Teddy Bears and Tea Parties: A Horror Story [Kindle Edition]

S. Boyd Taylor (Author), Jorge Rodas (Illustrator)

Book Description

PRAISE FOR TEDDY BEARS AND TEA PARTIES:
David Brin (NYT Best Selling Author, Hugo and Nebula Award Winning author of "Startide Rising") calls it, "Way unconventional, dreamlike, and fun."

Nebula Award Winner Eugie Foster says, "Homicidal teddy bears... and one scary little girl. S. Boyd Taylor has crafted a seriously sinister and unforgettable tale."

SUMMARY:
Enter a fairy tale gone terrifyingly wrong: magic has come back, and now the world is alive -- teddy bears, houses, swing sets -- and everything that lives must eat.

A scary little girl with a knife struggles to rescue her sister, Angie, from the teddy bears they both used to love.

Can she find her sister? And can she defeat Hymn, the creature that the teddy bears serve?

Length: Short Story

Product Details

• File Size: 187 KB
• Print Length: 17 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: S. Boyd Taylor; Premium Illustrated Version edition (August 12, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B005H5AI5U
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #548,322 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars As if written by Ray Bradbury's more sadistic brother! September 14, 2011

By Jason Sean Ridler

Format:Kindle Edition

A real gem of strange horror here, concerning a young girl's survival in brutal re-imagining of our world as a nightmare through the eyes of a child, with vampire Teddy Bears drinking blood and a quest to destroy the one responsible for this rendering of the world, a critter known as Hymn. Twisted and strange with a dollop of surreal, Taylor does a great job of evoking the world through the young girl's eyes, and his word choice in this regard helps make the world every more lush, vibrant and weird. If you like ChiZine magazine, or ever wanted to read a maliciously odd Ray Bradbury or John Collier tale, "Teddy Bears and Tea Parties" is worth the price of admission.

JSR

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars All is Not Right December 14, 2011

By Garrett Cook

Format:Kindle Edition

Somewhere between fantasy, Bizarro, surrealism, sci fi and horror, there's a space, akin to all the things Serling says the Twilight Zone is in his famed introduction. You could call it just "The Wrong". And it's tough to pull off. Cameron Pierce, Harlan Ellison, Lovecraft, Willum Pugmire and others who write the weird do it swimmingly. And so does this story. Truly schizoid, truly sad and truly scary. The teddy bear is an icon of security and innocence. The little girl is an icon of security and innocence. But in the world of childhood, there's always things that aren't right and in any place where you find innocence, there's always room for corruption to seep in. It's a quick read, it's a beautiful ebook and it's cool subject matter. Other than a desire to live your life without the incursion of The Wrong, there's no reason you shouldn't pick this up.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Delightfully Creepy September 26, 2011

By Jaye Wells

Format:Kindle Edition

You will never see a teddy bear or a jar of grape jelly the same again after reading S. Boyd Taylor's Teddy Bears and Tea Parties. His writing is vivid and macabre in a way that will haunt you for days.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars This horror tale is surreal and brilliant, filled with so many wonderfully, twisted images March 31, 2012

By Devlin Scott

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Teddy Bears and Tea Parties (Kindle Edition) by S. Boyd Taylor (review)

"And everything tricks and everything cheats and everything everything everything eats."
S. Boyd Taylor

This horror tale is surreal and brilliant, filled with so many wonderfully, twisted images:

Quotes from the short story: "The bears step around a corner wielding sharpened gears tied to sticks. Homemade meat cleavers to cleave girl meat."

"Hymn's skull unfolds outward like paper. White-bone origami undone. Smoke. The scent of cheesecake."

"Only dead things are still."

"She hears footsteps in the hall. Soft whooshes on the rotten rug that sound like a tiny voice whispering murder, murder."

The story begins with an unnamed little girl, a finger missing, bitten off by a teddy bear; Grape jelly stained (teddy bear blood) knife in hand as she calmly questions and tortures a captured bear. She's seeking the whereabouts of her sister. A prisoner of Hymn.

[Excerpt from story: He screams (teddy bear). And she keeps him screaming.

I don't know where she is, he says when she stops cutting. Don't kill me! I still love you!

I still love you.

One more cut and he falls in half.]

Obviously, this is not a tale for children! It is a tale worth reading...if you dare.

Devlin Scott (Lyshan Press)

View all my reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Madness Ensues December 24, 2011

By Allen Taylor

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

The Apocalypse. Who'd have thought it would bring such mayhem? S. Boyd Taylor (of no relation to myself) weaves a solidly horrifying tale of two girls, a house full of teddy bears, and various flavors of jelly. You'll think you woke up on the wrong side of the time warp. Magic came back.

That's not a good thing. But in the hands of S. Boyd Taylor, it's gripping.

It's rare to find a prose writer who spends so much attention to detail on the lyrical qualities of language. Yet that is one of the things that makes "Teddy Bears And Tea Parties" so remarkable. It's not just a story. It's a lyrical tale that must be told. And read.

5 Stars. I don't do that often.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Horror as fine literature July 3, 2012

By Cammy May Hunnicutt

Format:Kindle Edition

This book caught me by surprise and really blew my ears back: it's not really like anything I've ever read.
It's a nightmare, basically. One that can lurk on your hard drive or ereader memory and be called up to shiver your timbers any time you're up to it.

It could be read as a simple horror gore fest, and some probably will take it that way: a slicer/dicer reel with teddy bears standing in for zombies. But it's way more than that, a little post-mod package of surreal expressionism that moves with the insidious logic of dreams. The worst kind of dreams, that don't just scare you, but leave you quivering on the edge of your bed asking the night, "What the HELL was that all about????"
And as far as nightmare logic goes, if you accept that teddy bears bleed, why can't they bleed about anything you can think of?

Theinsidious thing about "Teddy Bears and Tea Parties" is that it doesn't deign to have slavering monsters terrorizing the innocents: everybody is scared stiff, everybody is hungry.

Another totally subversive psychic depth charge from obviously deeply disturbed S. Boyd Taylor is that all this stems from "the magic coming back". It's such a stock concept in children's books, especially children's books for grown-ups, that magic is the wonderful thing, that recapturing the lost fairy dust of childhood turns the world into a lovely Pixar Disneyland. While in actuality, magic cuts both ways. Children might be more likely to laugh beautifully among the flowers and unicorns, but the are also more likely to awake screaming in the wee hours, with the monsters by no means confined to the closet or under the bed....

This is a truly horrible little work, and I mean that in a good way: as much a piece of genius as Dali's mooncloud razor slicing an eyeball. Read more ›

More About the Author

S. Boyd Taylor is the author of "Teddy Bears and Tea Parties: A Horror Story" and many other short stories. His tales have been called "amazing", "unforgettable", "lyrical", and "gripping".

His influences include writers like Ray Bradbury, Cormac McCarthy, and Harlan Ellison, and his driving passion is to have the words he writes to glow like fire in the reader's mind.

He was born in Austin, Texas, but lived all over the world as a youth. He writes everything -- Horror, Literary, Heroic Fantasy, Modern Fairy Tales -- all set in strange, surreal, or exotic locations.

He currently resides in Dallas, Texas, researches strange philosophies and ancient languages as a hobby, and practices sword fighting and Kung Fu every weekend.