Unless you’re one of the Bah Humbug brigade, you might have noticed Chrimbo (Christmas) is coming!

And I promised you faithfully that once Rosie was out there normal service would be resumed on this blog.

Come closer because do I have a Chrimbo treat for you.

Meet the beautiful, the talented, the wonderful award winning author Tamara Ward who has come along to talk about Christmas poo. Yes, poo. Tamara’s one of those people who looks perfectly normal, sounds perfectly normal… Until… you read her books. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read one of her heroines and shook my head at the situations she gets them into and howled with laughter. And that’s the thing about Tamara she makes us laugh. If you’ve never read her then you are in for a treat!

Take it away, Tamara!

I’ve always loved a good prank. Perhaps it was bred into me as I come from a family of pranksters. Having a prank pulled on you meant you were loved.

My prankster training began when I was young; my mom encouraged me to put toothpaste and tape on my father’s face as he napped on the couch. That was before I whipped mud into a glass of water and presented it to my dad as chocolate milk. I remember the moment, my dad outside in the dry New Mexico heat, his face sweaty, the look he gave me when he thought I cared so much for him that I mixed up a cool treat especially for him, his eyes surprised at my thoughtfulness and full of love. (That look made me abort the prank before he tasted the beverage, so instead of getting a spanking I escaped with a glare, my gut twisting with guilt.)

No, I’m not sweet. And it was good that my dad learned this early in my childhood so I could get the disappointment over with sooner, rather than later.

As a teen, my dad and brother ganged up on my boyfriends, feeding them plastic burgers and asking them how they liked them, pulling the boys in a tube behind our boat, promising they’d give the boys a fun ride when really they had the boys clinging to the tube handles while they were hurled around at breakneck speeds. They boys would call me to complain of whiplash when they woke up the next morning! And of course I played along.

After I moved out of my parents’ house, my history of pranks continued and expanded beyond those involving family members. I met a friend who liked pulling pranks as much as me. Once, we taped paper over a cute boy’s apartment door and filled up the space between the door and the paper with popcorn. When he opened the door the following morning all the popcorn cascaded into his living room. Nothing says “I like you” like a mess on the carpet as you’re hurrying out of your apartment late for a class.

As for Christmas pranks, my brother began our family’s tradition of passing the Christmas poo along with a prank holiday gift. Actually, that was his gift to me one year, a Christmas poo on a keychain. That is, South Park’s Mr. Hankey, THE Christmas Poo, on a keychain. According to South Park, Mr. Hankey, the Christmas poo, “comes out of the toilet every year,” visiting girls and boys who have fiber in their diets.

At the time my brother gifted me Mr. Hankey on a keychain, I found that particular episode of the crude, politically incorrect South Park pretty funny. So did my brother. But a plastic turd on a keychain – what was my brother thinking? How could he possibly think I’d want something like that for Christmas? So the next year I returned his gift to him, along with another prank gift. And back and forth it went. One year, my brother gave me a shirt with his photo on it. The poo keychain had been wrapped inside the shirt. The next year I gave him a shirt with a photo of me wearing the shirt with his photo on it, as well as Mr. Hankey.

Another year, I recorded my cat meowing on one of those handheld recorders. (Pepper used to be my brother’s cat, but the cat ultimately chose me over my bro as I didn’t throw it down the stairs and see if he stuck the landing repeatedly.) It took days of following my cat around and working up to about 30 minutes of cat noise. I taped the recorder in a sizable cardboard box and hit the “play button” when I was about to reach my folks’ house. Then I turned on one of those battery-operated balls that rolls around randomly. I sealed the box and pretended nothing was up, stuck the box under my folks’ tree, and watched my brother freak out as he heard the meows and saw the box moving. He really thought I was returning his cat to him! Nope. It was just the Christmas poo.

Another year, my brother returned Mr. Hankey to me by placing him inside my baby’s diaper and having my mom tell me my baby smelled like he needed a change. I opened the diaper, and there was Mr. Hankey! This year, it’s my turn to give Mr. Hankey back to my bro. He and his wife are expecting their firstborn, and in anticipation of this event I kept some flyers I found particularly helpful from when I was figuring out how to handle a baby. One of those flyers is entitled “Poops of the Breastfed Baby” and is a glossy, full-color flyer showing photographs of baby poops. Each photo has a caption explaining what you’re seeing. So there’s, “Sometimes baby’s first poop is black and tarry.” And “Breastfed babies’ poop is often yellow and runny.” There’s at least a dozen photographs. I framed the flyer and taped Mr. Hankey to the glass on the front. 😀 Hope my bro appreciates all the poo that will be coming his way, and soon.

Speaking of Christmas pranks, my latest release features just that (though nothing nearly as disgusting as Christmas poo). In Jade O’Reilly and the 12 Days of Christmas, private investigator Jade O’Reilly thought her worst Christmas dilemma involved finding the perfect gift for her significant other. That was before she agreed to help Agnes Sturgis, the crankiest old biddy in all of Sweetwater, NC. Every day, for the twelve days leading up to Christmas, Agnes wakes up to a yard filled with Christmas decorations. But in Agnes’s opinion, “they’re not decorations; they’re property damage!”

Finding the person responsible for the scenes of yuletide merriment that Agnes demolishes every morning is not easy. With stealth and skill that rival Santa’s elves, the decorator strikes Agnes’s yard and eludes Jade and her surveillance equipment. Will Jade catch the decorator before Christmas morning?

The ebook is available in all formats for $0.99! Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, Kobo

So, do you have any good pranks, Christmas or otherwise, to share? Let me know! I’ll be dropping by before and after my Sisters in Crime meeting today, and I can’t wait to hear any naughty or nice pranks that have made an impact on those around you!

Drum roll, foot stomp for Tamara Ward, ladies and gentlemen!

Thank you for coming on my blog today. Please come back, we’re a lovely bunch!