Toxicoda Reeks and the Cursed Potato

By Jason Tipple

Kids love adventure!
Kids love zany characters!
Kids love crazy humour!
Kids love other kids doing exciting stuff!
Kids love potatos (okay so they don't!)
Kids will love TOXICODA REEKS!

In a strange town called Rusty Springs live people and witches and a talkative chess-playing badger. Ducks play football, rats have televisions and bridges fall out of the sky. Squirrels do magic tricks, witches cast horrible spells and umpteen legends are born at the drop of a hat in Wonderful Grove Park.

When stinky witch 'Toxicoda Reeks' curses young Jack and Ellie's potato, crazy adventures are the result. But at least their Mum is as clever as a calculator with all those extra buttons that no one ever uses!

Crazy adventure story in the equally crazy town of Rusty Springs, suitable for crazy children ages 4 to 10 and crazy adults 24 to 99! Dogs would love it too if they could read.

It's rated 8 out of 10 for humour and 11 out of 10 for craziness!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jason Tipple
• Release date: Dec 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301847983

Jason Tipple

Jason Tipple was born quite near the coast in sunny Norwich in the Summer of 1973. He moved inland to the new city of Milton Keynes at the age of the 8. His love of writing began at school where he wrote fun stories about zany characters and letting his imagination run almost as wild as his hair. At the age of 13 he wrote in an essay about Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice that Mr. and Mrs. Bennet's marriage could only be saved by a novelty 'His and Hers' towel set. Suffice to say this didn't go down too well with the English teacher but it set him on a path towards an interest in expressive writing. Four years later, his 5000 word A-level analytical essay studying the literary structure of the Conan the Barbarian novels by Robert E Howard was heavily frowned on by his teacher for not being about an 'author of suitable literary merit.' That moment convinced Jason only to ever write about subjects that he enjoyed applying his creative mind to. Jason soon began to write humorous tales, sci-fi and fantasy purely for his own enjoyment. The birth of his daughter in 2006 introduced him to children's books for the first time in 20 years. Inspired by the likes of 'the Gruffalo' and 'Mr. Gum', Jason ventured into writing children's books as well as an epic psychological thriller of 120,000 words.

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Toxicoda Reeks and the Cursed Potato

Jason Tipple

Copyright 2012 Jason Tipple

Front cover illustration Copyright 2012 Andrew Kerr

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Dedicated to the man or woman that invented tea

Chapter 1: Toxicoda Reeks

In a strange town called Rusty Springs live people and witches and a talkative chess-playing badger. Ducks play football, rats have televisions and bridges fall out of the sky. Squirrels sometimes do magic tricks, witches cast horrible spells and umpteen legends are born at the drop of a hat in Wonderful Grove Park. But I am jumping way ahead of myself here as usual, so let’s get back to the witches first.

Now there may be only a handful of witches in Rusty Springs (if you had a giant’s hands I mean), but do you know which witch is the wickedest witch in the west? Don’t try asking that question too fast or your tongue might fall out! You don’t know? Well then I will tell you that the worst is a witch by the name of Toxicoda Reeks. And she is an honest to God real proper witch too, not a pretend playtime dress-up make believe just-for-Halloween witch.

She is the wickedest witch in the North, South, East or West - in fact in any direction, including up or down. If she was in a foul mood she might turn you into a dog that looks like a frog or mayk yaw spareling suddunly gow reely bad.

Toxicoda is as skinny as a pencil made from a rotten mushroom and has a face as cold and cruel as snow being tortured on a rusty old barbeque. But can you imagine a grey haired old witch whose smell is so bad that you can actually see it? A thick green cloud, like smoke made from some mouldy cabbage leaves follows her around wherever she goes. If you actually get near her you might even throw up or get poisoned or probably even both!

Even her green dress is the absolute stinksters because she never changes it – ever! She sleeps in her stinky green dress and then wears it again when she gets up - and has done so forever. Now as you know, every witch has a cat but hers is worse than all of them put together. It’s a tabby monstrosity called Sludge who is just as vicious and nasty as its owner.

I would love to tell you that Toxicoda Reeks lives in a beautiful country cottage almost by the sea side but Mummy taught me never to lie. She actually lives in an awful old ruin called Spiderweb Manor. It’s a grubby old building the colour of rotten teeth brushed with old engine oil. Her house sticks out like a wart on a sore thumb, probably because most of the other houses in town are nice and don’t have evil old witches living in them.

In her overgrown garden, eerie scary hairy statues stand watch, but nobody knows what the beasts really look like under all the moss that covers them. The ones whose eyes are not covered in moss keep watch, whilst the others can only see moss and probably think it was an evil never-ending night.

But inside the spooky Manor umpteen rooms full of umpteen books and umpteen cobwebs might make you think that a family of umpteen giant Reading Spiders lived there. Well, they probably do. So nobody much visited the manor, unless they were a family of homeless reading spiders of course. Every room in the manor is full of spell books and musty old furniture – even the bathrooms. In fact Toxicoda had written some of her nastiest spells while sitting on her toilet, but I won’t go into that right now!

All the wallpaper was blood red (or ketchup red for the more faint-hearted) and for anyone still scared by those statues. The sitting room walls were covered with portraits of old and important looking witches in even older picture frames. I don’t know what actually makes a witch important but if someone painted them they must be fairly important. Well has anyone ever done a painting of you and put you in a big gold picture frame? No - I thought not! That’s how important these witches must have been.

Toxicoda lives with her minion, whose name also happened to be Minion. Do you know what a minion is? If you do then you can skip this part - otherwise listen very carefully instead. A minion is a servant-like creature who obeys someone who is more powerful than them. It’s not much of a job really is it? Not like a Doctor or a