This month, the Catholic Writers’ Guild is touring Guildie Deanna Klingel’s book, CRACKS IN THE ICE. It has the CWG’s Seal of Approval.
Teaser: Gina Mangalli, niece of a mafia don, has a dream of Olympic Gold as a figure skater. What happens to Gina 
when her dream is lost?
Summary: Gina Mangalli, niece of a mafia don, has a dream of Olympic Gold as a figure skater. What happens to Gina when her dream is lost is what happens to many of our modern-day athletes when they can no longer compete. They lose their identity. Two people who never give up on her are able to turn her to the faith of her childhood, redirect her talents and restore her family.
Awards: It is a Selah Book Awards finalist.
Website: booksbydeanna.com
Excerpt: Dear Diary, All I want is to be in charge of my own life and ice skate. Is that so much to ask? I mean I am fourteen. I think I can be in charge of something. It just isn’t fair. All I want to do is ice skate. Sometimes things happen that have nothing to do with me, but they change things in my life. I don’t think that’s fair. Now, I have all these other things I have to deal with. It makes me mad. Gina, 1954.
Bio: I was a child in a small town in the 50’s. It was a time when kids amused themselves with paper, scissors, magazines, paste, crayons, and books, while listening to the radio. That’s when I wrote and illustrated my first books, lacing the pages together with shoestrings. Writing wasn’t something I dreamed of doing “when I grow up;” it was something I was already doing. I wrote plays for my classmates, wrote for the school newspapers, yearbook, tons of letters of correspondence with relatives and pen pals. I recently found a yellowed poem I wrote for the Michigan State University newspaper. Don’t remember it, but there it is! After I had kids (7) I wrote puppet plays and stories for them, edited school newsletters, and projects, plays and news for Scouts and church. I wrote all the time. I made scrapbooks, diaries, and kept journals. I hadn’t figured out that I was a writer, or an author. That didn’t happen until after the children were grown and I began writing travel books for my grandchildren. Then one day it happened. I woke up and said, “I have a story in my head, and I think it wants to be a book. I guess I’ll try to write a book.”
Buy Link: Available from independent booksellers, as well as online at …
Paperback: http://tinyurl.com/nhp5mgd
Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/qyglhcs
Tweet: We skate deliberately over the wide dangerous cracks, where lesser skaters might fall and never recover. http://tinyurl.com/nhp5mgd #teenfiction
Michael Fraley
Michael Fraley has been editing and posting the CWG Book Blast since 2016. He's adapted the Arthurian portion of Geoffrey of Monmouth's “Histories of the Kings of Britain” to the comic page, has worked in book illustration, graphic design, and has also served as a newspaper columnist. In 2019 the story of his conversion to Catholicism was told in Nancy Ward's book Sharing Your Catholic Faith Story. His primary area of study is in the Jewish roots of the Church, with an emphasis on the Gospel of Matthew and the Epistle of James. He holds a MA in theology from St. Joseph's College of Maine and a BFA in fine art from Indiana University. He can be reached at michael@michaelfraley.com