Now divorced, Maxene has a 33-year-old daughter named Aleda and a 31 year-old son, Peter, who live in Utah. She has written her autobiography, but it hasn't been sold to a publisher "because I refuse to write the kind of books that they want written today. Ever since the Christina Crawford book came out, that's all the publishers want. ... I think the trend will pass, because we're really getting saturated in cruelty and lust and whatever else you want to call it." Asked about the changes in her life since her religious reawakening, Maxene says, "Darling, everything has improved. My disposition has improved. I used to be impossible for anybody to work with. ... I'm now reconciled to the feeling that I am never alone, and that in Him I have a partner, and that if I run into a problem that I can't solve, then I'm not supposed to solve it -- because we're just mere mortals." ******** WESTSIDER LUCIE ARNAZ To star in Neil Simon's new musical 9-9-78 Bad timing. That's what had plagued me ever since I had tried to get an interview with Lucie Arnaz last June. Back then, I was supposed to get together with her downtown, but our meeting was canceled at the last minute. My second appointment, set for August 31 in her dressing room just before a performance of _Annie Get Your Gun_ at the Jones Beach Theatre in Wantagh, Long Island, now seemed in jeopardy as well. I was kept waiting nervously outside while the house manager insisted that Lucie was engaged in "a very important telephone call." But when the young star finally emerged, her face beaming with delight, I found that my timing could not have been better. Lucie had just received official word that a major new Broadway role was hers. As we sat down to talk, Lucie was in one of those radiant moods that come only in times of triumph. She had been chosen for the female lead in a new musical, _They're Playing My Song_, which is scheduled to open in Los Angeles in December and on Broadway in February. The show has music by Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager. The book is written by Neil Simon. "I'm a lousy auditioner -- at least, I thought I was," grinned Lucie. "This new musical will be probably the pinnacle of what I've been aiming for. ... It's about a fairly successful lyricist who's not nearly as successful as the composer she's going to work with. Neil Simon has always wanted to do a play about songwriters. It's a very hip, pop musical. It doesn't have regular Broadway-type tunes."