A Stitch in Time »

Marshall Ian Key, who also goes by the alias Marsh Alien in order to avoid certain creditors related to the gaming industry, is a writer of comic romances. Some of them occasionally contain sexual material. Not so frequently that you would actually want to read them for that purpose, but often enough they you might not want your thirteen-year-old reading them at all. Up to you, though. Mr. Key worked as an organ grinder, an itinerant peddler, and a fishmonger before finally discovering a career suited to the present century. He currently resides outside a large Eastern metropolis in the United States. He enjoys skiing, fishing and white water canoeing. He can’t actually do any of them; he just likes the idea of them.

Patrick Sterling, a shy fifteen-year-old in a tight-knit family, dreams of attending the University of Virginia and, maybe, of asking his sister’s friend, Cammie, on a real date. But he’s in far too much of a hurry. When he accidentally meets Santa Claus in the men’s room of a mall, he wishes he could skip ahead three years, and avoid all the mess of high school.

On Christmas morning, he gets his wish. He is now eighteen year old “Trick,” a senior jock content to skip college and bed one babe after another. And he’s horrified--his family is rapidly unraveling, his friends have deserted him, and the first time he sees Cammie, she flips him the bird.

He has one semester left to stitch his family back together.

And get A’s in all of his courses to make it into college.

And pitch his baseball team to victory.

And understand Judaism.

And get his sisters dates for the prom.

Oh, and try to get Cammie to pull that pejorative finger back down...