Tom Piazza, who has written well about New Orleans (his NOLA-based novel, City of Refuge, was the runner-up in last year’s Tournament of Books), is a member of the writing team for The Wire creator David Simon’s imminent HBO series, Treme, set in the Big Easy. (Anyone know why the city is called that?).

The drum is already beating as the April launch date approaches:

Piazza, a TV rookie whose 2005 book Why New Orleans Matters first got Simon's attention, compares the series' formation to building a novel chapter by chapter. "There are different kinds of story arcs," he says. "Characters will have a big arc that takes them from the beginning of a novel to the end of a novel, or the beginning of a season to the end of a season; and characters also have smaller arcs that happen within chapters or within episodes. So basically the collaborative process (is) to discuss all of that — although, I think, [Simon] and [Overmyer] have probably the broadest view, and the most say, over the overall arc of the series. Then we each go and write an episode ourselves."

We can’t hardly wait. Can you?