"The Wages of Sin"

written by Francois Bloemhof

This one has a somewhat complicated back story. In early June of 2024, EQMM editor Janet Hutchings told me that a translation planned for the January/February 2025 issue had fallen through, and she needed something to take its place ASAP. I reached out to a couple of people I'd translated before to see if they had anything for me to look at, and Francois Bloemhof — a South African writer whose story "Proof" I translated for the July/August 2018 issue — sent me a story I thought would work for Janet. She authorized me to do the translation, and when I had it ready and had gotten Francois' approval, I submitted it on June 24.

Almost immediately, I got a response from Janet saying she was sure she'd read this story before and asking me to stay tuned. Barely fifteen minutes later, she wrote me again to tell me that she'd gone into her files and found Francois' own translation of the story, which he'd submitted to her himself back in 2018, and that she'd turned it down because, though she liked the story, she didn't think the English was good enough. (Amazing that she remembered a rejected submission six years later and was able to find it so quickly!)

Now that she saw the story again, though, translated not by Francois this time but by me, she thought it was right for the magazine and accepted it. All this, from Francois' approval of my translation through the back and forth with Janet to her acceptance, happened on the same day, June 24, far and away the fastest I've ever gotten an acceptance from EQMM.

Meanwhile, after thirty-three years as editor-in-chief, Janet retired from EQMM in November 2024, and the January/February 2025 issue — which is technically the magazine's one-thousandth (counting the last several years' bimonthly issues as two each) — was her last. It would have been sweet to have one of my own stories in Janet's final issue, but I'm happy to be represented with a translation.

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