New York City - Okay I'll say it, Jackie Collins is hot, sexy hot and literarily hot. Her latest sizzler, "Poor Little Bitch Girl," was just released by St. Martin's Press and it will undoubtedly prove to be another bestseller for one of the world's most successful and sexy novelists.

The beautiful and charming novelist has sold over 400 million books worldwide.

In a setting that could have stepped off the page as a scene in one her novels, we met in the luxurious Seine Bar off the lobby of the Hotel Athenee in Midtown Manhattan. Strikingly beautiful, Collins sat on a velvet loveseat surrounded by a bevy of young and adoring New York bloggers who had gathered for a meet and greet with the author prior to our scheduled one-on-one interview.

Charming and generous, Collins gracefully answered questions and offered some advice, romantic as well as professional, for the young Internet journalists, several who hoped to become novelists themselves. After the informal Q&A, Collins autographed copies of her new book and sat for individual photos with the bloggers, all of whom were clearly devoted fans.

Finally alone, Collins asked me to join her on the loveseat for our interview. (Yes, I get to say I sat on a loveseat with Jackie Collins!) After introductions and the offer of a drink, I ordered a Bombay martini and began my conversation with the seemingly ageless author whose sex appeal and style is as infectious as the characters she has created in her 27 best selling novels.

Her 27th novel "Poor Little Bitch Girl" was just released by St. Martin's Press.

Collins' steamy novels are filled with intrigue, corruption and, of course, lots of sex. Set in the exotic playgrounds of the rich, famous and infamous, I commented on the fact that she had never used the Hamptons as a setting for one of her books, "I have never gone to the Hamptons. Everyone tells me that I must go there, I have friends there, but I have never been. I have never set a book in the Hamptons and I really should. What I would like to do is maybe next summer rent a house for a month. That would be a good idea, don't you think? Then I could go back and forth to New York City and I could take my family, they love the beach and the sea, so yes I am going to think about it."

An admitted rebellious youth, Collins was expelled from school at 15. She has admitted to having a brief affair, at barely 16, shortly thereafter with the then 29 year old actor Marlon Brando. Describing her childhood, Collin's told me, "I was a loner, a total loner at school. All I wanted to do was play truant and go to the movies. I loved America. I would pretend that my father was in the CIA and that I was secretly American. So my imagination was in overdrive even then."

She describes herself as always having an "old soul" which perhaps came out of her love of the written word, "I read a tremendous amount. I was always a reader and I started reading at a very young age. My father had next to his bed, in a brown paper wrapper and I kid you not, "Lady Chatterley's Lover." So I started with that and I went on to read Harold Robbins, Mickey Spillane, Dickens and F. Scott Fitzgerald, I liked those kinds of books with charismatic characters. I am not a literary writer, I am a story teller and I have never pretended to be a literary writer. I think that is why people who have never read me criticize me, but then they read me and say, 'It is such a good story.'"

Collins' first book, "The World Is Full of Married Men," was banned in Boston, Australia and South Africa.

Asked if the criticism affects her at all, "It doesn't bother me in the least, I could care less. I write for myself. I simply love to do it, I love it." Although she always knew she wanted to write, she never felt the need to return to school for formal training, "That is why I describe myself as a 'street' writer. I never studied grammar or things like that; I just write what I want to write. One day, years ago, I said to my assistant who was very well educated, 'Read this page and make it grammatically correct.' She did and after reading it I said, 'Never do that again, change it back to the way it was.'"

Like author Nelson DeMille, Collins writes her novels out in long hand, "I use a black felt pen. I have to see it in my own hand. I like my handwriting, I think I have beautiful handwriting and at the end I have the original manuscript and the final copy edited manuscript leather bound."

As mentioned earlier, the highly prolific Collins has written 27 titles and has sold over 400 million books worldwide. Controversial from the start, her first book, "The World Is Full of Married Men" (1968) was banned in Australia, Boston and South Africa. Collins frequently reprises protagonists in her books with the enormously popular Lucky Santangelo making her seventh appearance in Collins' next book, due out at the end of the year, "Goddess of Vengeance." Actually, Lucky makes a brief appearance in her present book with Santangelo's son Bobby as a pivotal character in "Poor Little Bitch Girl," which the book jacket describes as about, "Three twenty-something women, one rich hot guy, two mega movie stars and a devastating murder."

Collins described the next Lucky Santangelo novel as, "She is going to come up against a Middle Eastern potentate and he going to want to buy her hotel in Las Vegas and she is not going to want to sell. But she is going to get into the whole way Middle Eastern men treat women and I want to have a real battle of the sexes. I really want to expose things that Middle Eastern men like the Taliban make women do. I am really pro-women, which has always been for me that girls can do anything!"

"Hollywood Wives" was made into a popular television mini-series in 1985.

It is hard to justify the criticism that Collins has had to fend off from feminists over the years, as her women characters are strong, decisive and very independent. Undoubtedly, their ability to use their sexuality as a chip in the big game is a bone of contention for some feminists. However, in truth, the characters and scenarios of the sexually liberated women Collins serves up in her novels seem to do more to expose her male characters abilities to be manipulated by their own sexual preoccupations. Another strong and resourceful reoccurring Collins' character is journalist Madison Castelli, clearly a favorite of the young women bloggers at the Q&A.

Referencing the enthusiasm of the young bloggers, I asked Collin's if the sound bite mentality of the virtual generation was a threat to the printed novel, "I love the internet, a lot of the correspondence I get at my website is from kids, 'I am 15 and I took my mother's copy of 'Lucky' and it is great! It has gotten me into reading, but I don't want to read anybody else. Thank God you have got 27 books.'"

She is thrilled to continue garnering a younger audience and describes her appeal, "I do encourage young people to read, to get 'into' reading. I can remember as a kid that I didn't want to be bored by books. Then when I started to write I was determined to be very concise. When I describe a room I want them to get it in two sentences, not three pages. I think that comes across."

Growing up in what she called "a show business household," her father was a theatrical agent and Collins did have an early career as an actress like her sister Joan Collins, "I never really wanted to be an actress, I knew I wanted to write. However, my parents, and this will be the title of my autobiography, they actually said to me, 'Reform school or Hollywood?' My sister was making movies in Hollywood, so I said, 'I'll take Hollywood.' I hated it, but it was money and it was great research. I know show business inside and out."

She does indeed have her finger on the pulse of Hollywood and it is often subject matter in her novels. One of her most popular and controversial books, "Hollywood Wives" (1983), was made into a television mini-series and is one of five books in her "Hollywood Series." It was written shortly after her move from London to Los Angeles, "I met these Hollywood women and they were so obvious and it was so obvious that nobody had really written about them. They lived their lives in such a particular way that I said, 'I want to write about this.' It was a brilliant title, don't you think? It is part of the language now."

Jackie Collins chatting with young New York bloggers about her new book at an informal meet and greet.

Unlike the multi-divorce marriages Collins often writes about in her novels, after a brief first marriage, the writer was happily married for almost 30 years to Oscar Lerman before his death in 1992. She is the loving and proud mother of three adult daughters and lives in a mansion in Beverly Hills when not jet setting around the world or in the company of the many actors, artists, politicians and titans of business that she numbers among her friends and fans.

Running to a radio interview, Collins insisted we get together for a "long lunch" when the next book hits the stalls. Perhaps it will be lunch at Nick & Toni's or The American Hotel and she will reveal to me that another Madison Castelli novel will find its way onto bookshelves in 2011, this time with the protagonist weaving her way through a sexually charged intrigue in the Hamptons. Frankly I can't wait, and just in case you didn't catch it earlier in the article, yes, I sat on a loveseat with the charming, intelligent and beautiful Jackie Collins!

To learn more about Jackie Collins go to www.jackiecollins.com.