Book #Review : Discover authentic, 5***** #GeorgianEra #HistoricalFiction by G.J.Griffiths @gjgfh_g

Available here!

What did I like about this book? Easy: its authenticity. This is what I expect from historical fiction: an authentic, realistic account of the time period with all the uncomfortabilities that go with it. I haven’t read The Quarry Bank Runaways (Book 1 of the series) yet but Mules; Masters and Mud can be read without having read the first book. Give this book a chance and don’t feel daunted by the dialect! The dialect adds flavor and flair and it may be challenging but I don’t want to be spoon-fed a story. I feel this is a very loving tribute to those western European workers of the 19th century that fought to make our western 20th century factories safer and somewhat human to work in. Highly recommended!

Here’s the book blurb: WARNING! This book may contain NUTS! (Non-Uniform Text Speech) In other words speech in what some have called “Olde English Vernacular.” It is spoken by characters in the book from the North, the Midlands and the South of England. There is a glossary at the end of the book to help if you can rise to the challenge. It adds shades of colour to this 19th century story that you may not be expecting.

When Mrs Alexander wrote about “the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate” and declared that “God made them, high or lowly, and order’d their estate” in the ever popular hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful, she was probably reflecting one of the mores of the times. It would fit in well with prejudices and beliefs of the middle and upper classes that paternalism had indeed been intended by God, thus laws protecting the workers in their fields, mills and factories were not necessary. In the words of Browning so long as “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world!”

The continuing story of the Quarry Bank Runaways is about what happened to two cotton apprentices over three decades during the Industrial Revolution; first as qualified young men with hopes and later when they are full grown. By the start of the Victorian period the fates and their ambitions would have collided. Serious events and incidents, both personal and national, were about to impinge upon the lives of Thomas Priestley and Joseph Sefton, who had earlier run away from their apprentice master, Samuel Greg. What would cause a qualified mule spinner to give up his comparatively safe job and risk failure, ridicule or destitution? Ambitious and determined working class individuals like Tommy and Joe had to carefully step through a pathway involving love, loyalty and legal persecution and prejudice, from within the social hierarchy of the times.

The inspiration to write The Quarry Bank Runaways and Mules; Masters & Mud came about after reading The Real Oliver Twist by John Waller, a biography of Robert Blincoe, and acting as a tour guide around the Quarry Bank Mill Museum in England. There to discover the existence of the real apprentices and the lives of many child cotton apprentices during the Industrial Revolution.

Check out G. J. Griffiths’ home page here: https://www.gjgriffithswriter.com/ 

About the Author: G. J. Griffiths is a retired science teacher with some early working experience of the photographic industry. Born in the UK he enjoys reading most genres of fiction such as sci-fi, crime/detective thrillers, historical and wildlife stories. Non-fiction reading mainly includes scientific or historical books. Walking in the English, Scottish or Welsh countryside with binoculars ready for bird-watching or other wildlife is a particular pleasure. Seeing badgers and otters in the wild recently was an exciting first.

His first novel was Fallen Hero and the So What! series of three books followed and which are all focussed around the fictitious Birch Green High School. They include: So What! Stories or Whatever!, So What’s Next! and So What Do I Do? Each book is quite different in its overall context, e.g. a collection of the teachers’ experiences, creation of a school nature corner, and arson, fraud and murder. More recent works include poetry: Dizzyrambic Imaginings, two illustrated children’s sci-fi stories about ant-size aliens and a historical fiction based upon real characters from the Industrial Revolution period: The Quarry Bank Runaways.

Drop Dead Gorgeous: 19th Century #BeautyTips for the Aspiring Consumptive @DrtySexyHistory

“Although having an active (rather than latent) case of consumption was all but a death sentence, it didn’t inspire the revulsion of other less attractive diseases until the end of the 19th century when its causes were better understood.”

Dirty Sexy History

Picture the ideal nineteenth century English beauty: pale, almost translucent skin, rosy cheeks, crimson lips, white teeth, and sparkling eyes. She’s waspishly thin with elegant collarbones. Perhaps she’s prone to fainting.

It shouldn’t be difficult to imagine; numerous depictions survive to this day, and the image is still held up as the gold standard for Caucasian women. At this point, it’s so embedded in the Western psyche as beauty that it doesn’t occur to us to question it. Of course that’s beautiful. Why wouldn’t it be?

By the nineteenth century, beauty standards in Britain had come a long way from the plucked hairlines of the late Middle Ages and the heavy ceruse of the Stuart period. Fashionable women wanted slimmer figures because physical fragility had become associated with intelligence and refinement. Flushed cheeks, bright eyes, and red lips had always been popular, particularly among sex workers (they suggested arousal), and women…

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How to cope with #cancer #treatment : @BlueHeronBW author Fanny Barry’s new release

Today I’d like to welcome Blue Heron Book Works author Fanny Barry to talk about her re-release of I Wish I Knew:

Fanny: “So proud that my I Wish I Knew books for breast cancer patients, family, and friends have been republished! Nearly 15 years after the event, they are all together and in color, and available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999146025 

“So blessed to still be here with them with the hope that they help others.
Thank you Blue Heron Book Works and my cousin and graphic designer extraordinaire Megan for making this happen. They could be the best thing I have done! But who knows, I am not done yet!”

Fanny Barry’s trilogy, I Wish I Knew…Notes from a Breast Cancer Survivor is now in one full-color volume. Fanny gives wise and witty advice on coping with treatment, how to help friends who are undergoing treatment, and how to make sense of who you’ve become after undergoing cancer treatments.

About the author: Fanny Barry, a native of Boston, Massachusetts, is a writer, artist, engineer, and yoga teacher who wrote the I Wish I Knew books as part of her recovery process from breast cancer. She moved to Tulum, Mexico shortly after surviving cancer where she re-built her life from the ground up, literally. She recently published her memoir about her adventures in survival called Map of Life and Beauty. She manages a yoga studio and shalla in Tulum, Mexico called Tribal tribaltulum.com. She blogs at her website thatbarrygirl.com.

Discover “Songs of Ourselves” #memoir #anthology A Great Read @BlueHeronBW

“Songs of Ourselves is a real trip into and across Americana. If you haven’t read it, I compare it to about two dozen Blue Highways wrapped into one volume.”

Susan Feathers

In 2015, Blue Heron Book Works published a collections of blog posts, journal entries, and other writing forms from writers across the nation. Bathseba Monk, the intrepid and visionary editor of Blue Heron Book Works, and her editor Mary Lawlor, put together a book of American voices as varied as the landscape between our coastlines.

Songs of Ourselves is a real trip into and across Americana. If you haven’t read it, I compare it to about two dozen Blue Highways wrapped into one volume.

Listen to Tomas Benitez: Quietude in the Gully. No moaning animals or ruckus. It’s as if the Pomona Freeway Ocean knows and slows to a steady heartbeat rhythm. The waves rumble with a distant peace. La Luna is framed by the dark outline of the palm fronds on the left, the Yucca tree on the right seems to be reaching up like a hand holding…

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LäGzz announces PURE WHITE LIGHT #musicvideo release #dance #edm

LäGzz announced the release of the video PURE WHITE LIGHT! This is the title track of the upcoming CD, to be released on February 23, 2018 by THE BUT! MUSIC GROUP.

Watch for the #releaseday FEB 23 #edm CD PURE WHITE LIGHT www.lagzz.com @butmusicgroup

The But! Music Group is excited to announce the February 23 release of the new electropop CD called PURE WHITE LIGHT by the band LäGzz! Watch this space for preorder links!

Get ready everyone! It’s #showtime! #writingtips #cheesecake

Here’s an even simpler recipe!

Week #6 Showtime

Or: The Final Hour

(This is the last of a six-part series)

We’ve spent the last three months planning and practicing a dinner for four unknown guests and writing a short story that has swelled to way more than flash fiction proportions. Together we had an idea, brainstormed and arranged the sequence of events. We’ve suffered the highs and lows of the creative process. We have three courses; a beginning, a middle and an end. Now it’s showtime.

It’s six-forty-five. The stage and the table are set. Car tires crunch in the driveway. I can see the headlights through fogged-up windows. Warm, inviting, savory smells, sweetened with cinnamon and spice swirl in the steam over the stove. Ice cubes clink as they drop into frosted glasses. I burn my arm as I pull the ginger cake from the oven. And I’m still stirring the pots, watching every detail in case something goes wrong because it still can. If I let my guard down now, overlook one detail, the outcome could be crushing for a perfectionist like me.

I run through my plan again–yes, I’m admitting how many times now. I believe it’s this sort of double-, triple-, and quadruple-checking that makes the difference between a good dinner and a great dinner. The difference between a good story and a great story.

In order for me to be at ease enough to receive guests or to write that query letter and press send, I need diligence in this final phase. For me, editing and proofreading is where the joking around stops. I like to be creative just like the next guy and I love to see what liberties other writers take with sentence structure, punctuation, use of commas and so on. But now I need some discipline, so I refer back to the one source I swear by in the editing process. The Chicago Manual of Style.

It is a simple handbook of simple rules. Ok, not always so simple. Because I tend to be chaotic, I try to follow these guidelines to the best of my ability. It is at the same time a challenge as well as an alleviation. Coherence instead of confusion. Consistency instead of chaos.

Just like one of my favorite simple cake recipes, The New York Cheese Cake. I follow this one (almost) to the tee. Yes I do. I measure (almost) everything. I do! I really do! We’ll make this the day before the big event for two reasons. One, someone may detest Ginger Cake Love (could not imagine why, but…) and, two, this cake could actually make a great accompanying cake for the ginger cake, if one was so inclined to include the king and the queen on one plate. No, wait, three reasons. This cake has to be refrigerated overnight. Actually, to end the event with this sort of powerhouse might just be the thing we need.

This recipe is simultaneously simple and genius. It’s subtle and direct, filling and left wanting. It’s innocence and ecstasy. Any cheese-cake lover will be putty in your hands. I have had many a cheese cake and the simpler the ingredients the better. Please don’t start using gelatin or, like the Germans do, quark–that curd cheese stuff. No need for flour or starches. Stick to the best creamed cheese you can get. (I would recommend Buko, it’s Danish and in my opinion, superior. There are no additives like you’ll find in the Philly brand.) Sour cream, eggs, white sugar, vanilla. And a graham cracker crust. That’s it.

I hear the doorbell. No, I may never be ready. I may never feel that this project is finished no matter how many times I pass through it. But now it’s time. I took care of loose ends so I have enough time to entertain my guests. Now I need to relax and touch every one of them somehow and make an impression.

And with all this in mind, I chisel away at my pitch and read through my query letter. I have independently self-published my novel in electronic form and paperback but I’m still querying agents. I have had some non-replies; have had a number of rejections and one request for a full manuscript followed by a rejection. And my short story, The Women of Tragic Hearts, is right about 5000 words before the final edit. I thought of posting it on my blog, yet another piece posted for free to the we.we.we. But after passing it by my trusted beta reader, I realize it could just be good enough to hold its own in the real world, meaning, I could query a magazine.

I re-read my query letter for the bazillionst time. Close my eyes and press send. Now the waiting begins. I stare out the window. An oak leaf falls from a tree, lands in a puddle and the water ripples away from it like the resonating waves a blog post can create when enough people read it. In the back of my mind, an idea springs to life. The scent on the wind gives the idea its first breath of life. I hear something a good friend told me the day before last. It’s time to open up a doc and see if this idea could sprout legs and become a story. What better way to while away the time between query letters than to write another story or…stomach rumbles…or look in the pantry! How about roasted turkey breast with a fresh herb and olive oil rub, homemade soft pretzel stuffing, candied yams and some sort of fresh greens?

 

 

Can you relate to The Dark Night of the Soul? #creativity #inspiration

Dark Night of the Soul

Week #5 Despair

Or: Dark Night of the Soul

(This is Part 5 of a six-part series. Here is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)

How does one feel when one has invested hours of research, money for materials and glistening bits of self in a project? At some point the hour may come to bare all. If one decides to share.

My plan is in place and I’ve practiced the process more times than I am willing to admit. I stand before the big event and I feel like I’m coming out of a cave, into the open, to expose my soul to the rest of the world. I’ve finally mustered up enough courage to submit my story. And the guests are coming tonight.

The sun is setting as the year heads towards the dark and damp winter solstice. A door opens elsewhere in the apartment and a cool draft goes through the hot kitchen. I hear stamping boots in the hallway. I peek around the door. A sigh of relief escapes my lips. Thank goodness, it’s not an early guest, only my significant other.

The heat of the kitchen is stifling, tension is mounting. Self-doubt creeps up my spine. I’ve come this far: everything that needs to simmer is simmering, what needed to be baked is baked, what needs chilling is chilled. Except me. I need to wash up and get dressed. I wonder if I can really pull this off. Who am I to think I could actually show anybody else what I have done here?

Suddenly the soup tastes too salty. The gravy has the consistency of wallpaper paste, the salad is wilted. I prepared yet again another piece of venison and it hasn’t gone the way I had planned. My mood slips from less-than-confident into a downright panic. I wonder why I even attempted this in the first place. A blackout or an earthquake would be a welcome relief. I feel like I’m in my own ‘All is Lost’ scene towards the end of Act 2.

I should not, no, I cannot judge my project at this stage by myself. I am my own worst critic. I see problems where there aren’t any. My brain manufactures grave scenarios when I step back and look at what I have created. Heck, I do this with lots of things in my life, not only my projects. As soon as it becomes important to me I am afraid. Afraid I can’t trust my intuition, afraid that I can’t write, afraid that I can’t cook, afraid that oh my God, what will these people think of me when they see what I have done! I don’t want any guests. I don’t want anyone to read my writing. Everything just plain sucks!

Heat rises in my face and I smell like fear. Despair sets in. When I was younger and wrote on paper, it was easy to set a ream of poems on fire and watch them burn with an almost ritualistic fervor. Not so easy with a laptop. Somehow pushing the delete button just doesn’t satisfy like fire does.

And here I stand over my perfect savory chocolate gravy. My tweaked Mexican Mole. I have cured the sauce and I taste it over and over until my tongue is numb. Yet another piece of meat is in the oven at a low temperature and can stay there until I’m ready for it. But the color is all wrong. It smells like a cadaver. I thought the desserts were perfect but I am now unsure.

I am no longer in the position to decide these things for myself. I need a fresh set of taste buds, a fresh pair of eyes.

We all need someone we can trust to honestly tell us if we’ve been true to our goals. I want to ease my guests’ spirits with my aperitif. The pumpkin soup should whet their appetites and leave them wanting more. The meat should carry the basic theme. I need the potatoes to hold their own like a supporting character. And I want the gravy to make a walloping impact; a subplot that rises to influence the final twist. The dessert is the climax. Have I done that?

Hopefully we have someone who has the guts to tell us what we need to hear, no chocolate-coated, candy-covered input. A willing food taster. An objective beta reader. I personally need someone to say, ‘Why did this character do that?’ Or, better yet: ‘This is a muddle!’ Then I’ll know if I’m getting my point across and if my plan is working the way I see it unfolding in the little world I so often inhabit alone.

I want my story to weave a classic mystery–did my beta reader ‘get it?’ If the reader didn’t get it, then I haven’t done my job. An honest reader tells me I may have missed a snippet. For me, an external opinion can make the difference between me throwing a meal out the window, setting a story on fire, pressing the delete button, or, hell, giving up on the rest of my life! It could make the difference between me melting down or buckling down to finish the job.

I write because I do. I always have done. I write for myself, keep a journal and devise stories–it’s a great way to keep my bored brain entertained. But I want to share my stories. They come alive when someone else reads them. In the same vein, I eat to live. I can go weeks on boiled potatoes and carrots and a few handfuls of nuts. But the kitchen is the beating heart of the home and comes alive through the banging of metal pot lids, the smell of frying onions and a splash of sherry, the laughter of fed and watered friends.

Bring on the guests. Bring on the readers.

It’s showtime.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is there such a thing as too much romance? #amwriting #ambaking

Week # 4: Romance

Or: How Spicy is This Going To Be?

(This is Part 4 of a six-part series. Here is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

So, we’ve had an idea, brainstormed and have sorted out some sort of structure for our meal and for our story. Now we’re coming to the next phase. I need to reassess the work I have done, season, thicken, tweak and refine. I need to tighten up the plot, add descriptions and emotional nuances, elaborate here and there and spice up the characters in order to make this experience large and memorable.

Here’s the question: How much is too much? It’s easy to over-salt. And it’s just as unsavory to add so many foreign flavors that the original tastes of the foodstuffs themselves disappear underneath. Just the same, I can add unnecessary description and zesty scenes that will suffocate the plot and we forget the original story. I’m never sure how much seasoning I can lend to a good creation. Overdosed spicy-hot herbs border on scandalous and can spoil the event. On the other hand, too little won’t excite the guests and will leaving them wanting.

I have experienced a meal like this. The cook added so much spice that I wondered if he was just covering up the fact that he was unsure of what he was trying to accomplish. Now is the time to keep the goals in plain view. I have a meal comprised of quality ingredients and I want that to shine through. And I have a story that revolves around adult relationships, broken marriages, friendships; the human condition, compact and concise. (Oh, yeah, and a dead body.)

Many human relationships do involve some sort of sensuality. In my first novel, I wrote the intricate adult personal relationships with little physical contact. I was unsure how far I could go with it so I did nothing. Then I changed my mind and went full tilt, writing explicit love scenes. Neither approach suited me.

Josip Novakovich discusses love scenes in his book Fiction Writer’s Workshop, a book I highly recommend. It helped me a lot when I was writing the Heaven’s Ponds series. I wanted to include realistic, personal love relationships but I didn’t want to put an 18-plus warning on it. Novakovich takes a more poetic, metaphorical approach to describing a scene between two lovers. For my particular project, this take on writing love scenes helped me a lot. If I was writing erotica, this would not be the case. Again, it all depends on my goals, who I’m writing for and how I want to make people feel.

Personal love relationships are really the dessert of life. We may not always want them, but they taste so good. They can be unhealthy. They can make us over-indulge, are too rich and our bodies shouldn’t have as much as we sometimes give them (see: sugar shock.) But we crave them, don’t we? They taste like more. They fill that hole in the soul. Like brownies twenty minutes after they’ve come out of the oven, the chocolate chunks cooled but still molten. Served with a deep frothy mug of cappuccino, the earthy smell of fresh ground espresso beans surrounding the young man behind the counter who brushes your hand with his, smiles and winks a coffee-brown eye as he hands you your change.

Yes, Love is the dessert of life. Mmm, dessert…Oh my God! I haven’t decided on dessert yet! And I haven’t written the ending!

No, this story does not have an ending yet. Some writers have to know the ending before they begin this phase, others don’t. I tend to do both, depending on the project. All I know at this stage is that I want all this to end on a happy note, the meal and the story.

Once again, we’re trying to guess what the guests or our readers are going to want or need to call this experience fulfilling. A conservative ending? A twist? A classic? Would they rather a cheese platter after the main course? (I’d have one on hand just in case.) With a dry red Franconian wine. Or are the guests charged, animated, inspired, the correctly-dosed spices of the meal still tingling on their lips?

Right now, I would have a few tricks up my sleeve. I have alternate endings for the story and will remain flexible to see where the characters are going with their antics. For the dessert, I will have a few alternatives on hand too. But my main offering to crown the evening will be the king himself, HRH Ginger Cake.

Is this too spicy, too provocative, a little too pungent to end the meal? No, I don’t think so. This is the punch I want to pack. The guests will have had a few drinks. I’ll see a yawn and notice a few glassy stares. Satiated stomachs cause the eyelids to droop. What better way to illuminate the guests before I send them on their way than an espresso and a piece of Ginger Cake? Numerous discussions surround the search for the perfect recipe. And I have found one by Felicity Cloake using dried, fresh and candied ginger and Lyle’s Golden Syrup. Smile. I will share this with you here.

And I’ll end this story on a frosty November evening, the washing up forgotten and decorating the kitchen like a trophy to would-like-to-be gourmet cooking. The guests have gone home leaving behind a settling quiet. A ballad has taken on a life of its own–Stevie Ray Vaughn’s Lenny. The significant other returns, famished and looking for leftovers. Candles burn on the cleared table illuminating a glass of Remy, a mug of cinnamon-spiced apple herb tea and a plate of warm, dripping-with-golden-syrup Ginger Cake Love.

 

 

We have to learn the rules before we break them #amwriting #RRBC

Week #3: Rules

Or: Learn Them Before Breaking Them

(This is Part 3 of a six-part series. Here is Part 1 and Part 2)

Last post we brainstormed the appetizer and the beginning of the story. Better said, we threw a soup together and slammed a thousand words into a word document. The soup simmers away on the back burner. The story turns over in the back of my mind along with feedback from friends who’ve added their grease to the plot.

Now things are getting serious. I proposed to grill an expensive piece of venison for the main course. I am not a meat eater therefore I am not a meat cooker. I am a meat destroyer. I have never made an edible roast except to plunk a chunk into a slow cooker overnight. Am I overreaching my area of expertise? Should I just forget about it and make a tofu stir fry?

This is the point where I need to seek help. There are plenty of well-meaning meat eaters out there who readily and graciously share their experiences. Teachers of the trade who are willing to impart their wisdom, share their rules born from trial and failure. Scientific rules–the ability to cook is really an understanding of chemical processes, reactions of certain substances as they are combined, heated and cooled.

Like my story. We have two women meeting after two years in a restaurant called Tragic Hearts. And we have a dead body. Oh no! It’s becoming a murder mystery? I’m not a mystery writer! Well, I’ve never written a mystery before but murder has now become the hub of the conflict. Here too I need to seek help: writers who blog and write how-to books, sharing their tricks for us to read and expound on. And writing a mystery involves understanding certain reactions as words form paragraphs and paragraphs form structured ideas. One should flow with purpose into the next as an understandable, working, concise story forms. Emotions are heated, cooled, causing certain reactions.

Refreshing rules is a constant venture, yes, but now is not the time to learn them. Structuring the story is for me like preparing this piece of venison; much too costly and time-consuming to screw it up. I better have a game plan before I start. All the work and investment will be for naught if I get this wrong. Or force me to throw the whole thing out and start over.

Grilling meat on this rainy November afternoon is out of the question. So I petition our experts (surf the internet) and find that this piece of meat I bought can be successfully browned on the stove and then cured to perfection in the oven for two hours at 80° C (175° F.) I think even I can handle that. I have a workspace where this project can unfold, come what may. And I’ve decided on mashed potatoes today–adds a bit of creamy, buttery comfort on this chilly autumn day. Peeling potatoes is also a therapeutic, mechanical movement just right for daydreaming. And I’m hell-bent on making a savory chocolate sauce, just because I want to throw a conflicting, unexpected twist into the whole experience. I now have a structure to use the next two hours effectively.

I need my story to flow in a similar fashion. I love to free write but I need a plan to move within. An outline. For me the structure of the story is not only like cooking a meal but also comparable to building a house. I have the framework, the walls, the doors, the windows. Once the structure stands, I can move in and decorate as I see fit. An outline for a short story can be a few sentences describing what I intend to achieve. For a novel, the outline is more involved.

I am a big fan of NaNoWriMo. The novel I am now working on is a product of that. And this is just the right time of year to be discussing that, now that November is right in front of us. The first NaNo that I participated in and finished was accomplished with moderate planning. The characters were already alive and the story half-formed. I made a tentative outline as I went along and made it through to 50,000 words. Last year, though, I took the whole month of October and outlined and researched so that November could be dedicated to free writing. Out of that came a 50,000 word first draft, bare bones, start to finish.

The venison roasts in the oven. Protein coagulates, juices brown, a tasty crust forms on the surface of the roast. Potatoes soften in boiling water just waiting to be slathered in butter and creamed to perfection. After skimming and discarding the recipe for Mexican Mole, I set to creating the perfect chocolate sauce. Onions brown in oil with a few spicy chilies. Add garlic to the hot oil, inhale and slake with homemade venison broth, not caring that the smells of browning meat permeate every inch of my body, my hair and the house. Add tomatoes, roasted nuts and puree the whole lot in the mixer. Pour the sauce back into the pot. Break off 70% baking chocolate, let a piece melt on my tongue and feel wanton longing rising in my heart as I sink the chocolate into the hot mixture and see its melted godliness spread on the surface.

I remove the venison from the oven and stand over it like a defendant awaiting a verdict. Touch the knife to the meat’s surface. The juryman hands the decision to the judge. The knife slides through the meat as if it was hot butter. A smile escapes the judge’s usual stoic expression. A muffled cheer bubbles up from awaiting friends and family in the courtroom. Absolution clears the clouds and an angelic ray of sunshine pierces the dirty windows of the courthouse. Music and birdsong crescendo and then echo and the scene fades to black. Roll the credits.