Am Writing: 32K+ words on my Gothic Victorian novella, SUNDARK, An Elle Black Penny Dread, and needed to know the Victorian flower meaning for the asphodel. Well, my reference book, 'A Victorian Flower Dictionary' by Mandy Kirkby, didn't even have an entry (I'd link to the book, but I'm kind of miffed)! So I found the meaning on fellow Steampunk writer, Raydeen Graffam's My Ethereality blog.

I'm writing the asphodel into SUNDARK because it was the flower for the chthonic deities (Hades, Persephone, and of course Hekate, who is part of the SUNDARK story). But it's good to know how the Victorian 'contemporaries' in the story viewed the flower.

SUNDARK, an Elle Black Penny Dread

Elle Black, an unconventional psychic detective in an unconventional Victorian marriage, leaves her housewifely duties to answer a desperate plea. Guests are vanishing in a mechanical hotel known as the Sundark, and Elle must use her 'anomalous perturbationist' gift--the ability to moves objects with her mind--to save herself and the remaining hotel residents from malevolent, sidereal powers. But with apparitions appearing, magnetic lines disrupted, and clairvoyant guests lurking, who is the true murderer---or murderess?

The flower pic above is from here: http://www.tiuli.com/flower_info.asp?lng=eng&flower_id=121