And so here were are again, in the fading months of the year. Here in the northern hemisphere, the land is going dormant, the sun rises later and sets earlier each day, and bears are adding a final layer of fat in preparation for the long winter that lies ahead. It is a cycle that repeats, like a chant or a mantra, om mani padme om, into perpetuity.

The power of repetition cannot be overstated. A child learns to speak through repetition. It is endless repetition of a strand of DNA, with minor genetic changes, that produced every creature on this planet. Like the chorus of a song, repeating themes echo through much of our lives on earth. Repetition is routine, and routine can be comfort. In our November issue, InTheFray magazine would like to explore some of the repetition that can be found all around us, and what happens when we break those repeating patterns. Think broadly about the idea, examine it from all angles, and pitch us a story.

Contributors interested in pitching relevant news features, poetry/fiction, cultural criticism, commentary pieces, personal essays, visual essays, travel stories, or book reviews should e-mail us at chorus-at-inthefray-dot-org. Send us a well-developed, one-paragraph pitch for your proposed piece NO LATER THAN OCTOBER 15, 2009. First-time contributors are urged to review our submissions guidelines at http://inthefray.org/submit and review recent pieces published in InTheFray Magazine at http://inthefray.org.

Aaron Richner I am a writer/editor turned web developer. I've served as both Editor-in-chief and Technical Developer of In The Fray Magazine over the past 5 years. I am gainfully employed, writing, editing and developing on the web for a small private college in Duluth, MN. I enjoy both silence and heavy metal, John Milton and Stephen King, sunrise and sunset. Like all of us, I contain multitudes.