Curled up with Jackie Collins

In person Collins is much like the content of her books -- chatty, funny, irreverent and knowing. Mostly, though, she is endlessly enthusiastic -- she will stop in mid-sentence to declare her various excitements over a singer ("Isn't Amy Winehouse amazing?"), TV shows, movie stars, friends or just her lunch. She ordered the Neil McCarthy salad. "This is the most delicious salad ever," she announced.

This summer saw the publication of Collins' 26th book, "Married Lovers," which centers on a woman named Cameron Paradise, a personal trainer, and a trio of men: a director, a screenwriter and a late-night talk show host, all set in the Hollywood of today.

It is pointed out that all the eligible men in her new novel are aged 40, while the heroine is 25. "Well that's this town, isn't it?" She laughed. "And all these women who are 40 are always with these guys who are 75 or 80!"

As she looked around the Polo Lounge, Collins recalled the point at which she decided to conquer America. Twenty-six years ago she wrote "Chances," the bestseller featuring Lucky Santangelo, the heroine who grows up in the mob and takes over the family business.

"If you wish to be successful," Collins said with the authority of an author whose books have reportedly sold more than 400 million copies, "there is a place you should be at a certain time. And Los Angeles in the 1980s was it. My books were quite successful around the world, but I couldn't quite crack America -- they would only be on the bestseller lists for a couple of weeks. So for 'Chances,' I wanted to be here to promote it. And it was the 10th-best-selling book in America that year.

"We embarked on a tour across America -- me, my husband and our three kids," she recalled, digging into her salad with ladylike gusto. "We would have brought the dogs, but that wasn't possible then. We took the kids out of school and everything. One of them was 9, one of them was 12 . . . oh, I'm not very good with ages, including my own -- it's all a horrible blur!