Wake me up when September ends, dear," she said, and then my mother rolled over and fell asleep amid a drift of comforters and overstuffed pillows. A single red-orange leaf lay beside her pillow, like an alarm clock promising to wake her up when her season came around again. As it happens, this had been one of the better summers that I could remember in my whole life, at least when one considers it a good thing when my mother is awake. After some fifteen years of being my mother, I think she's finally learned to remember that I am human, and mortal, and have limitations. I may be awake when she sleeps away the other three seasons, but once she wakes up, she's *up* until winter comes to town, and sometimes even for a bit after that, since the seasons may shift back and forth a little. There's wiggle room. Some of that wiggle room is why I saw so much of her this summer. I wonder how Summer is doing, honestly, or I would if I really knew him. But he's here now and again to visit with my mother and discuss those things pertaining to their separate domains (it's a lot more than weather, let's just put it like that). She got to be awake because of the drought and unseasonable cold that had some of the maple leaves turning colors early. Everyone else complained and worried, but it made me secretly and selfishly happy, because it meant that for once I got to go on a summer vacation with my mother and my father. Dad and I have always had our own little rituals--and believe me, I use that phrase in the most common and generic sense, not like some of the other mortals who've figured out about Mom and the other seasons would!


Inspiration: "Wake Me Up When September Ends" - Green Day
Story potential: High.
Notes: Not sure if I want the protag YA or not, but either way, lives with parents, interesting seasonal relationship. Stronger story potential because this could be a good seasonal sale.

Raunchy like a hurricane is maybe not the first thing that most people would think when they saw a woman wearing tropical clothing sitting in a chair in the middle of winter, but it's all a matter of perspective. Think of the sand, wear the clothes, imagine hurricanes or both weather and alcoholic varieties, and think of being on a beach. If you lie to your brain convincingly enough, you'll succeed in something. What you succeed in kind of depends on how you've been trained or where your talent is or simply which direction the luck is blowing on that day. Maybe you'll transform the back 40 into a tropical paradise (it's been known to happen--the person in question then went on to have a very, very successful tiki bar in the middle of Wisconsin until the weather wore off). Maybe you'll transport yourself to Fiji without having to pay the extortionate airline fee. Maybe you'll just discover that you can work your way into a state of mind where the weather doesn't affect you. That can be pretty darn useful in some occupations, like snowblower operator on the interstate. Maybe you'll summon up a bronzed cabana boy who wants nothing more than a vacation in a snowy cabin with a cuddly woman. It just depends. One person to try it that I know of got beaned by a flying manta ray. I know that it really depends, is all. On the other hand, it's usually less potentially harmful than some other kinds of magic that people try with a lot less hesitation. Love magic. Employment magic. Healing magic. All of those things have one heck of a lot more possible downsides, again, depending on all the things I mentioned above. It's not like you can open a book to a recipe for something, cast the spell, and get the something. It just doesn't work that way, contrary to all our initial expectations. Frustrates the scientists who try to get some "cross-discipline synergy" working to no end, I'll tell you that.


Inspiration: "Rock You Like a Hurricane" - Scorpions + http://www.flickr.com/photos/closetartist/8477937231/
Story potential: High.
Notes: I like the kind of screwed-up magic realism weirdness of this magical "system." Nice change from the more methodical and reliable kinds usually read about. Could be a whole hell of a lot of fun to write.

Fiddling up a storm. There’s a reason for that expression, and although it may have started with the quick and fickle summer storms that any really well-trained fiddler could call up, it also extends to the big, heavy, man-killing winter storms. When I was just a little girl, not even full grown, my grand-pappy pulled me aside and warned me about what could be fiddled up, and as part of that warning, he taught me how. Storms are some of it. There's other things, too. Many of them even I've been smart enough not to try (like calling up the Devil for a contest, for one!), but I've had a rough life at times and sometimes I've let that make me do things that I wish I could call back. There's no fiddle charm for that one, though. The winter storm I called up, for once, didn’t kill anybody--well, not anybody who didn't deserve it. You could say it saved a bunch of folks, even, and you'd be right. Of course, I think the preacher suspects what happened, since he was there when I called it up, and I know a whole bunch of well-meaning folks keep nagging me to do it again, to play like I did that day of the big snowstorm, the one where there was a jailbreak and that school bus of little kids almost got took. Well enough, and all that, but of course it becomes awkward over time when I keep insisting that I don’t' know what they're talking about and that they hear me play every day. And then it got on YouTube, and the weirdness really started.


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/closetartist/6767805131/
Story potential: High.
Notes: And this is one of those "didn't do any writing all day and mustn't break the chain" freewriting ideas. Yeah. Well, whatever gets the job done.

I stay away from the jar of flies she keeps in every room. They're her spies, and they buzz in her ears at night when she takes all the jars into her bedroom and lets them fly around while she sleeps. Sometimes this means she knows things she shouldn't. Sometimes it also means she believes her dreams are true. This can be very bad if she has nightmares about betrayals. I suspect that's what happened to my brother. Or maybe he did mean to betray her, to run away, to crush her flies and pull the wings from her ladybugs and overturn her bee hives. I don't know. The flies don't talk to me. I don't want them to. I keep a bird in my room, and I've warned her that sometimes the bird gets out, and if her flies come into my room, they may be eaten. Sometimes flies still come to my room, but not as much as when I was little, when they swarmed in until I had hysterics.

Inspiration: "I stay away" by Alice in Chains on Jar of Flies.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: This is so creepy and--I just want to spend a little more time here, even if it makes my skin itch.

Samedi sat at the crossroads and laughed at her, but she fancied herself a righteous woman with nothing to fear from voodoo devils, so she settled her best church hat square on her head, lifted her chin, and strode out to meet him, a bible in one hand and a pamphlet in the other. "Woman," the Baron said, "why are you here? You are not one of those who comes to me, and you have neither rum nor cigarettes to give me." "Of course I don't," she said firmly, "for they are of the devil. I'm here to talk to you about temperance." Baron Samedi, he reared back in surprise and bellowed a great laugh. "Temperance? Woman, I am the last creature to talk to about temperance!"

Inspiration: Critiquing a quite good Critters story, "The Price of Freedom," about Samedi.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: I do like this. It has the start of a classic folktale setup.

The scarecrow spun on his stick as the wind blew him, his arms pointing whichever way they could. He spun counterclockwise, and the decision was made. It was watched like that by the mice in the fields, those who knew that where the scarecrow's arms blew, there was trouble coming. For all the scarecrows were supposed to be fixed firmly in place, but the wisest of the mice had spoken and said that they must know if the portents were true. There had been blue rot in the corn before it was ripe, the insects had trebled in size, and other portents of doom had been noted in the fields. So the mice swarmed up the scarecrow and chewed through the bindings in the designated places that would make the portents plain. And the scarecrow had spun counterclockwise without pause for the week following, a response so grave that even the wisest of them had stuffed her cheeks with good corn and huddled in the corner, waiting for it to stop. On the eighth day, the scarecrow stopped--

Inspiration: Thinking of autumnal things, like scarecrows.
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: I want this to be higher potential than it is. Alas.