I want to thank my three wonderful reviewers straight from my heart for taking the time to share their thoughts on Jezebel’s Island. Your insights mean the world to me and help other readers discover the secrets hidden within the book.
I am only sharing these three beautiful reviews for now, but I have received so much wonderful feedback. I will be sharing more reviews with all of you very soon, so please stay tuned!
Exciting News: Jezebel’s Island Is Now Available on Kobo!
Great news for ebook lovers! My book, Jezebel’s Island, is no longer exclusive to Amazon. You can now officially download it on Kobo.
Why expand to Kobo? I want to make sure every reader can access my stories on their favorite device.
Here is why this matters:
Global Access: Kobo is incredibly popular worldwide, especially for readers in Japan, (where it is powered by Rakuten ), Canada, Europe, and Australia. Device Freedom: You can read it directly on Kobo e-readers or via the free Kobo Reading App on any tablet or smartphone. Library Integration: Kobo works seamlessly with OverDrive, making it easier for library lovers to find digital books.
If you have been waiting to grab your copy outside of the Amazon ecosystem, now is your chance!
Gabriela Marie Milton- An Exclusive Invitation to Jezebel’s Island: A Phycological and Mystery Thriller
Dear friends and readers,
Happy 4th to those of you who celebrate!
As you open this post, you cross a threshold with me.
For the past several months, while working on anthologies, I have been quietly weaving a new world, laying down mirrors, and hanging veils. Today, as we step into July, I am deeply proud to announce that my mystery thriller and dystopian novel, Jezebel’s Island, is fully realized and preparing for its definitive release through Literary Revelations soon.
This is not a traditional story. It is a psychological labyrinth built on an intentional contradiction. If you are looking for a simple journey from A to B with a tidy conclusion at C, this is not your journey. Instead, Jezebel’s Island unfolds in cinematic flashes, abrupt transitions, and fragmented scenes that tell you a profound story. I want to share a secret with you before anyone else reads the book: the ending greets you at the very start.
When you open the first chapter, The Night the Silence Screamed, you are not reading the beginning of Anastasia’s journey—you are reading her chronological future. She had already survived a devastating experience, absorbed Jezebel’s ruthless mandates, and returned to the City with a cold, revolutionary clarity. But will she stay there?
At its core, this book is a defense of human consciousness against a sterile, automated existence. As Jezebel writes in her letters to Anastasia: “Real answers lie deep within the human soul, not in robots.”
Anastasia begins her journey believing she is an independent investigator pulling back veils, only to discover a more terrifying truth: she is a mirror silent surface upon which the elite of the City project their crimes and shifting legends. But when the mirror finally shatters on the deserted sand, it is an act of total liberation. She is freed from their script to write her own.
Reading this book you are my co-investigators. I invite you to listen closely to the rhythm of the rain, the sudden chill of the sheets, and the spectral sing-song of the black-clad children. These are not merely details; they are the pulse of a world coming together and falling apart in the same moment.
Please, keep a close eye on your inbox over the coming days. The gates to the Island are about to swing open.
Step into the mist with me. The investigation begins soon.
With all my heart,
Gabriela Marie Milton
Author & Editor-in-Chief, Literary Revelations
My books (Only English)
All listed books will feature on Times Square Billboards in September 2026.
Jezebel’s Island: A Mystery Thriller by Gabriela Marie Milton – Excerpt 3
My dearest followers and subscribers, I am thrilled to bring you again a short excerpt from my upcoming novel Jezebel’s Island: A Mystery Thriller. Tentative publication date: end of June.
Have a beautiful weekend!
Jezebel to Anastasia
….You will have to find a new axis mundis, a new explanation of our life. You will have to take from God the thick garment of misery with which the present civilization has dressed him. You will have to tear off from his face that repugnant mask that those who pray that business will go well, that they will recover the lost money or the long lost power have stuck on him. He must remain the God of the oppressed, the God of the sick, the God of the mother who loses her child.
Make him shine again, Anastasia, turn on the light of the lamp to the God the Creator, take him out of the swamp where he has been thrown, from all kinds of obsessives, who claim him in the name of doubtful pains and by virtue of a single phrase, “I will”. Whoever affirms that will is the privilege of the superior man, is a madman. Will has its role, of course, but it should not be taken to the extreme, nor should it be divinized.
Anastasia felt a horrible pain in her stomach. She was suddenly afraid, and she wanted David to be beside her, to explain, to tell her the whole truth. The truth? Hadn’t she gone mad like the others? Who could know the truth? And where had Esteban and David disappeared to? They had probably vanished earlier in the day through some secret door in the bush. Alone. They had all left her. It seemed to her that she was sitting in a pile of skeletons. She tried to shake off that horrible image.
About Jezebel’s Island: A Mystery Thriller by Gabriela Marie Milton
At the far edge of the Island’s circulation stands Anastasia, witness, recipient, and actor—her presence poised between necessity and chance. As the curtain lifts and the first figures Anastasia, Jezebel, David step into view, readers remain in the dark, their biographies concealed, their stories unwritten. The narrative unfurls like a film reel abruptly set in motion, and at its heart is a woman of haunting beauty, gradually awakening from a nightmare that lingers, stretched across the threshold of reality. In this twilight of memory, other figures rise each bearing identities veiled in uncertainty, summoned from the depths of recollection into the shifting light of the present.
M.B. R.L.
Haiku for Soulmates is coming soon at Literary Revelations. Please stay tuned for more news.
Gabriela Marie Milton, Author and Founder of Literary Revelations.
Happy weekend! Today I would like to share with you another excerpt from my upcoming novel Jezebel’s Island: A Mystery Thriller.Literary Revelations plans to release this novel at the end of June. Thank you for reading.
Jezebel’s Island: A Mystery Thriller by Gabriela Marie Milton – Excerpt 2
…
– In this part of the Island, Anastasia, they have not limited our freedom of movement at all. Only our freedom of thought. And what time is there for free thought anyway? One has so much to do. So many brands of bags and socks to choose from. Here everyone thinks they live their own lives as they please, without realizing that in reality they live only what they are allowed to live.
…
In the living room, Anastasia’s gaze fell on a photo. She paused for a moment, staring blankly. A heavy, golden frame held a photo of a young man, wearing a white T-shirt with vertical green stripes, Polo brand. Anastasia had been to Jezebel’s house several times, but she had never seen that picture before. Behind him, she could see a field where three golf cars had been abandoned. The photo had been placed on a lemon-yellow wooden console, near which one had to pass to get to the other rooms of the house. It was impossible not to have noticed that picture.
She shivered, feeling like a piece of ice was running down her back, and experienced again that cloudy feeling, still incomprehensible, about Jezebel.
From the foreword
….The question remains: Why Anastasia, this young woman saddled with so great a name? Why has she become the obsession of two figures of the ruling class? Perhaps because her passivity and incuriosity have not brought her into solidarity with her fellow citizens, who share her discontent, but rather have made her an ideal vessel for the plans of the elite.
But what plans? Yet another mystery. There must be, the reader thinks, more to Lady Swartley, more even to Jezebel, who is already so much. And what about the servant Armando, who seems to be much more than a servant, or the archaeologist Esteban, whose presence almost seems to bait and tease Anastasia along some path occluded to all others?
He was a great novelist. He avoided the big juvenile traps: on the one hand, repeatedly writing about one’s childhood and one’s limited experiences, and, on the other hand, confining his characters to slogans such as do good or better days are ahead.
He knew he went against the grain of what was considered acceptable in his country; a country in which the novel frequently used everything from camaraderie to horror, and from war to sex, in order to avoid the birth of a new Emma Bovary. Emma’s sensuality would have scandalized a society in which some, if not most, deified violence and crucified sensual love. Should I mention The Scarlet Letter?
He loved me. In his last note to me he wrote:
“Love and sensuality include divination: a thirst for deciphering the signs inscribed in the sacred area of our subconscious, a craving for knowing what the future holds, and the supplication that providence or god will fulfill our desires.
How much we want that which is not only given to us but that which we create too: Mircea Eliade’s homo religiosus, that alter-ego who lives inside us and conjures the meanings we create in sacred times and spaces.
I read your words and a thousand childhoods burrowed into my heart.
Gabriela Marie Milton
My Dear Readers
Thank you to everyone who submitted to Literary Revelations Publishing House’s collection Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology, due to be released late January. If anything changes, I will let you know.
I am thrilled to release the full cover of the anthology and the preface I wrote. I have tears in my eyes. Here is why.
I am beyond humbled by the number of submissions. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for entrusting me with your beautiful poetry. Most important you entrusted me with glimpses of your childhood. That honors me more than words can possibly express. I rarely talk about myself. Yet, last night after 14 hours of work I was listening to the winter knocking on my windows and thinking of your poems. A sentence inscribed itself into my soul. It will stay with me forever. I read your words and a thousand childhoods burrowed into my heart.
We are looking at a monumental work of poetry; a work of breathtaking beauty and substance. I included over 150 poets and around 280 poems. The Word file I will send for formatting tomorrow has 456 pages. I suspect after the formatting the anthology will have over 456 pages. Congratulations to everyone who was included.
I wrote a good number of rejection letters and I am not done yet. To those poets who were rejected: please do not get discouraged. I am honored by your submissions too and ready to collaborate with you in the future.
One other important thing I learned by reading your poems: this collection teaches the reader about childhood perhaps more than an academic treaty could do it.
————–
Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology – preface by Gabriela Marie Milton
If you open the pages of this poetry collection, you will be mesmerized by the talent of the contributors, and by the range of stylistic approaches they use to recreate the world of childhood. It must be said from the beginning that this is not a poetry collection for children. The pages you will read memorialize the beauty and magic of childhood – remembrance of love and fairytales – as well as its ugliness – abuses, poverty – that unfortunately still exist in our world. Some of the authors of the poems included in this anthology were brave enough to talk about the pain they endured in childhood. I salute all contributors: those who tell the world that childhood is love, and those who still bear the wounds of a difficult childhood.
As the editor, curator, and publisher of this book, I am honored and humbled that so many poets entrusted me with their work. The poems I included in this anthology are stunners. They are magnificent in their wealth of emotions, and very diverse in style. It is the role of the editor to try – as much as she/he can- to stylistically unify the works included in poetry collections. To a certain extent, I decided against it. I allowed for English spelling, as well as for American spelling. I overlooked places where perhaps I would have used different words, in the interest of clarity. Why did I do it? Two reasons: (1) These breathtaking poems have their own energy, an energy that continuously echoes in one’s soul, and it sends shivers down the spine of the reader. There is a freshness about them, freshness in front of which the strive for better formulations ends up in patheticism. (2) Perfection is most of the time sterile. There are emblematic poets who sometimes consciously allowed for small degrees of clumsiness – here and there – in their poems in order to preserve the authenticity of the feelings. I hope I did that in this collection.
The themes and archetypes the contributors use are very diverse. You will find the father as the protector and/or as the abuser, the figure of the mother as the nurturer and/or as the monster, the loss of siblings, the heavenly paradise of grandparents, the fight with disease, and the list can continue.
To turn to a different idea, once Charles Baudelaire wrote, “The child sees everything in a state of newness… Nothing more resembles what we call inspiration than the delight with which a small child absorbs form and color.” No doubt, during childhood we are first and foremost the recipients of the sensory world.
The academic literature on childhood – as well as our common understanding – frequently defines childhood as a period of our lives that precedes adulthood. Whatever happens during our first years is formative and important to our becoming. However, we tend to dissociate childhood from maturity. Most people subscribe to the dichotomy of childhood/adulthood.
Indeed, the prima facie reading of the poems included in this anthology shows that the authors kept in mind the dichotomy of childhood/adulthood.
Yet, what strikes the reader during the second and/or third reading of these stunning poems is how present childhood is in the lives of the authors, now mature people. For these poets, whether they know it or not, childhood is not a simple memory filled with joy or pain. Childhood constitutes itself as an integral part of their poems, a part that continues to transform them as they write.
The strength of this poetry collection is the capacity of its authors to blur the line between childhood and adulthood. Whether the authors talk about joyful memories, or sadly abusive childhood, the effect is stunning. We do not know anymore where childhood stops, and adulthood starts.
Am I returning to Philippe Ariès and his Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (1960), who put forward the idea – albeit controversial – that during medieval times childhood was not recognized as a distinct phase of human existence?
No. I am not. I merely claim that the idea of childhood is not as transient as authors such as Ray Bradbury claimed.
In many aspects, childhood never goes away. It stays with us forever.
This is what you will discover in this anthology, which contains the most beautiful, as well as the most heart-wrenching, verses one has ever read. And this is a phenomenal discovery.
Coming soon: Literary Revelations Publishing House
Dear Readers,
It is with utmost pleasure I announce that the Literary Revelations Publishing House will open soon. It will be up and running in early November of this year.
Literary Revelations honors the memory of my mother whose passion for literature knew no limits.
I owe a great debt of gratitude to both my parents. However, it was my mother’s love for languages, literature, and arts that permeated every fiber of my being starting very early in my childhood. That love has never left me.
I am happy to tell you that Literary Revelations has already manuscripts under consideration, and it will open with a call for an anthology. Literary Revelations will feature a poetry journal and provide services for authors such as marketing, reviews, and Spanish translations staring January 2023.
Please watch this space for more updates and the launching of the press’ website. Follow me on Twitter @shortprose1.
Have a glorious weekend everyone and let me know if you have any questions.
Below please find a paragraph describing Literary Revelations’ mission.
Literary Revelations Mission Statement [excerpt]
Our mission is to feature emerging and established authors of poetry and fiction.
We publish most poetry genres: epic, lyric, narrative, or prose poetry. We expect work that dazzles the intellect, and delights the soul; work that makes feelings blossom into symphonies of love, beauty, and sorrow. Interpret the silence. Find the place where love was born, and tears are entombed. Be the voice of prophets. Be the soft whisper of Sakura.
Dream, create, suggest. Avoid cliches. Avoid the banal and the explicit, even if both have become trendy. Remember “To define is to kill. To suggest is to create.” (Stéphane Mallarmé).
We also publish fiction such as mystery, romance, fantasy, and other types. We do not publish erotica.
Remember a novel is not the mere act of outlining one thing after another. We do not look for tables of contents. We want you to love, and to suffer, with your characters. To remember the importance of the landscape, and to look over your shoulder where the unknown lies. Embrace it. Remember what Jorge Luis Borges said:“When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.”
Image: Gabriela Marie Milton, 2022, Interior of Capela dos Ossos, Évora
Autumn. The day after Helen left for Madeira. The city’s noises vanish in a moribund sun. A paraffin lamp burns on a glass table. The light trickles on the walls like water. There is something familiar about this room. Vague scents of dried flowers. Tear-like motifs on the walls.
I hear footsteps. I shudder.
– Miguel, let’s get out of here.
He put his hand over my month.
Laughter comes from upstairs. It’s Jacques’ laughter. His and the laughter of a woman. She is not Helen. It can’t be her. Helen left yesterday. What am I thinking? The laughter can’t be Jacques’ either. He is dead. Jacques is dead.
The smell of the dried flowers Helen put on his coffin on the day of his funeral invades my nostrils.
I pull away from Miguel’s arms, my soul dark, the tightness in my throat stronger. In a mirror I replace my image with that of my mother. My voice is not mine anymore.
– Miguel, with you or without you, I am getting out of here.Where is the door?
He bites his upper lip.
–Anastasia, I know you are surprised.
I am enraged.
–Surprised? Who? Me? If Winston Churchill would walk in this room right now, wearing Josephine Baker’s famous top hat instead of his, and Bottega Veneta stiletto sandals I would not blink an eye. From now on until the end of my days I swear nothing is going to surprise me anymore.
The light from his eyes vanishes.
– Anastasia, how many times have you asked me for the truth?
I shout.
–Oh, the truth. Stories masquerading reality: the plot, the characters, the setting, the conflict, the theme. Spare me the banalities. I do not need your truth anymore. I want to get out of here. There are dead people in here, or ghosts, or whatever. I want out.
—Anastasia…. Listen…
The geometry of the space changes. Through a little square cut from nothingness, I see a lonely blue jay feather floating in the sky.
I wrote in a previous post that I was going to launch a new project in mid-October. Thank you to all my followers who expressed interest. The launching may come a bit later due to circumstances that are out of my control. Please be patient. Much love to all of you.
I am deeply grateful to everyone who reads and supports my work. Your likes, comments and shares brighten my days. Thank you to those of you who brought to my attention that my posts are getting reproduced on some WP sites on their entirety without my permission and without any links to my original work. To the very few of my followers who do that a gentle reminder for now: unauthorized use and/or duplication of my posts without express and written permission from me is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thank you.
Lethargic trees, nights dripping verses in our bed, Baudelaire’s ennui silhouetted against my soul. A young autumn, breasts stuck to the moon, cloudy eyes caught between sunrise and sunset.
There are too many eyes in this place: mine, yours, those of the portraits and the photographs on the walls, why do we have so many portraits and photographs?
Facing the armoire, left arm under your head, you sleep. Black dahlias invade the bedroom. I listen to the sound of nothingness.
I sit in front of the computer. On the screen, Sebastian’s letter.
Anastasia, I have no idea why Jacques fell in love with you. Your mild manners, your lipstick always in the right place, banal essences of Coco Channel on your clothes. Why do you dress in black all the time? Oh, wait, I know, Baudelaire, À une passante,
La rue assourdissante autour de moi hurlait. Longue, mince, en grand deuil, douleur majestueuse, Une femme passa, d’une main fastueuse Soulevant, balançant le feston et l’ourlet
That’s the way you got Jacques. Soft black fabrics, mixtures of innocence and mysteries, the majestic air of an untouchable nun burning with desires.
I try fitting in one of your dresses. Why do you pick taffeta all the time? It’s so yesterday.
I look down. Ravishing view from your balcony. The moon bathes in the water, nightingales sing, the air is soft like the touch of a virgin… Beauty and then forever night… How I long for the forever night… the black of your dresses…
I am not in our bedroom anymore. I hang onto the balustrade of my condo’s balcony. Void. Impulses of self-destruction. I taste their ashes. A mannequin floats in the air. I am scared…
Jacques’ arms wrap around my shoulders.
–Anastasia what are you doing in front of the computer? It’s 3am. Back to bed.
–Sebastian…. Sebastian’s letter on the screen…. Read it.
–What letter, love? There is no letter on the screen. There’s a website that says, “Travel to Corsica.”
Head of a Woman’ by Jean Jacques Henner, Public Domain
Flash Fiction by Gabriela Marie Milton
My name is Gabriela. Papa used to call me Marie.
One night the moon stretched in our bed, its lips sultry, its breasts soft like two humongous cotton candies bought by the Holyoke Merry-Go-Round Carousel. That night your cascading laughter made all naked desires hide under the bed. I tried to drag them out. I couldn’t.
Later, head on your shoulder I looked at the stars through the broken ceiling, my eyes plagued by an inexorable yearning to prove my existence. I don’t know why. Those who want to prove their existence live in the realm of the inexistent. They are bizarre people who write love letters to themselves trying to deceive others. Any trick is a cry for recognition. Any cry for recognition is a basic assertion of impotence.
What was I doing? Oh, I was trying to get into my red dress. I couldn’t get it over my hips. The humidity of the night must have made it stick to my skin. Did you laugh again? Stop. Put your shirt on. We’re going out.
Anyway, I was talking about the absence of existence itself which always leads to sorcery. The skin of an eel caught in the spring, dried, stuffed with rose petals and rosemary, chopped and hidden behind the head of the bed. A night spent in that bed will haunt the two lovers for life. Like I haunt you.
How did you call me? Why did you use that name? Yes, it is my first name, but nobody uses it. Everyone calls me Gabriela.
Stop calling me Anastasia. I am not resurrected yet. I don’t know who Anastasia is. I’ve never met her. But don’t get fooled. That doesn’t make her less dangerous than me.
