Jet: Wanda is back with: new TV show 'Wanda Does It' new book: 'Yeah, I Said It' new comedy tour

Wanda Sykes may just be the hardest-working Black woman in comedy today.

After falling off the audiences' radar last year when the FOX Network cancelled "The Wanda Sykes Show" (she wrote, produced and starred on it), Sykes is back with a trifecta: "Wanda Does It" on Comedy Central, Her first book, Yeah, I Said It (Simon and Schuster, $23) and currently a 31-city comedy tour.

"I haven't been in rehab or strung out (on drugs) somewhere, I've just been busy!" exclaims the kinetic comic who also just finished filming Monster-in-Law with Jane Fonda and Jennifer Lopez.

And Sykes has at least two more movies planned for next year (The Barnyard and In the Pink).

"Everything just kind of happened at the same time as far as opportunities. I like how it worked out," says Wanda. "I'm really happy so many good things are happening and I'm so busy," she tells JET.

Still, Sykes, 40, is working like she owes somebody BIG dollars.

"Come on, that ain't it. But, everybody's getting in trouble (Kobe Bryant, Michael Jackson ...), so I might as well save up for my Johnnie Fund (as explained in her book: Yeah, I Said It: 'After the O.J. trial I started a Johnnie Fund. I'm saving up, just in ease I kill somebody ...')," she says laughing. "That's what I'm doin' man, workin', workin', workin'."

Which is exactly the mentality she's taking to her new weekly half-hour TV show "Wanda Does It" on Tuesdays on Comedy Central, proving no job or challenge is off-limits. The weekly, half hour series focuses on Sykes' real life attempts to do everyday jobs outside show business with an "I can do that" attitude.

In one episode, she recounts a bad experience with turbulence on a recent flight and decides she can easily learn to fly a plane. How hard could it be? Other episodes have her working different jobs in and around a Las Vegas casino, and when Wanda gets rid of her car and then wants it back, she learns the free art of '"repossession."

"Aw, man! This is the best project I've done on TV! It's really funny, and Comedy Central has been great as far as just letting us do pretty much what we want to do. It's basically a reality show (as cameras follow me around) with a little of 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' (unscripted comedy) thrown in."

"It shows me doing a bunch of different jobs outside of television and a story that goes along with it to show how I got there. This one episode, I sell my car to a friend and her check bounces ... and when I go to get my car back, she's moved. I then went to work for a "repo" company. Then I went out and repossessed my car," Sykes explains.

So, how does a comic who works as much as Sykes (who even has a TV show about working a new job every week) find time to produce her first book? Well, at a book signing in Chicago, she tells the audience it took over a year to do it.

"And I kept asking for extensions ... the third time they were like, 'I KNOW you're not asking for another extension ...,' which was right about the time my show ("The Wanda Sykes Show") got canceled. Oh, I had a LOT of free time then."

The neophyte author admits she tackled the book with no particular process in mind; in fact some of the book's first chapters talk about the mental hurdles she had to leap just to get started. "My writing process for the book? It was a lot of just staring at the computer and the computer screen staring back at me like, 'What do you want me to do?'"

"Some of the stuff in the book is from past shows I've done ... (look, I got to fill up a book), but an overwhelming majority of it is new. I was constantly looking for stuff. I enjoyed doing the book because it made me think about different subjects and how I felt about them. There's a little bit of everything in there, from politics to dieting to race to relationships. At least 70 percent of the book is all new material," the diminutive comedian reveals.

"I was inappropriate as a child," admits Sykes. "I wasn't trying to be mean, but I'd say the wrong thing at the wrong time. I remember one of my mother's friends came over and the lady's wig was crooked. And I'm looking at it laughing, so as [my mother] was trying to get me out of the room before I said something, I blurted out: 'What's wrong with your hair? Your part is "all the way on the other side of your head.' So now the lady is embarrassed, my mother is embarrassed ... If people came over who owed my parents money, I would just bring it up to them in front of everybody. I started spending a lot of time at my grandmother's."

She believes people will like her tongue-in-cheek observations on everyday life and jokes that her close friend, David Chappelle, "loves my new book because it's so easy to clean his weed on it."

Sykes says she and Chappelle, who made guest appearances on her defunct FOX show, go all the way back to 1987 when they were just starting out and worked some of the same comedy clubs.

Back then the Portsmouth, VA, native, had just left her desk job with the National Security Agency to try her hand on the stand-up circuit.

During her travels, she met Chris Rock and a friendship started. When Rock landed his own HBO show in 1997, he tapped Sykes as a writer and performer. Sykes joined the series and became a writer and frequent onscreen performer in the show's many sketches.

She spent five years as part of the critically acclaimed show and won an Emmy in 1999 for Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Special.

Right now Sykes is winding her way through New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Portland, and Denver in her 31-city Cotton T-Shirt Tour scheduled to end in January.

The admittedly workaholic comedian says that working with a live audience is energizing and helps to keep her sharp comically. Sykes says she loves to see people of all ages and nationalities come out to have a good time and laugh together.

"Professionally I've learned what makes me happy ... it gives me peace of mind having fun doing what I want to do. Work at what you enjoy doing ... all the other stuff will happen," says Sykes.