Writing a new role for herself

Someone's purse seems to be ringing, and Bernadette Peters assumes it must be hers. Her schedule is jam-packed with publicity appearances for her children's book, "Broadway Barks," a touching story about a dog in need of a home, which comes with a CD of a lullaby she wrote. The kiddie book, named after the annual event she started with her close friend Mary Tyler Moore to help shelter animals, is Peters' first -- and her royalties will be donated to the charity organization.

But that's not all that's going on. Peters has been waiting to be fitted for a couple of dresses Bob Mackie is designing for her Aug. 16 concert at Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts . And directly after being interviewed, she has to fight Friday rush hour to make a rehearsal for her appearance with http:/// www.menalivechorus.org/index.php "> www.menalivechorus.org/index.php , the Orange County Gay Men's Chorus.

Fraught as this West Coast tour of duty sounds, Peters, a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, couldn't have been happier to be back in L.A., her home away from home, and not simply because a choir of gay admirers would soon be harmonizing with her for a gig that, as it turned out in late May, was bookended by standing ovations that threatened to turn into soccer stadium waves.

"I have some really good friends out here," she says, sipping on a specialty iced tea at Hugo's, a relaxed West Hollywood eatery not far from the apartment she's kept for ages. "One girlfriend just moved to San Francisco, but I have another who's like family to me, so I look forward to seeing her when I'm out here. Otherwise, the thing I enjoy is that I wake up early because of the time change, and I feel like I get three extra hours in the morning. I get up, go to the gym, and I'm still not late."

She could use the leeway. Life has been extremely hectic even in a period that could gingerly be called "transitional." After starring as Rose in the 2003 Broadway revival of "Gypsy" -- a role that brought this illustrious Sondheim interpreter as much acclaim as angst -- disaster hit. Her husband, Michael Wittenberg, was killed in a helicopter crash on a European business trip in 2005, and Peters says the last few years have been "the hardest" of her life.

"You realize that there's no such thing as time because that first year you don't even realize a year has gone by," she says. "But what helped me was basically . . . he would kill me if I didn't move forward. He gave me so much strength."