GtPGKogPYT4p61R1biicqBXsUzo" /> Google+ Audiobook Review: Creature Feature: A Horrid Comedy by Steven Paul Leiva | I Smell Sheep

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

Audiobook Review: Creature Feature: A Horrid Comedy by Steven Paul Leiva

CREATURE FEATURE--named a top book of 2020 by the Montreal Times, Steven Paul Leiva's horrid comedy is now being turned into an audiobook, read by Seamus Dever (better known as Detective Kevin Ryan on ABC's CASTLE) and Juliana Dever (known as Jenny Ryan on ABC's CASTLE)

by Steven Paul Leiva
Narrated by: Seamus Dever and Juliana Dever
April 13, 2021
Estimated Length: 4.4 hours
Publisher: Magpie Press; (Spring 2021)
Publication Date: TBD
Genre: Horror/Comedy
Language: English
Available on Amazon, Audible, and iTunes

THERE IS SOMETHING STRANGE HAPPENING IN PLACIDVILLE!

It is 1962. Kathy Anderson, a serious actress who took her training at the Actors Studio in New York, is stuck playing Vivacia, the Vampire Woman on Vivacia’s House of Horrors for a local Chicago TV station.

Finally fed up showing old monster movies to creature feature fans, she quits and heads to New York and the fame and footlights of Broadway.

She stops off to visit her parents and old friends in Placidville, the all-Ameican, middle-class, blissfully normal Midwest small town she grew up in.

But she finds things are strange in Placidville.

Kathy’s parents, her best friend from high school, the local druggist, even the Oberhausen twins are all acting curiously creepy, odiously odd, and wholly weird. Especially the town’s super geeky nerd, Gerald, who warns of dark days ahead.

Has Kathy entered a zone in the twilight? Did she reach the limits that are outer? Has she fallen through a mirror that is black? Or is it just—just—politics as usual!

"Steven Leiva not only promises but delivers. Bravo!" -- Ray Bradbury, Author of Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles.
$.99 ebook/free on KU

This is the first time I have reviewed an audiobook even though I listen frequently while traveling (or cleaning house). It was also my first foray into this comedy-horror style and I must say after acclimating myself with the first chapter I decided I would hang in there and see where this was headed.

Outrageous, fantastical, eye-rolling, teenage boy-type storytelling in the dark or maybe sitting around a radio program in the ’50s are some of the thoughts that came to my mind. Mindless would be another...ha. 

A young actress returns to her hometown to find it overtaken with 6th-dimensional creatures and she is clueless until she becomes their “personal choice” for leader to help take over the world. See...fantastical plot.

But never fear, there is also a geek hero to help save the day with his outrageous inventions (more young boy imagination)! I didn’t feel the “comedy” as straightforwardly as just whimsy and wit but the title “A Horrid Comedy” seems rather appropriate. Short listen and could be the right fit for a short drive to bring companionship and not a mind-boggling script.

The narrations were great and easily understood. I felt like if there were a few more “clang”, “bang”, “shoe clops” and old-time sound effects I would have no problem imagining myself in front of that radio listening to a “horrid” short of “War of the Worlds”.

Getting 4 whimsical sheep from me.





Jeanie G

About the Author:
A refugee from the silly fields of Hollywood where he cavorted with such luminaries as Bugs Bunny and Betty Boop (although the latter was but a brief affair), Steven Paul Leiva has authored nine novels and one novella since 2003. His work has been praised by literary great Ray Bradbury, Oscar-winning film producer Richard Zanuck, NY Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Diane Ackerman, and Star Trek actor John Billingsley, the greatest bookworm in Hollywood. He has received the Scribe Award from the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. A traveler among several genres, his books include his witty Hollywood thrillers, BLOOD IS PRETTY and HOLLYWOOD IS AN ALL-VOLUNTEER ARMY, his novelization of the indie family film; the Scribe Award-winning 12 DOGS OF CHRISTMAS; his Sci-Fi satire of first-contact told from the point-of-view of the aliens, TRAVELING IN SPACE; his comic look at happy-ever-afters, BY THE SEA; his surreal political fantasia, IMP; his bizarre, possibly audacious, somewhat Sci-Fi novella, MADE ON THE MOON; JOURNEY TO WHERE, a contemporary "scientific romance" written in the tradition of H.G. Wells and Jules Vern; CREATURE FEATURE: A HORRID COMEDY; and his latest, BULLY 4 LOVE, a rather odd love story

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