"The Candy-Factory Girls"

by Tessa de Loo

This time EQMM editor Janet Hutchings contacted me, rather than the other way around as usual, and told me that she'd gotten a submission from Dutch author Tessa de Loo's British agent. The story was in Dutch, of course, and Janet asked me to read it and see if I thought it would be right for the magazine's "Passport to Crime" feature.

I read the story, and loved it, and told Janet I would be eager to translate it — but, I said, it's really not a crime story. When I outlined the plot for her, she told me she thought it did sound suitable, so I translated it and she bought it — and even put Tessa's name on the cover of the issue.

I was kind of hoping this one wouldn't come out for another couple of months, so that I could claim to have had my work published in the pages of EQMM during six consecutive decades — a string of publications only a couple of other authors have achieved. Ah, well, I guess I've got 10 years in which to write something else!....

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