tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. tonight a conversation with the irrepressible jackie collins whose best-selling novels which have sold 500 million copies worldwide are filled with larger-than-life characters basking in the world of glitz and glamour. her latest is called " confessions of a wild child" and returns to a character she wrote about in 19 -- 1981. best-selling author jackie collins coming up right now. ♪

>> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. tavis: jackie collins has written 30 some books all hitting the new york times. her latest is "confessions of a wild child." the lead character in eight of hers novels as well as three

television miniseries. there is a companion could look featuring some -- cookbook featuring some recipes. >> it is great to be here. tavis: get this necklace for me. i want to ask you about this. good lord. it's ok. tavis: that is turquoise? >> i designed it myself. i am a control freak. i do everything myself. i design my clothing and jewelry. tavis: that is a beautiful necklace. >> in my spare time. tavis: since i last saw you you had written three books. then thesetrip" and two books. how do you do it? we all have the same 24 hours. want six more hours. tavis: how do you manage your

time to be so prodigious in your work? rex it is a question of having to do it. i write in longhand so i have to say to myself i am cutting myself off from everybody and i have to write until -- from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and then i am watchto go to my tv and some shows and go out and do research. have dinner or go to a premiere or party. and then the similar thing the next day. promoting a book. it is a great excuse. >> you described yourself as a sort of anthropologist. >> crawling through the jungles of hollywood. i went on saturday night. it was interesting observing people. i have got my drink and a couple of friends and i am watching. there were a lot of famous people. it is fun to watch them when they're letting their hair down. so to speak. or neveru never would

have outed celebrities. that is not what you do in your novels. noti wonder whether or people are on their best behavior when you come around less you be a character in one of your books. unbeknownst to them. -- they do not know me, i can see that cautious thing going on. my friends and i know a lot of celebrities, there are always, when are you going to put me in the book? tavis: that is just like hollywood. they want to be in the book. >> the late great peter sellers had said that his mother-in-law said i had written a book about him. he read it and he went you really captured me. edited going to a psychiatrist. -- at are then going to a psychiatrist. tavis: let me jump first to the so we get to go into

lucky's early years. publisher said everybody loves lucky. teenagers.it is for how does lucky become the strong woman she is today? how does she do it. how does she get over the fact that her mother was murdered when she was five years old and she finds the mother possum body floating in the family swimming pool. and then censor off to boarding school. what is the thread? click she is discovering boys, sex, rock 'n roll, drugs. all those things in life at we have -- that we have to go through. that is the way it always works. how do all those

experiences help make her who she is, the strong person. but she sees a very chauvinistic man. -- fabulousabless hair tour and goes on to be a gangster and becomes legitimate and she watches him when she is a kid. she says i want to be like daddy. i will be powerful. he has a son who happens to be gay. she says whatever you do it cannot tell gino because he is the kind of man who would never accept it. she accepts it totally. she still says want to take over the family business, i want to be the one and gina says you are a girl. you have to have kids and get married. that is what you are going to do and she says i am not. you see her strength the merge as she starts to learn about life.

tavis: it made me think and i will ask. as you look back over your 30 novels, how have they tracked changes, you know where i am going with this. in our society in the issues that are in play. wondered when you look back over your books whether or not they have tracked in the books themselves what was happening at the time. >> they have tracked that dream much. aggie man rummy the letter and he had listed all the gay characters i have written about. he said you're the only writer i know that has had gay characters in her books ever since you started writing. as weave had more freedom change the laws and getting married, i have tracked that in

my books. when i wrote chances they were two families. they were italian-americans and there was the other family who was a black family. and stephen is still around. he is coming back in the new book i am writing now called the santangelos. there been occasions where you wanted to process to wrestle and your reading with certain social causes and issues, have you done it in a way that we are entertained by so we do not feel like you are proselytizing. >> i feel that very much. i got a letter from a woman the other day and across the envelope she had written you had saved my life and i read this letter. it was typed and it was really beautiful. she lived in the country where genital mutilation took lace on

girls. she said she had a very powerful father and the father said you're going to do this and she said i am not. she said the reason i said now is because i just read your book "lucky" and i felt that a woman could be strong and stand up to her father. she has an organization in america who is trying to stop this going on. and i thought that is fantastic. i really felt out of that. on, this isbrought now book eight that deals with the santangelos. do they enter into the jackie collins matrix? >> when i came to america i was very young, i was 15. i was expelled from school. did i tell you about my god father russian mark i had this girlfriend. she had this boyfriend called slim. we lived in this melrose place

type complex. they wanted to be actors but they were parking heart isn't pumping gas. she said she broke up with this boyfriend and she said, with me, i just ought a car from two guys that i was dating and it was a buick. she said you can drive. drive me to baylor. he has a house and he has got mike television. we can get the television and get out. off we go to bel air. when i opened the window dogs come running and guards appear, all the stuff goes on. she was living with the son of a really powerful guy from new york, you know what i mean and the sun was good-looking. he had been sent out to hollywood because he wanted to be a movie star but he was a really great guy. because i was so young he kind of got rid of her and took me under his wing and a atomic way -- in a platonic way.

i knew him for very many years and we would go to new york sometimes, he would take me and i would meet all these guys and it would be straight out of the sopranos. say to one guy, what do you do, and he would say, i am in the waste disposal business. was i wrote about gino, he based on this guy and a new these characters. i write about hollywood movie stars because i know them very well and the mafia kind of g women likeers, cliché characters which you see in hollywood all the time. if you were teaching a class and you are asked to list three or four things they have to have to make a novel work, what would you put on that list is to mark >> you have to write about what you know.

do not write about hollywood if you have never been there. even if you work in a little town and you work in the department store there. there is always something going on. always things that you know about that nobody else does because everybody's life is different. you write about what you know. that is number one. you write. number two. so many people talk about it and do not do it. what i say to them to encourage them especially women because girls can do anything, i say if you wrote a page a day of the -- at the end of the year you would have a book. whether it is any good is beside the point but you would have a book. instead of just talking about it. the third thing, you have to have a passion for what you do. books, i do not know what is going to happen. i could pick up any one of my 30 books and i could continue the story on. i get to a certain amount of words and icy i had better wind this up, otherwise this will be "war and peace." passion.e this

i still have a passion for what i do and i will be doing it when i am 105. i will be scribbling away and if it was 100 years ago i would be by the campfire saying, got a story to tell you. this stuff just come to you? forve such great respect fiction writers because when i start to write something i have a subject i am writing about. i want to dissect it and deconstructed and get you to re-examine your assumptions. i am starting with something. you start with nothing. and you build a story around it. does this come to you? >> it does. right now and i have left it at a pivotal point. is like the new it girl in europe. she is like -- 18. that is lucky's daughter. her son has been arrested in chicago for a murder he did not

read but he is set up. it is so interesting to get back to it because i do not know what is going to happen next. is he going to get bail? is he going to get out of it? i do not know until i write about it. i become that character. you have written 30 new york times bestsellers, you have done some good work obviously. obviously have a huge fan base and people of what you have done. you look at from book one to book 30. can you see, can you tell whether or not you have become a better writer? >> definitely. tavis: i am asking because if the first was on the bestseller list and the 10th and the 15th and the 20th and on and on an the 30th is on the list, how do you know that you have got to be better? >> my writing is better. i am a story teller. you're going to

write something different. i am writing relationships between people. all different colors, and different sizes, different sexual orientations and that is what i want to do. i think when i read my books and i do not have time to do it once i have finished the book, it is there. when i read back i can see little improvements. stupid things like not repeating words which a lot of writers do. even good writers. things like that. my books flow. people say they've pick them up and they cannot put them down. i pick my pen up but i cannot put my pen down. the great my and delete -- maya the best writing is darn hard writing. is -- that is another advice i would give. you have to make your characters interesting. if you think you're going to

write a sexy bix -- book, what d o you care about their sex lives if you do not care about the characters? energy never wanes. you are always cranky out two or three books at a time. i have not gotten to the cook book. if in your obit years from now, they said that jackie collins relationships, with that be accurate question mark -- would that be accurate? >> it is about relationships. it is not chick lit. it is not romance. it is all those things mixed up and it is about people. it really is about people and how they react to what is going on in the world around them. that is gino. i have taken him from a 13 euro boy who comes to america at the beginning of the last century

and now he is a 90 something-year-old man. i have followed his past and it was so interesting for me to write that. i have so many friends that i can talk to, one of your great poitier andneidney his wife. "confessions," she read the book for the audio, his daughter. she does all the voices. she is a traffic actress and completely beautiful. hard not to enjoy it when you and sidney are friends. i will put this out there. you do not know where books are going to go. how does it change

things when gino dies? >> you'll have to read to find out. is heading in that direction. i know the fans are going to be furious if anything happens to him because they love him. he is gino the ram. it will be interesting if i get to that point in the story. tavis: >> if that were to happen because that is where the story ends up taking you. you do not know where the story is going to go. i get that. how scary is it for a writer to the looking at some and where you know the character is dancing with mortality. >> it is very scary. you know that the people who read you and because -- i have so many young fans who have started reading the books. and they are going through the seven or eight books treat i do not want to disappoint them when a character goes.

i have tried for three books to kill off lucky's husband lenny. i cannot do it. the fans will not let me do it. they write me, do not do anything to lenny. i want to give some freedom to lucky. she has had three husbands. she has a revenge kill in there herher -- the murder of mother and brother and fiancé. she has done amazing things. tavis: now lucky has occurred out. -- a cookbook. >> this would be something instead of being a book that goes from hardcover to paperback and goes back on the shelf, this would be something they can put in their kitchen and have fun with. i have written little scenes between lenny and lucky. fun and some fabulous drinks. it is a gorgeous cover

and these photos of the food are making me hungry. another nice necklace. i love that. >> illustrations are fun, too. she where some of my jewelry. describeuld you because every time we talk you are always at some event. whether you're being honored or just hanging out. you are at some party, you're doing this or that. what role has food and rink played in your life and in your work? >> a lot because my husband when he was alive owned nightclubs. he owned the ad live in london and the tramp club in london. so food was part of our lives. they would make these incredible hamburgers and i was engaged to an italian. along came the pasta

and meatballs. i was making them this week at the l.a. fair. food is very important. my mother used to make fabulous english roast potatoes. and the salmon is delicious. am i making you hungry? this is a fun for vote. if you are on a diet don't even bother. i has ingredients that you can find. you know when you read it cook book and you say what the hell is that, you have to go to the supermarket and search for it. tavis: one of the great compliments to you, it is one of those books where it seems that you can find these ingredients. it is the worst thing and i will not name any names. i have talked to folks and they come up with a cookbook and who in the world is going to do that? go to thegoing to

japanese market and scour through re-think to find the ingredients? -- everything to find the ingredients? i have suggestions of music you might want to play. you on thell put spot. somebody asked me a question similar to this. , set theving dinner stage for me. what do you want to eat, appetizers to dessert. give me a good meal and wine choice and what music. >> i do not drink wine. i drink vodka. tavis: all right. >> i will have the jackie collins. this is a wolfgang puck drink. limeade and a pinch of and you shake it up with vodka. shrimp with awith

fabulous creamy sauce. and the best mashed potatoes in the world. it is not for dieting. probably a fabulous salmon which sauce which take seven or eight minutes. something green. that is cauliflower. joannaaving lunch with poitier. thechef said he had made cauliflower dish. soaked in cointreu. on" by marvining gaye.

tavis: we have to hang out. jackie collins is always busy. she has written three books but there are two out that you can pick up. it is the latest in the lucky santangelo series. "wild child" and a lucky santangelo cook book. who knows when i will see you next and how many books you will have written but i am anxious to see what the santangelos encounter. the next is "reform school it of hollywood." our show fort is tonight. thanks for watching and as always, keep the faith. and talklk the walk

the talk and now you get to be on the walk of fame. >> you're getting the star on the walk of fame. you deserve it. guy who should have been on the walk of fame along time ago. he has one thing that i have only heard maybe once in all the time i have been listening in 60 years in l.a. television and radio. he sees it all. >> 20 years of broadcasting and you're still -- and now you're on the hollywood walk of fame. you have arrived but you have arrived a long time before that. tavis, well done. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. in recognition of earth day. globalrsation on warming. that is next time. we will see you then.

♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> be more. thank you. >> be more. pbs.

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