ReadBooksBy.Faith

All about author Faith Phillips

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Holiday Flash Sale!!

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A holiday book set from ReadBooksBy.Faith

Holiday flash sale! From now thru December 18th ReadBooksBy.Faith offers a signed & wrapped complete book set for $55. That’s four books, including our latest release “2020 Visions”! The book set covers all the bases: a fiction supernatural thriller, a true crime novel, a hilarious collection of true mishaps, and the memoirs of a new teacher and her students negotiating the year 2020.

Order now and we guarantee your gift-wrapped present will arrive just in time for giving. Buy local unless you live far away and then go ahead and buy far away! 🙂 Order details included below #okienoir #2020visions #cherokeewriters

Place your order for a signed box set right here for $55.00, includes shipping!

https://paypal.me/FaithPhillips?locale.x=en_US

2020 Visions

Death Isn’t Like The Movies

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The author, Jerri Daugherty, and her dad, Ray Bearfoot Daugherty.

Hi there, it’s your old pal Faith but not for long this time. I have seen the future. She lives and writes in Adair County. Part of my dream for this website was to provide a forum for young writers to be published. I wasn’t published until my mid-thirties but when it happened my life was changed. It set me on fire. The opportunity to hand that fire down to another writer, especially an Adair County writer, feels like looking up at the stars. Big and small all at once…

I asked my students to write their personal narratives. I told them not to self-censor and encouraged them to express themselves freely without fear of judgment or reprisal. I was emotionally unprepared for their responses. Passionate young writers are coming up in Adair County and, by God, they are going to tell their stories.

The following piece is from a writer named Jerri Daugherty. I should have known she was a writer the moment she stepped in my room for the first time. She was dead-serious and bespectacled. She said, “This looks to be the room of a witch.”

I wish I had known then what I know now. Ladies & Gentlemen, I present to you the superior and heartbreaking work of my colleague, Jerri Daugherty:

“Death is not like the movies. It doesn’t give you a warning. You don’t get to say goodbye. There is no talking to the dead once they’re gone. They don’t wander around the house waiting to talk to you. There’s nothing but confusion and the bitter realization that you are forced to go on, even if you don’t want to. Sometimes, it goes like this:

     You wake up in the morning to get ready for school. You get dressed, do your makeup, brush your hair, and go to the bus stop. You don’t wake up your parents to say goodbye, especially not your dad, because he was tired the night before. He was sleeping in the rocking chair in the living room when your boyfriend brought you home.

     You head out to school and have a good day. A normal day. Normal, that is, until you arrive at your local vocational college and start to work on your daily module. It’s the same old welding module you’ve been studying for weeks; angles, metals, and so forth. You’re joking around with your friends when all of the sudden your instructor asks you to come into his office.

     I don’t remember all the details. It isn’t a time my brain wants to keep. My instructor basically told me something bad had happened and he couldn’t tell me anything except that it wasn’t good. He looked me straight in the eye and asked if he could pray with me. As a Christian I’m always open to prayer but this seemed different. I let him pray with me. 

     I checked my phone on the way to the office. Nothing. Yet I felt in my heart that the news would be bad. 

    When I arrived at the office the most unexpected sight was waiting for me there: my grandma.

     She said, “Did anyone tell you?”

     Obviously, no. 

     “It’s your dad,” she said. “He’s gone.”

     I was completely dumbfounded. 

     “What?” That was all I could say. 

     There was no way. He was just asleep this morning in bed with my mom. There is no fucking way. 

     We got into my grandmother’s car and I called mom. My brother answered her phone. He was angry. He just kept saying over and over, “Dad’s dead. Dad’s dead.”

     I didn’t want to believe it. I called him a liar and kept asking where my dad was. I demanded to speak to him. My mom finally got on the phone, crying, and told me it was real and to get home as fast and as safe as possible. We hung up.

     Grandma drove the speed limit on the way to my house. I was stunned and staring out the windshield thinking, “this isn’t real, this can’t be real”. If I’d been in my right mind I’d have asked to drive. I would have sped the whole way home, like my brother did. 

     When I got to my house I saw an ambulance and cop cars, or maybe just one cop car, I can’t remember. What I do remember is getting out of my grandma’s car and dropping my bag right there where I stood. I pointed at the ambulance and asked, “Is my daddy in there?”

     I was sixteen years old. I hadn’t called him “Daddy” in years but that’s how it came out that day. Daddy. 

     I don’t remember every single detail. This is all I have: I walked into the house. A lady cop was there and she tried to keep me out. She’s lucky she didn’t succeed because I think I might have hit her. That was my dad in there. I was getting to him one way or another.

     When I got to my dad they had him covered with a sheet-like thing. I grabbed his hand. He was so cold. I started to cry. I shook his hand and begged him, “wake up, Dad, please. Wake up, please, Dad.”

     I was there for what felt like forever. Then Mom said it was time to go. I remember sitting outside with all my family there. Just waiting. Waiting for them to bring my dad out of the house. They left him in there for hours, there on the ground. He didn’t belong there. He didn’t deserve to die on the floor, alone. 

     Too often I wonder if he suffered. Did he call out for one of us? Was he crying? Was he ready? Did he know how much I loved him? Did he know how kind, funny, and important he was to us? Did he take our love with him when he left us?

     Did he know how much I fucking loved him?

     I was, and still remain, so mad. I was mad at everyone because they weren’t him. They were living, breathing, and he wasn’t. I was mad at myself for not saying goodbye that morning. I should have awakened him. I was mad at God for taking my dad away from me. My friend. My supporter. My hero. My first love.

     After the Important People took my dad’s body and everyone left, we all sat in the house confused and crying. 

     We’ve made it so far. That’s not the whole story. It will never end now. It still hurts. It hurts so fucking bad. I still cry and pray, begging God to bring him back. But he can’t. 

     Can He?”

December Flog: Special Okie Music Edition

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I like seeing you here for the December Flog: Special Okie Music Edition. Despite the title, I don’t have a musical in the works. But that could be pretty interesting, yeah?

In a perfect world, the holiday season is supposed to remind us to be grateful, to make us more aware of blessings, and then help us find joy that can be made complete by giving that very joy away to others. That’s what I’ve learned in my time on this rock, at least. This is a long overdue Flog Post about the blessing of music in my life and the joy that flows from it.

Since the third book took off this fall I’ve participated in several interviews with the media. Perhaps the most common question I get concerns music. All three of my books have soundtracks that augment the story in some way. Perhaps that sounds weird. Let me explain, by telling you about the first time music took its hold on my pen:

In 2008 I left Tulsa the day after a Bob Dylan concert and began to drive back to Ardmore, where I lived and worked as an attorney. I put the radio on scan because I couldn’t find any good music on the usual stations. I was struck by the sound of a haunted song. The voice was deep, the song simple; it had a rockabilly bass line that grabbed me. It was Sanford Clark singing The Fool. I was mesmerized. The song ended and then a voice floated from my speakers that made my ears catch fever and my face turn red. You know those voices in music that cannot be mistaken? You hear the very first note and you know who’s singing? Neil, Bob, Leon … this voice was like those. I’d never heard a voice so velvety, inviting, and somehow knowing. I could tell this guy had some knowledge that I really needed. The connection on my end was immediate. The radio host was Steve Ripley. He spoke with great passion about Leon Russell and Will of the Wisp and played a track off that album. I can’t explain it exactly, but somehow the inspiration Steve conveyed in his radio show set off some strange combustion in my own brain. In an instant the outline of an entire fiction novel appeared in my head. I could see it like a movie and scrambled to write down this unexpected gift.

It’s a long story and I’ll spare you the details, but eventually Steve Ripley was the first artist to recognize something in me and my work. He invited me to enter a door into a world of artistic creation that I didn’t believe I deserved to walk through. He will likely not be tickled by this public reference because he is such a private person, but he remains the single most responsible party for my inspiration to write for a career. When I picture the whole thing in my mind-dreams, Steve opens the door wearing a top hat and that trademark smile. Thank you Steve, for sharing your joy with me. I promise to keep giving it away.

Recently I came across a quote from one of my favorite writers, Michael Ondaatje. It explains the music and literature connection better than anything I ever came up with: “The rhythm of music has been the biggest influence on my writing – it’s not Wordsworth, it’s Ray Charles. Music has been such an important part of my life. The elements that I have when I’m writing is closer to music than anything else I know. The music in the words.”

If music brings joy to your life, and surely it must, please explore these Okie artists who so generously contributed to my latest book. They comprise a list of incredible talent. Just tapping your toe doesn’t pay the bills, you know? So spend some dough on the music that you dig this year. Many of these artists released albums in 2018 and/or have upcoming releases scheduled for 2019.

They are, in order of appearance in Now I Lay Me Down:

Carter Sampson     Lauren Barth     Kalyn Fay     Wink Burcham     Samantha Crain     John Moreland     Evan Felker

Buffalo Rogers       Nellie Clay          John Calvin Abney     Tequila Kim Reynolds     John Fullbright

Looking for something super fresh? Check out the debut album from the West Coast band Dark Mondays on Itunes and Spotify, headed up by lead vocalist (and Cherokee citizen) Natahne Arrowsmith. Her voice is sublime and rich, like dessert (listen and you’ll hear what I mean). This dark jewel carries a moody vibe that lives up to the band’s name. Dark Mondays also offers up several interpretations of classic Christmas tracks with innovative vocal acrobatics from Arrowsmith. It can be a most satisfying experience to start a new tradition.

Itunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/come-sundown-ep/1434478114

Spotify https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/darkmondays/fkQ5

Now hear this: mark down two more upcoming 2019 albums from my dear friends – The Red Dirt Rangers release their 10th recording, described as “the live sound they’ve been looking for since Cimarron Soul, with lead and rhythm accordion players” in 2019! Follow their Kickstarter and release dates on Twitter and Facebook.

The Okie musician’s musician, Joe Baxter, drops his vintage collection, The Weather,in 2019. I was lucky to get an early glimpse of this album. It is GORGEOUS, full of yearning, dark romance, vulnerability and as always with our old pal J.B., it is quintessential Okie Folk. I daresay it is Okie Noir. Just my style.

Here are my last two book dates of the year and then I’m DONE for quite some time:

Tuesday, Dec 11 in McAlester, Oklahoma, accompanied by the former prosecutor from Now I Lay Me Down, Judge Maxey Reilly and the acclaimed Okie singer/songwriter Nellie Clay. We’ll be at the public library there at 11 a.m. and then at Common Roots that afternoon for a signing from 4 – 6 p.m.

Friday, Dec 14 at The Branch in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, 7 p.m. This time the real performance will come from our beloved and talented Buffalo Rogers. I get to be the lucky sidecar. Oh, how I relish being the lucky sidecar. Seriously.

Ok, it is past time to sign off now. Thank you so much if you stuck with me through to the end. You take care now and give that joy away.

“Listen, I shew you a Mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be transformed.”