Where the Heart of Anti-Shurtugal Rises Again.

Well, okay, it's not actually "just in" because it happened a while ago, but this is apparently what she had to say when the "venom cock" extract from Touched by Venom became a laughing-stock at a convention back in 2005 or so.

"Uninformed opinions can be so delightfully, outrageously ridiculous, can't they? Haven't got a clue who is saying what about my book, but I'm just chuffed that people are talking about it (though it would be much finer if they were buying it and reading it first... ah, the vagaries of human nature).

To keep it brief: many things inspired me to write the book, (books, actually, as it is a series) but one thing in particular inspires/drives me: how human beings, women and children being my main interest, can survive tragedy and persecution, torture and deprivation--not only survive but continue with life. These things are happening every day, and have happened in our little corner of the world in the not-so-distant past, too. Really, my books are the stories of these people.

I also explore, on the side as it were, the interesting boundaries we human animals draw around the passion-evoking subject of sex. We are a confusing, fascinating, contradictory, terrible and terribly wonderful species."

Well, Ms Cross - having sporked the entire trilogy, my own quite well-informed opinion is that it's repulsive exploitative trash which isn't even particularly original.

(And is it just me or does she sound exactly like Anne Rice throwing a snit fit because people didn't like her latest cheesy gay vampire novel? Though to her credit without 100 odd blatant spelling and grammatical errors).

BONUS: Here's an extract from one of her other books which perhaps mercifully never saw the light of day.

When Karen Morton masturbates, this is what she does.

She chooses a carrot, an organic carrot [this carrot?], from within a cello bag in her fridge. The carrot must not be too slim at the tapered end, or it will break off during its employment (she has learned this through experience, and there is nothing so sensuously dampening as poking around in one's vagina in search of a lost carrot end).

Chosen carrot is then peeled and both ends are chopped off, being that the tapered end occasionally has wispy filaments attached to it and the blunt end is far too reminiscent of manure and farmers' Wellington boots.

SEXY CARROT!