I spent a long time on my knife fight sequence. I did tons of research on knife fights, had it all written, and I realized that while the end of the fight made sense, it lacked impact. It just ended, and in a not particularly surprising way.
As I was writing the next chapter and dealing with the trauma of what had happened, I thought about Hector and how arriving at the jail cell after Maggie was finished dispatching everyone was upsetting to him. Yes, there are a lot of bodies, but what if I amped it up a bit?
Maggie is locked in a cell with bad guys. She is suffering from a loss of impulse control. She is also highly trained and basically a killing machine. As she is focused manically on the one guy who is left who she dislikes the most, how horrific could that get?
And here is the thing I realized. Writing a novel is more like writing a radio play than it is writing a movie. You have to conjure the images in the reader’s mind. Nothing I could write could be as horrific as a reader could conjure in their imagination when I refer to it as horrific and a bloodbath.
The answer was blindingly obvious. End the scene as Maggie is going in for the final kill. We know whatever she did to this guy is very bad because Hector is having nightmares from having seen the aftermath of it. Here I decided to use the power of the reader’s imagination rather than my own, and rewrote the entire ending of the sequence.
What’s Up With Us
Cooking Thanksgiving dinner has long been stressful for me. I want to turn out restaurant quality food, in the same amount of time that a professional chef and his team would have. This is not possible, of course, and only leads to frustration. This year, it all went much better, thanks to better technology and tools.
The major change was the turkey. I’ve tried smoking a turkey in the past and was not that happy with it. The secret to smoking a turkey, in my opinion, is spatchcocking. You take out the backbone and open the turkey like a book. Since it is flatter, the smoke flavor is more evenly distributed, and it cooks faster and more evenly so that the dark meat is done without drying out the white meat.
I cooked it on a pellet grill, which makes the whole process trivially easy. It took six hours to cook, but I just walked away and waited for the app on my phone to get the signal from the thermometer telling me it was done. It was the best turkey I ever made, and now the only way I’ll roast a turkey.
I smoked the turkey the day before, let it cool, then made perfect thick slices of the easily removed breast meat with the deli slicer. I used to use an electric knife to carve the turkey, but the slicer worked so much better.
Of course, the stuffing was made separately, as actually stuffing a turkey with stuffing is a terrible idea. The stuffing sucks out the juices making the meat dry, it is a breeding ground for salmonella, and makes the roasting take a lot longer. You might be wondering about what you do about aromatics, which smart cooks stuff into the turkey cavity. In this case, there is no turkey cavity, but sprigs of fresh herbs like rosemary and sage can be slid underneath the skin.
The turkey slices were wrapped up and gently warmed the next day using the steam feature of an instant pot (which many people wrongly call an instapot, including me, and I continue to do it even though I know it is wrong- I am a rebel like that). I also used the slicer and the instapot for the prime rib. The instapot was also a hero with the Honey Baked Ham we bought. The ham really is best served cold, and heating it has a tendency to just melt off the glaze, which is a lot of what you are paying for. The instapot warmed it gently enough that the glaze stayed on and it came out perfect.
Afterwards, I made stock from the turkey carcass, and used the turkey leftovers to make a quite tasty turkey soup, which I have been making since my teens. I also used the ham bone to make stock, then turned it into a terrific potato and ham soup. The secret is lots of bay leaves, as they do magical things with pork. An instapot can be used to dramatically shorten the simmer time on stock, and this can be very useful when you need to make a quick stock from leftover turkey parts from trimming before cooking. That stock is very useful when making gravy.
With Alexa making sure I did not cook things too long, and the other equipment in the kitchen, I turned out a very elaborate meal with less effort than probably any Thanksgiving meal I ever made. Having the right tools makes all the difference.