekly—so you see what we did, where it landed, and what comes next. And most importantly, if you have a publisher's deadline, we'll meet it.
The Spectrum
Every author arrives in a slightly different place. Some can write and need a light editor. Some can draft to the three-yard line and need someone to run it in. Some need a thought partner who pulls the book out of them. Some need the architecture only—and take it from there.
Books are platforms, not endpoints. The pieces below are the work most authors didn't know was available—offered because our expertise runs deeper than ghostwriting.
The Structural Difference
Most ghostwriting firms operate on a generalist-plus-network model. A salesperson signs you. A project manager checks in. A contracted writer somewhere—often one you'll never speak to—drafts your book. We don't work that way. The people you engage with at the beginning are the people who write the book. No salesperson, no project manager, no anonymous subcontractor between you and the work. We are a boutique firm with a handful of clients, nearly all of them referrals. That allows us to do more.
For 80% manuscripts that aren't landing.
You don't need a full ghostwriter. You have a manuscript that's eighty percent there—drafted by you, by a coauthor, or by an AI that produced something that reads exactly like AI. We diagnose what's wrong (missing argument, broken character logic, no felt stakes) and rebuild what isn't earning the page. Structural repair. Voice reconstruction. Story insertion. The fastest path back to a manuscript a publisher wants to see again.
For books with a film or series future.
Platte is a credited screenwriter on Lionsgate's The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (2024 · 92% Critics / 97% Audiences), with active film representation through Plain Text Talent in Hollywood. Authors whose books have a film or series future engage us through the architecture stage to ensure the manuscript is built with adaptation in mind—and to position the work for the right Hollywood ear when ready.
Tools that transform organizations.
Three decades of curriculum design for FranklinCovey, VitalSmarts (Crucial Conversations), ZengerFolkman, and more—building world-class programs delivered to millions across six continents. When your book leads to a workshop, a cohort program, an assessment, or an online course, the architect of the book is the architect of the curriculum. Same source. Same designer. No handoff.
No salesperson hand-off. No anonymous subcontractor in another time zone. Every Straw Dogs project is run end to end by the two people below.
Principal · Lead Writer
The credited screenwriter on the 2024 Lionsgate feature The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (92% Critics, 97% Audiences), the novelist behind the Bad Unicorn trilogy at Aladdin / Simon & Schuster (250,000+ copies, distributed internationally), and the ghostwriter for over thirty nonfiction titles for executives, founders, and category-defining experts.
Before ghostwriting full-time, Platte built behavioral curriculum for FranklinCovey, VitalSmarts, and ZengerFolkman, and served as Chief Learning Officer for a B-to-B training company partnered with Tony Robbins. That instructional-design background is the engine under the architecture—he writes books that change how the reader behaves after closing the cover.
Currently authoring Author Unknown: Why Some Stories Change People and Most Don't and hosting the Author Unknown podcast. An active Hollywood WGA member; B.S. in Philosophy, M.S. in English / Instructional Technology.
Senior Writer
The second pair of expert hands on every Straw Dogs project. Her work spans content development, editorial, training design, scripting, and the production work that takes a manuscript past its first printing—workshop materials, launch copy, podcast scripts, cohort curriculum.
Recent and ongoing client work includes Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi (Mastermind.com), Jason Stacy (The Pressure Code), Luke Falk (The Mind Strength Playbook), and others across the firm's nonfiction roster. Trained inside the same behavioral-curriculum tradition that built the shop, with a working fluency in adult-learning design alongside a sharp editorial ear. The result is structural rigor at draft speed.
On a typical engagement, Kennidy partners with Platte from architecture through delivery. B.A. in English Language and Literature, Utah State University.
30+
Trade nonfiction titles
Leadership, sales, sports, behavior, memoir
250K+
Copies sold (Simon & Schuster)
Bad Unicorn trilogy · distributed internationally
92%
Critics—Lionsgate feature, 2024
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
30
Years of curriculum design
FranklinCovey · VitalSmarts · ZengerFolkman, and others
“Facts inform. Meaning transforms. The gap between the two is closeable not by talent, but by architecture.”
— Platte F. Clark
Whichever path you pick, the advice you leave with is good—whether we work together or not.
A twenty-question assessment that returns a written read of your authority profile—your Primary and Secondary types, and the kind of book those styles produce together.
Two hours of preparatory analysis followed by a one-hour live session. You leave with a defensible next move—on a manuscript, a book proposal, a narrative, or a training concept.
Book your session ↗The full Straw Dogs read on a draft manuscript. Four components, delivered as one engagement:
Start a Project
A book deal, a draft, an idea on a napkin, or just the conviction that you want to write something that stands the test of time. We'll listen, ask the questions that matter, and help you craft a message that rises to the level of your expertise.