DEAL SIGNED: Biographer Alex Thorleifson of Irvine,...

DEAL SIGNED: Biographer Alex Thorleifson of Irvine, who co-wrote “John Wayne: My Life With the Duke” with Pilar Wayne and “Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace” with Scott Thorson, has signed a “low six-figure, two-book contract” with Bantam.

But the contract is not for another celebrity bio: It’s for two novels.

The first, “Creative Urges,” deals with the Southwestern art world. “It is written and in Bantam’s hands,” says Thorleifson, who has just begun writing the second novel, “Past Forgetting,” which is set in Santa Fe in 1929. Before she started writing, Thorleifson, a former Scottsdale, Ariz., resident, was a sculptor whose work was represented by 14 galleries around the country.

Thorleifson, 53, said she began writing “Creative Urges” 7 years ago.

“I had never written anything in my life other than in college,” she said. “I decided I wanted to be a writer, and I wanted to write a novel.”

Over the years, Thorleifson, a member of the South Coast Writers Workshop, wrote four drafts of “Creative Urges.” All four, she said, “were just terrible.” She turned to nonfiction after meeting Pilar Wayne, who was looking for a writer to work with her on her book about her late husband. When Thorleifson returned to “Creative Urges,” she threw out what she had written and “started from scratch.”

No publication dates have been set for the two novels, but Thorleifson said “Creative Urges” will probably not be in bookstores until early 1990.

POETRY READINGS: “Alternative Voices”--ethnic, native, feminist, gay and lesbian poetry readings--will be held at the Fullerton Museum Center, 301 N. Pomona Ave., Fullerton, from 8 to 10 tonight. Admission: $2. Information: (714) 541-3879.

READER THEATER: Steve Mellow’s Readers Theater will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Scribner Book Store in Crystal Court at South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa. The theme is “Hot Off the Shelves.”

AUTHOR UPDATE: St. Martin’s Press has released the paperback version of La Habra author Jackie Hyman’s suspense novel, “The Eyes of a Stranger.” The 1987 novel has been optioned for a TV movie.