Perfect Timing for a First Novel : A Japanese takeover of the last privately owned movie studio is the theme of book co-authored by a Huntington Beach woman.

The timing for the publication of Jina Bacarr’s first novel couldn’t have been better.

Just as newspaper headlines have been proclaiming that Universal Studios has been bought by the Japanese, here comes the Huntington Beach writer’s “Avenue of the Stars,” a steamy novel about the Japanese takeover of the last privately owned movie studio in Hollywood.

“Avenue of the Stars” (Dutton; $18.95), which Bacarr co-wrote with Ellis A. Cohen, centers on the efforts of ruthless Japanese billionaire businessman Hiroshi Takashima to take over Constellation Studios, whose financially strapped owner swore he would never sell. Standing between the studio owner and Takashima, who has hated Americans since he was orphaned at Nagasaki, is Kelly Kristopher, the studio’s “gorgeous head of production.”

It’s the kind of novel only someone with insight into the Japanese (that’s Bacarr) and experience in Hollywood (that’s Cohen) could have written.

Cohen is an award-winning producer-writer of CBS-TV movies, with 25 years of Hollywood experience that includes being an executive at the William Morris Agency.

Actually, Bacarr has Hollywood experience of her own: Since 1984, she has written about 40 TV scripts--from “The New Love American Style” to “He-Man and She-Ra” and a string of other Saturday morning animated cartoon shows.

It was while working as a scriptwriter for Japanese animation studios in Hollywood and traveling to Japan on studio business that Bacarr gained insight into the Japanese. A former language major who speaks five foreign languages, Bacarr even made tofu commercials in the mid-’80s for a Japanese food company. (She is now taking a class in the traditional art of wearing the kimono and even wears a kimono and rice-powder makeup to her book signings.)

Bacarr, who has written two unpublished novels, got the idea for “Avenue of the Stars” during the Writers Guild strike in 1988. The Japanese had recently bought CBS Records and, Bacarr said, “I figured it was just a matter of time before the Japanese bought a big studio. I didn’t realize how close I was.”

Indeed, Dutton bought “Avenue of the Stars” in 1989, just two days before Sony Corp. purchased Columbia Pictures.

Bacarr met her co-author at the American Booksellers Convention in Anaheim in 1988.

Recalled Bacarr: “When I met him I thought this guy knows Hollywood and I know the Japanese--let’s take the idea I had about the Japanese running a studio and put together a story.”

While writing the novel, Bacarr and Cohen met every couple of weeks in Century City (site of their fictional movie studio). But the collaboration between Bacarr in Huntington Beach and Cohen in Los Angeles was really a long-distance affair.

“Telephones are great, but we got fax machines, so talk about a modern collaboration!” said Bacarr, who would write a scene or chapter and then fax it to Cohen who would edit it and then fax it back.

“It’s a give and take,” Bacarr said of collaborating on a novel and also citing the contributions of her editor at Dutton. “Even though it starts with an idea, I certainly couldn’t have done it alone. It’s a team effort.”

She laughed: “I sound Japanese, don’t I? It’s called ringi. That’s a group effort.”

Of creating the novel’s Japanese characters, Bacarr said, “I have Japanese friends, so I’d double-check with them on things I’m not sure of.

“Everyone asks me, ‘Do you know anyone like Takashima?’ ” her ruthless, revengeful villain known as “the Asian octopus.”

With a laugh, she conceded: “I’ve met a couple like him. He’s based on a couple of (movie) directors I know in Japan and a Japanese businessman in particular I met many years ago.”

While working on “Avenue of the Stars,” Bacarr and Cohen had a bit of a scare when Jackie Collins announced she was coming out with “Lady Boss,” her just published novel about a female head of production. But if the setting was similar, Bacarr figured she had an ace up her kimono sleeve. As she told her co-author: “Don’t worry about it; we’ve got the Japanese.”

“Jackie has always been one of my inspirations for writing one of these kinds of books,” said Bacarr, who actually wrote Collins into “Avenue of the Stars”: “She’s running around the studio interviewing (production head) Kelly Kristopher for research for ‘Lady Boss.’ ”

Bacarr said her agent has been shopping “Avenue of the Stars” around Hollywood, but so far no one has bid on the movie rights. She learned that one major TV-movie maker turned it down for one simple reason: His company has too many Japanese investors, and he was afraid they might be offended by some of the novel’s Japanese characters.

“So far everyone’s afraid to touch it,” Bacarr said. “It’s too volatile.”

If Bacarr was prophetic about the Japanese buying a Hollywood studio, it turns out she was prophetic in another way.

A one-time tour guide at Universal Studios, Bacarr wrote one scene in which an arson fire burns down the Constellation Studios back lot just before Takashima takes over.

Although Bacarr had Universal Studios in mind when she wrote the scene, the fire was in her outline two years before a similar fire this fall burned down much of the Universal back lot, not long before it was announced that Matsushita Electric Industrial of Japan was buying MCA.

“Talk about uncanny coincidences,” she said. “That was the scary one.”

Book Signings: William Harvey (“Spanish for Gringos”) will sign from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday at B. Dalton Bookseller in South Coast Plaza.

Fiction Class: Registration for Huntington Beach mystery-suspense novelist Elizabeth George’s advanced professional writing class begins Monday.

The Coastline Community College class will be held from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday evenings beginning Feb. 5 at Estancia High School in Costa Mesa. Cost: $17. Phone registration may be made by calling (714) 241-6176.

George, who just completed her fifth British detective novel, says the course is designed for students who have works in progress.

Library Bash: Donald and Mary Decker, authors of “Laguna Niguel: The Legacy and the Promise,” will discuss their new illustrated book during a free program celebrating Crown Valley Library’s third anniversary from 7 to 9 p.m. today at the library, 30341 Crown Valley Parkway.

Columnist Talk: Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman will discuss “Making Sense of Social Change in the ‘90s” at 7 p.m. Friday in Titan Hall in the University Center at Cal State Fullerton. Free. For information call (714) 773-3928.

The syndicated writer and associate editor of the Boston Globe is the author of “Turning Points,” a 1979 book on social change, and four collections of her columns, including “Making Sense” in 1989.

Writers’ Circle: Erik Himmelsbach, managing editor of Orange Coast magazine, will speak at the Orange Writers’ Circle meeting at 9 a.m. Saturday in Orange. For location information, call Marilynn Bates at (714) 526-4264.