Hello, and welcome to the file room. My name is April. I'm 31, I live on the North Side of Chicago, and I'm a 911 call taker, four nights on and three nights off, which leaves a lot of daylight for writing. These are my due South stories.

I started watching in 1994 because a coworker told me there was a show on CBS about a Mountie who was loose in our city. I figured I'd watch once and laugh. Instead I fell for the whole thing: a polite man in a red coat who honestly believes people are good, a Chicago cop who honestly believes they're not, and a deaf half-wolf who honestly believes in doughnuts. It was filmed in Toronto, and if you live here you can tell (we don't have hills, people), but it always felt like Chicago to me anyway, the cold and the El and the way everybody in the city has an opinion about where to get a beef sandwich.

The show was cancelled more times than I can count, and it kept coming back, which is a very Fraser thing for a show to do. It finished for good this year after four seasons. I'm not done with it. So here's where I keep Fraser and Dief walking my Chicago, with whichever Ray happens to be driving.

due South and everybody in it belong to Paul Haggis, who created the show, and to the companies that made it. I'm only borrowing them. Nobody pays me for this, and I always put them back where I found them, usually with their boots dried out and something warm in their stomachs. The people who aren't on the show (callers, neighbors, kids with shovels) are mine. Please don't put my stories on another site without asking me first. I'll probably say yes. I just like to know where they've gone.

I don't write anything above PG. If that's what you're looking for, there are other places, and I won't be offended, but you won't find it here.

I like both Rays. I'm not taking sides, and I'd be grateful if you didn't write to tell me which one I'm supposed to like better. (Three people have. I wrote back nicely.) Ray Vecchio would give you his last ten dollars and then complain about it for a week. Ray Kowalski would chase down the guy who stole your ten dollars and then forget to ask for it back. Fraser needed them both, at different times, and I think we got lucky twice. So I write both, and I'll keep writing both.

Is the 911 operator in your story you? No. She doesn't even have a name. She's every call taker I've ever sat next to. (Also, we say call taker. "Operator" is a phone company word.)

Do you really get calls like that? Every winter. Most of them end fine. That's the part that doesn't make the news.

Will you write Turnbull? I'm trying. He's harder than he looks. It's like trying to write a golden retriever who has memorized the RCMP manual.

Do you write for other shows? Not yet. I have a Homicide idea, but I'd need about three more nights off a week.

You are caller number

since the file room opened in February 1998. Please hold.

Feedback makes my week, and I answer every letter:
[email protected]

Last updated September 19, 1999