[I posted this on my website blog but have been so busy I haven't been able to post this on my Myspace blog. Anyway, happy holidays all!]

Hey! It's Christmas and it's been a frenzy of over-shopping and over-indulging chez moi, as well as over-angsting over deadlines. I am drunk on champagne and good feeling since the baby is asleeep! Which means I can now go watch the TiVo'd Crowned and Gossip Girl, woohoo!

As a Christmas present to all the Blue Bloods fans I thought I would post my outline notes of the first chapter! Please note that the first chapter that has come out of this outline is actually very different from what I planned here. (But not that different--the essential bones are the same, but there are a few big changes.) Anyway, wow, I managed to say nothing and everything in that paragraph huh?

The following has been directly copied from my REVELATIONS-OUTLINE document!
Author's Notes in Italics.

Blue Bloods III: Revelations

By Melissa de la Cruz

(A Novel of Secrets and Lies) --> a hint of what is to come! For Masquerade, I wrote "In which no one and nothing is as it seems." I like to write little themes so I remember to stick to them when writing the book.

Here is the epigraph I chose. The quotes that begin the novel. I looove epigraphs. I think because I grew up reading Stephen King and he always chose great epigraphs for his books. You will notice all my novels have epigraphs. How can you start a book without it?

Now war arose in heaven,
Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon;
and the dragon and his angels fought,
but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven….
"But woe to you, O earth and sea,
for the devil has come down to you in great wrath,
because he knows that his time is short!"
Revelation 12:7-12

-->Can't you just hear Samuel L. Jackson saying those lines?

Chapter One: SCHUYLER POV ---> I always write POV=Point of View so I can remember whose mind I'm supposed to be in.

It has been a month since Schuyler returned from Venice, and she's now living with the Forces in their townhouse across from the Met. Life is complicated. She is forbidden to see her grandfather as well as her best friend and human conduit, Oliver.

But on gray days when no one notices, Schuyler repairs to a penthouse apartment in a gleaming all-white tower in downtown Manhattan. There, inside the famed Richard Meier building, she waits for her secret rendezvous. A secret she finds hard to admit even to herself.

Finally, someone arrives. Schuyler looks up expectantly. "Hello Schuyler," a friendly voice says. But the boy who appears is not the one she was waiting for.

--->OOOOOH!!!!
I know. I probably should not have done this. But, it's Christmas and some of you have begged so nicely.

xoxo
Mel