Making a movie

All of us pay to see a movie at the theatre or at home, but how many of us pay to have a movie made?

This is your opportunity. LONE CHIMNEY FILMS will be producing their next documentary, HOME ON THE RANGE. 

That is where I come in, Sharon Black


Donating to Lone Chimney Films in Wichita, Kansas to help fund the movie doesn't take thousands of dollars from one person, unless that is your heart's desire. A donation of any amount is appreciated. 

 http://www.lonechimneyfilms.org/Home.html

Home on the Range, the song, is known world wide, and is sung by school children in China. It is the most recognizable song other than Happy Birthday.  HOME ON THE RANGE is located in Smith County, Kansas in north central Kansas. Now on the HOME ON THE RANGE HIGHWAY formerly hwy 8. Margaret Nelson wrote the book Home on the Range. She was a country school teacher when my mother was young. They called her Maggie. She taught one year, and in that year she typed a school paper with stories of Doc Higley, and what the students were doing. I have those papers that my mother kept. I'm so glad she did. How much time do you suppose it took to type those? On a manual typewriter and maybe there was carbon paper available. I don't know. I treasure these papers.

How am I involved you ask? Other than the book Margaret Nelson wrote,  titled Home on the Range about Higley and Smith County, which I have read three times, been to the cabin many times, yes, it still exists, the one that Doc Higley lived in. $100,000 dollar historic restoration, DAR  flag dedication, and walking routes and a dedication to a Rotary member. Two fundraisers on site with Higley descendants who sang Home on the Range inside the cabin. I've been to most of the events. 

I took it upon myself about 12 years ago to see the story was put on the big screen. Always had the idea of something for it, maybe just tidbits of people in my imagination who lived there. Nothing concrete. I wrote a screenplay. It wasn't based on too much research. I shopped it. Nothing came about. Then when the owners of the cabin passed away, the nephews went in control of the cabin. Good control, and they had the good mind to update the cabin because it was falling apart. Fundraisers. I was at most of them, but let me back up. ElDean Holthus, Mitch Holthus' dad, is one of the nephews. I approached him and said I had written a screenplay. He wanted to read it. I copied it. Back up again. At a concert in Smith Center, a group who had played music for a film by Lone Chimney Films, is when I first heard about them. Not really sure of all this, I looked them up, sent the screenplay to them. Didn't hear anything.
ElDean met Ken Spurgeon of Lone Chimney Films at a fundraiser for Home on the Range in eastern Kansas. So, we found them and they found us.

After a meeting a couple years ago, I was asked to write the documentary. I was beyond ecstatic. That's when the real research came in. Patient and hard work put to good use.
I have researched and searched and made phone calls and sent emails until I tracked down people whose relatives were in the story in the 1930s. Some came easy, others were difficult. I'm still trying to find a picture of Samuel Moanfeldt, the New York attorney who came out West to give authorship to the song Home on the Range to Doc Higley and Dan Kelley.

I found out more than I thought I could, and figured some things out just by studying the census.

You will be in for a treat.


 Thank you for considering a donation to Home on the Range, the documentary.

Think about this. This will be the FIRST time the characters in the story are ever on the big screen.
You will be part of this historic film.

 Sharon Black

 

The Lady in the Ladybug by Sharona Black

sold on amazon.com and Kindle

My newest book, which is like a newborn. I created it and named it. Will people like it? The cover is great and received many compliments.

A huge chicken riding in a red Mustang convertible going up a hill with huge watermelons and pumpkins on sides of the road. An enormous ladybug is on top the hill below the lavender sky.

Sugar Martin is driving. She works her organic farm in the state of Coronado in the Southwest. I named it after the Spanish explorer. Why shouldn't a state be named after him anyway?

She is wearing a black and red driving cap, and the artist put on the tag, Sugar. That was a nice touch.

In the introduction I wrote about the influences that created the book.  Working in the grocery business for 20 years brought a lot of ideas. A woman who drove an old pickup, wore rubber boots and was quite the character frequented the store. She bought powdered milk in boxes and she said they sure do insulate a chicken coop good and do we in the store want her to save us boxes to insulate our chicken coops? She was so serious.

I had the first few chapters completed when I met my boyfriend for 8 months. Two months into the relationship, he was told he had liver cancer. We went to New Mexico. He was hell bent on working. So there, I took in the Southwest, trying to cope with this awful disease, and wondering if there was a magical cure somewhere in some mystical shop.  So that gave me the idea of food curing diseases. Was it the soil that gave food that healing miracle? Or from elsewhere. Asteroids were always in the news. I remember my parents telling of a boom and the sky brightened for a few seconds one night.  So what was that? An asteroid? Space junk?  I did see space junk one night.

A few years earlier in my town of Smith Center, transcendental meditation believers came in, and the store put in organic food, since we thought the movement would gain and grow. But it didn't.

So many ideas formed in my head, and then what was Sugar Martin, or Roxy Roxalena really like? Then I found her background. I really don't remember what influenced that.

The book is $10.00 and I premiered the paperback at The Chicken Festival in Smith Center on April 4. Despite a cool morning, and a persistent wind, I sold 6 copies.