Story notes for "Loving North" by Resonant First posted to Ex-Wood on December 2, 2001
Most of my Due South stories are, to borrow Ces's phrase, "love songs to Ray." But this one's definitely a love song to Fraser.
"Loving North" was inspired primarily by the Kathleen Raine poem that begins it and ends it. (That's the whole poem, by the way; I found it in Scottish Love Poems: A Personal Anthology, edited by Antonia Fraser, which I love.) The Due South connection clicked in my head when Otsoko responded to a Yukon vs. Territories thread on the DS_Asylum mailing list by saying that Fraser's Northernness transcends geography, and that the key thing about him is that the North made him.
Ces gave me a tremendous amount of help in the early stages on this one -- starting when she read what I thought was a finished draft and gently pointed out that it was more like an outline. She made it up to me, though, by saying those three little words I so love to hear: "Needs more sex." (She's the reason this one comes so quickly on the heels of "Sixteenth of June," too -- I had to finish it fast for fear it would decide it wanted to run away and live with her instead. )
I'm also grateful to Livia and Gearbox for terrific and thoughtful betas.