Collins survives four decades of publishing trends

Jackie Collins has been chronicling the antics of show business folk for four decades -- pulling hundreds of skeletons out of the plushest closets on both coasts -- and she shows no signs of slowing down.

Collins has survived who-knows-how-many trends in the publishing business and has defied any attempts to put her work into such commercial genres as "shoes & shopping," "chick lit" or "women-in-jeopardy."

With 400 million books sold in 40 countries, Collins has simply become her own genre.

The writer's latest show biz expose, "Poor Little Bitch Girl" (St. Martin's Press), debuted in the No. 6 spot on last week's New York Times bestseller list, just after she returned to her Los Angeles home from an East Coast book tour, which included a stop in New York City.

The new novel mixes an amazing variety of characters and plot threads into a juicy 472-page read that shows us how prostitution rings and hot clubs operate on both coasts (and in Las Vegas); how movie stars deal with legal jams; the extreme measures that politicians will take to clean up personal messes; and the way that celebrities can do just about whatever they want most of the time.

"Poor Little Bitch Girl" generated controversy when the folks at ABC's "Good Morning America" decided that the nation's morning TV audience was not ready for the B-word and wouldn't let Collins say the title of the book she was promoting.

A sheepish George Stephanopoulos told Collins just moments before they went on the air that her title was a no-no.

The writer laughed as she recalled the incident in a phone interview last week.

"Of course, everyone rushed to my Website to see what the title was. It became the second-most Googled item of the day," Collins said of the extra publicity generated by ABC's decision.

Prudes have had a problem with Collins going all the way back to the 1968 publication of her first novel, "The World is Full of Married Men," which was banned in Australia and South Africa.

Ever since her U.S. career went into the stratosphere with "Hollywood Wives" in 1983, Collins has been widely attacked in this country for the supposed salaciousness of her show biz stories.

"My worst critics have always been the people who haven't read my books," Collins said with a chuckle.

Perhaps one of the secrets of Collins's enduring success is the fact that she has never lost her fascination with celebrity and her books are always in the present tense -- the writer's characters remain young and juicy and don't spend much time thinking about the past.

I mentioned to Collins that she seems to be one of the few mature people in Los Angeles without an ounce of nostalgia for earlier eras.

"No, nostalgia doesn't interest me much," the writer admitted. "I am an avid collector of photographs, but that's about as nostalgic as I get."

Some observers thought the rise of 24/7 entertainment news and gossip on cable and the Internet might be the end of Collins, but she has thrived in the new media world. Millions of readers still turn to the author for her insider's take on life in the fast lane.

Indeed, Collins has embraced the Internet in a big way, with a terrific Website (www.jackiecollins.com). She also is one of the most active and interesting writers on Twitter (you can follow her at jackiejcollins).

"I love Twitter...I can't stay away from it," she said, adding that unlike the old days when a written note from a fan might or might not reach her through snail mail, she now gets immediate feedback from readers via the Internet.

"It's very comforting to me and I think it's a very friendly thing," Collins said of Twitter, adding that she spends enough time on the social networking site to have figured out which celebrities do their own "tweeting" and which use assistants.

"You get a real sense of a personality and the links are great," she said. (Collins recently entertained her own "followers" with a link to a crazy Italian TV show in which the journalist/host confronted David Beckham in an unusually intimate manner.

"I'm hooked on all of the entertainment shows - `Extra,' `ET.' And "TMZ.' I love Chelsea Handler and Craig Ferguson is great," she said of the two TV talk show hosts.

"I didn't understand all of that arguing over Leno vs. Conan, because I think Craig is better than both of them. So are Chelsea and Jon Stewart. They're fun and fresh and they say what's on their minds," she added.

The writer credits some of her durability to the fact that she is not a native of L.A. and has never lost her fascination with the town and its people. Her enthusiasm and her outsider/insider status has also allowed Collins to expose Hollywood -- with names changed to protect the guilty -- without losing her own ringside seat.

"I think it's because I'm from England that I've never gotten a jaundiced eye. If I was brought up here, it would be totally different," she said of her constant amazement and amusement with what goes on all around her.

"I see so much, I read so much that I think I can get into the minds of these characters," she said of the high rollers who populate her novels.