Sando MacSpan has been no stranger to the press in recent months. His controversial literary re-working of the Christian Bible's New Testament has attracted plenty of headlines. In case you've missed the hype, the novel recounts the story of Jesus as a thriller in which the Messiah is sexually abused as a child by a mysterious traveller. Christ then grows up swearing revenge on his attacker, spending years hunting him down before brutally massacring him along with several members of his family. Here's an excerpt:

He could still remember it, the day the bad man hurt him in the bad place. It was why he too now did bad things. Bad things like what the bad man did to him all those years ago. He didn't want to do it to other kids, but he couldn't help it, not until he could get his revenge anyway. Only then, only when he saw the bad man's blood flowing down the hill the way his tears might have done if he had lived near a hill at the time, only then could he stop revisiting his own terrible fate onto others.

The Picasso Cipher is just the latest in a long line of thrillers set in the biblical world to hit the headlines, such as the many famous titles by author Dan Brown. Mr MacSpan responded to claims of sensationalism and exploitation last week by erecting a 20ft statue of Jesus being given a blow job by some children outside his home, along with a poster displaying his current asking price for interviews.

This week we're proud, humbled and more than a little astonished to present the bravery of one Miss Pam Philth in the form of Chapter A from her forthcoming book, a partially fictionalised autobiographical novella with pictures. She was only seven for Christ's sake.

I think I'll probably always remember the first time my uncle's friend abused the shit out of me. I was seven years old and he had promised to take me for a quick pint on the way to the dog track. We were walking across the road to the pub and all of a sudden he grabbed me and dragged me back onto the pavement. I started screaming and screaming of course, ran all the way home and told my mum. She phoned the police straight away and he wasn't allowed to come near me after that. It sickens me to this day that even now he can't admit what he did, he just keeps saying he saved me from being hit by a car or something.

He Did It To Me When I Was Seven is being released by Accessible Abuse Publications later this millennium.

So I was talking to Claire and she kept going on about how I should definitely wear at least two bracelets to that work thing later in the month and I can kind of see what she means but at the same time I don't want to come across all kind of accessories and spangles and blah blah blah. So instead I thought I might just go for the pink underwired corset smock and kaftan overcoat with built in hairnet paired with my groin, nipple and arse-cheek free leotard but now I'm a bit worried about whether or not that says too much "hey I'm totally into all fashion and coolness and things". So maybe I should just paint my toes and fingernails a kind of opaque indigo yellow and then TATTOO a pair of BLOATED FUCKING BALLS on my LEFT CHEEK and then RAM a gleaming 6ft ENAMELED SPIKE 100% OF THE WAY UP MYSELF.

That was an excerpt from Haisie Tumquack's forthcoming novel Oh My God What Am I Going To Wear To That Work Thing Later This Month?????

This week's treat is a sneak preview of Nark Baxter's forthcoming novel:

  Hangman Sun
- a tale of love, death and leprosy of the mind

1.

  The crueller sun rose, like a hangman polishing his mask with the blood of a wrongly convicted dead man's dog.  It was Tuesday.  Fucking Tuesday.  Mother-fucking Tuesday.  Cock-sucking Tuesday, the jaggiest turd of all the days of the week, of all seven.  This was to be the day.  Today, Tuesday, would be the day it would happen, come to pass if you will, or even if you won't, for there could be no respite from it, no escape, no way out, no chance for an evasion of the inevitable outcome of what simply had to happen this day.

  He shook his head with the precision of a darts supremo stroking himself with last night's spent flights; finished, sticky.  His love affair of a haircut vaguely resembled a policeman's guilt, he suggested as he regarded himself sarcastically in the hallway mirror.  "I'M SO FUCKING COMFORTABLE" he shouted to the retrospective furnishings in his (1970s) Blackpool-style bathroom as he prepared to thrash himself mentally with a few rounds of solitaire on his Elvis-shaped laptop computer.  He had to be sharp, on the ball, fighting fit brain-wise for today's confrontation battle.  This was the only way he would possibly survive the draining and exhausting rigours of what was awaiting him to come.

  "Don't let him inside your humour", he kept reminding himself; that's when he gets you, sinks his teeth in like a newly ordinated priest blessing the water for his first and last exorcism before leaving the priesthood for a frustrated life of deliberation and shoplifting.  He practised for a while: "Good morning doctor, I want you to prescribe me a stronger inhaler, yes that's right, a stronger inhaler, please?"  He'd better be a bit fucking more aggressive than that when it came to it, he thought before finally deciding to discard the paper hankie he had been using for the last week or so, and replace it with a fresh one; it seemed appropriate given the circumstances and anyway, it had begun to smell a bit weird since he'd used it to mop up a small amount of milk from the worktop on Friday.

Read more at the hangman sun blog