Selma Blair can write...or can she?

[buttmunch]

If this whole acting thing doesn't work out, maybe Selma Blair can become the next Danielle Steel.

"My first published short story comes out in a week or so," she told Lowdown at Tuesday night's party for the Montblanc women's jewelry collection at Cain. "It's fiction, in a women's anthology of erotica with Joyce Carol Oates and Dorothy Allison."

Apparently the petite 33-year-old siren - who stars in the soon-to-be released remake of the horror flick "The Fog" - is between projects.

"I could probably use a screenplay, so I should write one," she laughed. "I do plan on one day writing again. I mean, that's what I went to college for."

Then, in response to a frothy question about the supposed demise of Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey's marriage, Blair demonstrated a literary flair that can only be called post-modern.

"All these people's divorces, there's nothing I can think of except for, like, strobe lights," she said. "All I think of with all of them is strobe lights."

Strobe lights. Got it.

Meanwhile, around the corner from Cain at Gotham mag's 100 Hottest Bachelors party, NBC entertainment correspondent Maria Menounos was being closely guarded by not one, not two, but three minders - two publicists and an assistant.

A good thing, too.

"What is this place? Is this Marquee?" she asked Lowdown, as her handlers dragged her away, yes, at Marquee.