According to Deadline, HBO has greenlit a new hour-long dramedy from Alan Ball with a very familiar theme: death. Ball, who won an Oscar for writing American Beauty, and created the mortuary series Six Feet Under and the southern-fried guilty pleasure True Blood (which just picked up an Emmy nomination yesterday for Best Drama), will produce and direct the pilot for All Signs Of Death. The show is based on Charlie Huston's "crime noir" novel The Mystic Arts Of Erasing All Signs Of Death; according to the report, Charlaine Harris (author of The Southern Vampire Mysteries book series upon which True Blood is based), gave Ball a box of books which included Huston’s Caught Stealing, and Ball became such a fan of Huston’s "Hank Thompson" trilogy as well as his "Joe Pitt" book series that he took a meeting with Huston, and the two soon became friends. Seeking advice, Huston asked Ball whether The Mystic Arts would make a good television series, as he was planning to pitch it to a network. Ball clearly thought so.