Karma in the Conservatory

Blooming ‘corpse flower’ in Golden Gate Park augurs well for possible Nick Zollicker novel

A couple of weeks ago I was making notes for a new Nick Zollicker tale. The first two were short stories: An Imperfect Mimic and Smothering the Savage. The new project is more ambitious: it’s novel-length.

My notes concerned a crime scene set in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, specifically the Conservatory of Flowers. It occurs in connection with the botanical garden’s heavily-promoted blooming of an Amorphophallus titanum (a wonderfully vulgar Latin name bowdlerized to “titan arum” by the insufferable Sir David Attenborough).

Lo and behold—on Thursday there was a heavily promoted blooming of an A. titanum in . . . the Conservatory of Flowers.

I’d say that’s a big hint from the Muses that I should get to work on my Nick Zollicker novel. Stay tuned.