This is still more than a month away, gang, but I'm going to post it now because the ever-encroaching deadline here tends to make me lose track of everything else on the planet.

Here's an announcement from private detective-writer extraordinaire, O'Neil De Noux, in New Orleans:

Kent Westmoreland and I will autograph copies of ALFRED  HITCHCOCK MYSTERY MAGAZINE’s April 2009 Issue, which features our collaboration – “Price Tag Attached.”

TIME:  3 p.m. until 5 p.m.

DATE:  Saturday, March 28, 2009

LOCATION:  Maple Street Book Shop, 7523 Maple Street, New Orleans, LA (Phone:  504.866.4916).

AFTER, at 6 p.m., Kent and I will each have a reading at PJ’s COFFEE SHOP, 7624 Maple Street, New Orleans (Phone: 504.866.7031).

A LITTLE ABOUT “Price Tag Attached”

When Burleigh Drummond (a fixer – not a private eye – a man New Orleanians turn to when they want something handled efficiently and discreetly) visits a French Quarter antique shop in the middle of the night and discovers the man he’s looking with a Japanese dagger in his chest, he has no choice but to call the police.

Enter NOPD Homicide Detective Jodie Kintyre, whose heard enough stories about Burleigh to be more than curious about the man, and who has no qualms drafting him into helping her solve the murder of a smarmy antique dealer mixed up in the thefts of valuable artifacts (including a heart of Grecian marble worth a quarter million dollars) from the above-ground cemeteries of the Crescent City.

Filled with sexual tension, sharp dialogue and New Orleans as it is, readers will enjoy this romp along the wild side of town. There is also a cool illustration by Jorge Mascarenhas accompanying the story (Jorge’s work is at www.jorgemstudio.com/). The April 2009 Issue of AHMM also has stories by other fine mystery writers: Beverle Graves Myers, Steven Gore, Frank T. Wydra, John H. Dirckx and S. L. Franklin, a mystery classic by Fletcher Flora from 1955, introduced by one of my all-time favorite writers, the indomitable Loren D. Estleman. AHMM is edited by Linda Landrigan.

I assure you the readings will be ‘G’ rated.  Don’t laugh.  I’m the guy who emptied the author’s reading room of a bar on Oak Street by reading the opening paragraphs of my first novel GRIM REAPER.  I figured – a New Orleans barroom at night, adults, liquor, people cutting up – who would have figured a realistic description of police work would offend?

Hope y’all can come.  If not, the reading will be very, very short.

O'Neil De Noux
http://oneildenoux.blogspot.com/
http://oneildenoux.com/cms/
2007 SHAMUS Award Winner for BEST SHORT STORY