Todd’s Ghostwriting Samples

Excerpt from Biola Shofu’s upcoming memoir, Sheltered:

SHELTERED

by Biola Shofu and Todd Klick

PROLOGUE

ESCAPE

I have only minutes left — a brief sliver of time between life and death. My heart pounds. My breath quickens. Fear traces a cold finger up my spine. He suspects, my mind warns. He’ll return and pounce on me when I step outside. He’ll drag me back to that terrible place…and this time I won’t be able to talk him out of it.

I have to refocus. Will Erin come, like we planned? What if her car broke down? What if Los Angeles’s notorious traffic delayed her? I don’t have a cell phone to call her — he took it: my husband, the same man authorities once imprisoned for stabbing his ex-girlfriend with a kitchen knife. But he was kind and sweet when I first met him, before I knew his history. He was a professional-level bicyclist. He attended church with me. He promised he wasn’t that “other person” anymore. I believed him, an ex-con, with my whole heart. What was I thinking? How could I have trusted a man who had, just recently, tightened a leather belt around my neck until I couldn’t breath. As I struggled to keep conscious that terrifying night, in the back of his van, he asked if my children would miss me when I was gone. “After you die,” he whispered in an eerily calm voice, “I’m going to hang myself from a tree.” Jesus! I screamed in my mind during those horrifying moments — I couldn’t let my husband know my fear, though. Fear would fuel his intent. Willing my eyes to remain emotionless, I screamed, silently, in my mind again. The intensity of my plea, my final hope, curdled my blood — JESUS! PLEASE HELP ME, I’M NOT READY TO LEAVE MY KIDS!

My panicked eyes flick towards the clock — 10:28 am. Cold sweat streams down the sides of my ribs. It’s almost time. My senses heighten. I hear the traffic outside with amplified precision. Is that him driving back early? My palms ache from my fingernails carving crescent moons into them. It’s not him, Biola, calm down. I smell the bouquet of potpourri lingering inside the gallery. It will hurt to leave this place. Eight Ladies Galleries was my dream job. I had tried for years to sell my artwork here and had finally succeeded. But now the opportunity will be stripped away forever. Don’t think about that now, I scold myself. I can’t let anyone at work suspect what I’m about to do. Must appear calm on the outside. Conflicting thoughts intrude though: Should I go through with my plan after all? Fleeing now means leaving behind my entire world: my laptop, which holds years of business ideas and family photos; my journal, my clothes, too. He has everything now. He, the strangler, who will soon return.

How did I get to this point? Why me? What caused this to happen? I had been a young woman of esteem in my village in Nigeria. I had been well-educated and a fashion model. I had been a graphic designer in London. Now I was a forty-four year old homeless mother of three living in the back of a van with a homicidal maniac. This was not supposed to be my life. What caused all this? Even if I did manage to escape him unharmed today, would I tumble back into the same damning pattern again with another man? — the same pattern I’ve repeated over and over, in escalating, unraveling, increments? What is it in me that keeps attracting this? Maybe I’ll escape him today, but will I ever escape it?

A memory flickers, like a past image grasped by a drowning victim. For an instant I see an idyllic foster home nestled in an English countryside. It’s the house where I was raised until the age of six. It stands vivid and white in front of me. Caucasian and Nigerian children laugh and play in the front yard. I smell the mowed green grass and fragrant flower beds. My mind’s eye is drawn to the house’s second story window — the black window pane, behind which, the dark secret is kept.

I push the thought away. No time for that now. Must stay on course. The gallery clock now shouts 10:30am. This is my absolute last chance. It’s now and forever.

Erin, where are you?

– END EXCERPT –

Excerpt from Mike Taylor’s upcoming book, Making A Splash. Mike is the first person to swim the English Channel with multiple sclerosis.

MAKING A SPLASH

by Mike Taylor and Todd Klick

CHAPTER ONE

The swarm of national and local television cameras that surrounded me was electric. Reporters, holding out microphones, asked rapid-fire questions. Journalists scribbled my every word into their flip-over notebooks. They wanted to know how it felt, what it was like, how it was done. They wanted to know how a man, without the use of his legs, defied the odds to become the first person with multiple sclerosis to take part in a historic swim across the English Channel. They wanted to know how the seemingly impossible became possible. Someone with my kind of disability wasn’t supposed to be able to conquer the Mount Everest of long distance swims. Yet here was proof sitting before them.

Photographer’s captured my exhilaration — a beaming face later set to newsprint. But what their lenses failed to catch that sunny day, was the adversity, surprises and pebble-bottomed low points that led to that singular moment –- and the tremendous peaks and valleys that would follow.

If you would have told me six years earlier that in just a short span of time I would lose the use of my legs, I would’ve said you were mad. I was invincible, full of overflowing possibilities. It was the dotcom-boom decade in London. On the radio you’d hear Oasis, Blur, Pulp and Ocean Colour Scene. You saw the start of leggings, flares, boy bands, raves, US Grunge and Sunny Delight. And what Londoner my age couldn’t recite The Fresh Prince of Bel Air rap? It was good times, and I was living downtown — the center of it all. I was your typical rambunctious 26-year-old who played rugby, cricket, drove motorbikes, wind surfed, skied, rowed, and scuba dived. You name it, I gave it a go. Sports mad and hungry for life, that was me. In addition, my graphic design career was taking off. One of London’s largest design companies hired me to work on global projects for Blue-Chip companies like Shell Oil and IBM. I was on top of the world and the view was fantastic. Little did I know that soon the view would, literally, become clouded.

Six months before embarking on a solo adventure to see the world, I was working late on an important design project when something peculiar happened. It was as if someone had placed a piece of tracing paper over my left eye. I tried rubbing and blinking it away, but I couldn’t remove the foggy obstruction.

Visiting the doctor, I learned I had optic neuritis, an inflammation of the eye nerve. After a couple of steroid treatments, the inflammation vanished as quickly as it came. No big problem, I thought, and off I went as normal, preparing for my much anticipated holiday trip.

My first stop on my global adventure was Los Angeles where I stayed with my mate, Chris Vincent. Chris was a track and field athlete who had competed for UCLA. Wanting to fit in some exercise during my visit, Chris and I decided to go for a run. After about twenty minutes, however, my left leg started dragging. That’s odd, I thought. Chris asked what was wrong. Assuming the limp was from an old sport’s injury, I stopped and rested for about five minutes. When the leg returned to normal, we resumed our run. No big deal.

The next incident happened five months later in South Africa. Strapping oxygen tanks to my back, I bounded down to the ocean to do a little scuba diving when my left leg suddenly gave way again. Oops, I thought, and waited for the leg to return to normal. When it did I pushed the episode out of my mind and continued on with my dive.

Months later, the limp reappeared, but this time more pronounced. So I visited my old sport’s physical therapist, Dr. Alan Watson. He put my body into various Yoga-like configurations. In one position in particular, my body collapsed, as if a power line had been cut inside me. Concerned, Dr. Watson ordered an MRI, so I returned to my optic neuritis doctor for that procedure. When the results came back, the doctor showed me an X-ray that featured tiny lesions on my brain. “I’m sorry to tell you, Mister Taylor,” he said, “you have multiple sclerosis.” And with that he sent me away without any further information about the disease, or an explanation of what to expect. Now, bear in mind, in those days the internet wasn’t up and running. I had access to very little information. All I have is a mild limp, I thought. No problem. The Mike Taylors of this world don’t get diseases. I was destined to live a full, successful, healthy life. Nothing could get in the way of that.

Or so I thought.

– END EXCERPT –

Read an excerpt of Todd’s bestselling book Something Startling Happens: The 120 Story Beats Every Writer Needs To Know.