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.

"Time is what you make it. Never feel like you're going to break it, because if you feel that you might--well, then you might. But if you don't feel that you might, then you never will. And we hate having to go in and clean up after broken time. It's inevitable, I suppose, with us teaching you young ones how to take care of it, but that doesn't mean it's any fun. Sometimes there are human casualties, and there are *always* causality casualties. All of you will be volunteered to help with a time collapse before you're passed through. It's important to learn what we're trying to avoid, here. And yes, there are natural time collapses, and yes, they can be real buggers about it because they're not as naturally limited in scope as ones caused by kids screwing up something minor. Yes, I'm talking about you. Yes, I know that most of you have degrees and all of you are over the age of majority--like any responsible parent would sign off on a minor--and--yes, you have a question?" "More of a statement, really," he said calmly. "I'm fifteen. Just thought you'd like to know." "Well, yes--what?!--who passed you thorough?" "It was less of a passing and more of a necessity. I was found in one of these disaster zones, and my parents--don't exist anymore. I can hardly remember them, since I was only a toddler. I've been in a special exclusion zone ever since, but they decided that was no longer safe enough for those around me. So they decided to train me instead of kill me." He hesitated. "I think. I suppose it's possible I'll die here or that the killing will still end up being the only option, but they decided to give me a chance first."


Inspiration: "Until the Morning" - Thievery Corporation
Story potential: High.
Notes: I'm giving this story bonus points because it's a possible time-travel/paradox-related story that I actually like. Though I think I'd probably treat it as fantasy instead of SF, if only because time travel is...not very much S, really.

The manor was turned halfway inside-out when the architect died, and so it stayed afterwards, since nobody could figure out what the architect had done or persuade the manor to obey any other spells. This suited the patriarch of the family at the time just fine, since he had hired the architect specifically to create something unusual, and this certainly qualified! At that time, too, the family's finances were more in order and they could afford the extra servants to properly get things done between the two halves and the hazard pay that sometimes became necessary if a servant walked through the wrong door in the wrong phase of time. They posted signs as soon as such things happened, and so the house proliferated with warning labels, but over time this approach was able to reduce the incidence of a disappearance down to one perhaps every ten years, and that was easy enough to blame on a parlormaid running away or footman stealing a piece of jewelry from a guest. The signs stayed up, though, because if it went back to the way it had been it would be much more difficult to--


Inspiration: Today's Google Doodle in honor of Antoni Gaudi.
Story potential: High.
Notes: I like this. It feels whimsically charming. Rather Chrestomanci-esque.

Drifting through the trees, weightless in real time, while around everything else moves in slow-motion. I move slow, but if you glance up, all you'll see is leaves rustling quickly or maybe a flicker of white. It is a frustration, I tell you. I understand why some ghosts start zooming through people, or deliberately creating cold breezes. The strongest can even knock items over. Me? Not so much. But I did learn that I can--age--buildings. I may not be able to grab a can of spray paint and tag anymore, but I can damn well make the bricks age and the mortar chip and the mildew die, leaving "Ghost" behind in its place.

Inspiration: "Aish Tamid" - Matisyahu
Story Potential: High?
Notes: But this is a character. But a teen ghost, who can still do some things--and then something else happens, and he/she is actually called to...could be fun. YA, though, which--gah! can I even write?

Living on the rooftops with the gargoyles and taking care of them was a life, and it was much better than some, he thought. Cleaning moss from their teeth and mildew from inside their ears, reading aloud to them some of the novels people threw out in their trash, and generally keeping an eye on things during the day. Scaring off kids from drawing graffiti on them and the like. The gargoyles were pretty good company, too. During the day, he could stretch out on their stone backs, warmed by the sun, and watch all the people moving around the city below, and at night--well, at night, he was in the safest place in the world. And night was when most of the nasties that might be interested in boys came out, so really, he was doing pretty well. Now and again, the gargoyles would even bring back food for him, mostly even food he could eat. So he was doing pretty well, and life was good, and his only worry was if the gargoyles were serious about him having to go to school once he turned fourteen.

Inspiration: "Chim chiminey, Chim chim cher-ee!"
Story Potential: Medium-high.
Notes: And then something Bad starts to happen to other gargoyles, and it becomes a Dangerous Adventure. This is high potential, I guess, but it's not very original, so I downgraded it.

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"As soon as I turn 18, I'm taking out your plug!" she hissed at her mother. "No more of this! I don't *want* you knowing where I'm going, and I *really* don't like how you moms all got together and shared blueprints so you even know which *room* I'm in--and how could you let each other track your chips? It's totally no fair for you to know if I'm alone in a room with him!"

She glared at her mother from behind her glasses, for ince ignoring the chatstreams and the floating holograms of her friends videos with word-blurbs witing to be actiated. Her mother, in the real world and in the midle, was her unidvided focus.


Inspiration: The Writer's Block Prompt
Potential: Ah, low, I suppose.
Notes: Though I do find it entertaining to extrapolate how different interactions would change with technology. I mean, writers all over the place play with sex and death and entertainment. Less so fights with your mom or other unglamorous things.

She was carving ghoulies out of the dinosaur skulls when her father found her. She thought he'd yell at her, because most of the year he wouldn't even let her touch the bones, but this time he just stopped in the doorway and watched what she was doing. She carefully carved out toothy grins and winking eyes, smiling lips or mouths parted in a howl, ears like curlicues or like trumpets. The knife never got dull, and she thought it was so much better than th knife that she took with her to school to cut her meat and peel apples. "Papa," she asked, "can I have a knife like this to take with me to school?" He went a little white around the eyes, then guffawed, as if it was a surprise to him. "No, dear--"

Inspiration: A website with crafts suggestions for kids. It had suggestions for carving ghosties and ghoulies.
Story Potential: High?
Notes: I thought this wasn't very high, at first, but now I rather like the idea of writing a cheerfully goth little girl who lives in a very peculiar world/society. It's not original, I know, but it *is* endearing.

The bubbles rose to the surface of the pool and burst in great explosions of water that spattered the tiles of the wall and sent chlorine belches into the air. Good thing coach wasn't there to see this; he'd've gone crazy, seeing his nice pool being destroyed like that. Destroyed? Oh, yeah, it wasn't only water that was exploding. Tiles around inside the pool were shattered from the sonic underwater force of the hatching. Long strands of birthing slime floated through the pool. Tom got a lashing of it right across his face and made a screech that I couldn't help laughing at, despite the seriousness of the moment. I mean, here we were about to be parents, sort of, and *he* was the one who sounded like a girl. Of course, it was a nice bonus that--

Inspiration: Pearl Milk Tea (bubble tea)
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: So, two young swimmers find something and bring it back.

The shortcut wasn't working out the way he planned. From the street, it had looked like the back yard opened right out onto the alley, no muss, no fuss. It would be pretty easy to cut across the yard, dodge through the alley, and get home before his ma found out he was gone. Or so he'd thought. He had only made it halfway across the yard, though, when things got...weird. He hadn't expected an old woman to look up from her gardening--he was pretty sure nobody lived in the house, and even if they did, why would they be out gardening at 3 in the morning? He hadn't expected her to give him an odd measuring look before she turned back to her gardening either. He'd figured he was going to get yelled at, for sure, and maybe worse.

Inspiration: Damn kids walking over my lawn.
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: Maybe she needs an adventurous kid who's always poking his nose in the wrong place. Or maybe it's just punishment. Either way, he'll be gone a while, though of course it will still be the same time (almost) as when he left back home.

The dividing engine was a marvelous thing to behold, a creation of steam and iron and magic. It was also scary, at least when one was only a ten-year-old boy who had never expected to be brought before it. It was a great honor, everybody said, but he'd only ever planned on working in his father's shop and being the best student and son that he could be. He hadn't expected to save a boy who nearly fell in front of the automobile of the Prime Minister, and therefor to be brought to the attention of the lords. He had certainly never expected that their capricious reward would be a declaration that he should be Divided, as fit reward for his service above and beyond the expected for his station. It was only children of nobility who were brought before the--

Inspiration: "dividing engine"
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Shades of Philip Pullman.... I don't know what the Dividing Engine does, certainly not that, but I want to find out! Could be a nifty steampunk coming-of-age story.