The recowboybooting of The Song of the Canyon Kid book continues with this here press release.
Be it ever so hostile, there's no place like home.
Such is the hard lesson learned by a singing
cowboy's homecoming in Scott Cherney's new western comedy romance novel, Song of the Canyon Kid.
A straight-shooting, guitar strumming buckaroo known
as The Canyon Kid returns to Dirt Clod, Missouri only to find his hometown in
ruins due to the machinations of a corrupt "hanging" judge. To make
matters worse, he discovers that his childhood sweetheart is about to marry his
sworn enemy, a ruthless desperado who is not only the town sheriff, but also
dead set on framing The Canyon Kid for murder.
"It's a total cartoon," Cherney explains.
"I mean the main character is a singing cowboy. When is the last book you
hummed? And, in full disclosure, it's also a novelization."
The author adapted his story from his comic
melodramatic play entitled Song of the
Lone Prairie or Poem on the Range which debuted in 1987 at the late, great
Pollardville Palace Showboat Theater in Stockton, California, a production he
also directed.
"Pollardville was a magical place,"
Cherney recalls. "We had a melodrama/vaudeville theater as well as our
very own western ghost town on the property where we'd get paid to play cowboy
on the weekends. Our duties included robbing the train, engaging in fisticuffs
and shooting it out with fellow gunslingers at High Noon. This was the
birthplace of The Canyon Kid."
Cherney realizes the stigma of a novelization, but
he felt creatively stagnated and needed a writing exercise to get himself in
gear. Digging through his old writings, he came across his script for Lone Prairie, a melodrama he considers
his best and the culmination of everything he learned at Pollardville.
Adapting it into novel form came fairly easy,
fleshing out the characters and story while transposing the stage direction
into prose. Soon, it began took on a life of its own.
"I loved revisiting my old characters and
giving them back stories like Nastassia Kinky and her brother, Two Gun Boris,
the fastest gun this side of the Ukraine. I also made The Kid's horse, Thunder,
more of a supporting character. And the love story is something I never I thought
I was capable of pulling off, but I feel like I did. Overall I had a blast with
this, the most fun I've had with a project since I wrote the original back in
the '80's. It certainly helped to rekindle my love for writing.”
Concurrent with the release of Song of the Canyon Kid has been renewed interest in the original
source material, the melodrama which has been performed across the United
States for the third year in a row. This summer, The Canyon Kid and Co. will
riding into two separate productions in Texas. On Memorial Day Weekend, The
Brazos Theatre Group in Waco will be the final performances of Song of the Lone Prairie under that
title. The same show with the revised title of Song of the Canyon Kid opens this July in Houston’s Theatre
Suburbia.
“The Canyon Kid has been very good to me. I hope
I’ve returned the favor,” author/playwright
Scott Cherney declares about his creation. “By digging back into my
roots, I’ve found that sometimes you have to take step back in order to move
forward.”
Song
of the Canyon Kid is available in paperback and
e-book.
More information can be found at: http://www.scottcherney.com
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