The Lavender and the Rose

I sometimes wonder why I called this and my homepage The Rivendale Review – I think Rivendale was a homage to Tolkein, a place of magic and soul searching counsel; home to Galadreil, Queen of the Elves, embodiment of wisdom and divine femininity, the earth goddess, the muse,…

And Review?… Well, when you’re publishing online, your stories are never finished. They’re always available for review. Every time I read a story I find myself editing it, smoothing it, clearing out the typos. I usually do this when transferring a story from one format to another, one cloud to another,… Website to Lulu.com, website to Feedbooks, to Smashwords or whatever.

At the moment I’m still wildly enthusiastic about Feedbooks. Its ability to reach a worlwide audience is without equal at present, and for most of 2010, I’ve not only been putting up my short stories on Feedbooks, but also “reviewing” my novels and putting them on there as well. Of all the novels I’ve penned though, I’ve been resisting a review of The Lavender and the Rose, if only because it was just so damned long, but also out of an irrational fear that I would no longer understand just what the hell I was on about in this story.

I’ve been chipping away at it though, managing to sweep up a few typos in the process, but also, crucially, managing to remain in tune with the narrative, and in sympathy with the characters. It’s a bit of a rum story to be honest and I’m not sure at all where it came from, but there it is. I put it up on Feedbooks on Boxing Day night, and by the following morning it had been downloaded a hundred times. This is not a measure of the merit of L+R, because those downloaders had no idea what they were getting, rather it is a measure of the reach and the popularity of Feedbooks.

The Lavender and the Rose is an erotic love story, an exploration of the nature of identity and reality, and a homage to a part of the world I consider to be my spiritual home.