LUELLEN SMILEY ADVENTURERS IN LIVINGNESS

Where Gaps of Expression are Liberated

ABOUT

Luellen Smiley is a creative nonfiction writer, author, columnist, and historian whose writing is deeply rooted in a controversial personal history. She is the daughter of Allen Smiley, a close friend, associate, and business partner of notorious Las Vegas gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. Her father was sitting only feet from Siegel when Siegel was murdered in Beverly Hills on June 20, 1947.

That extraordinary childhood history became the foundation for Smiley’s first book, Cradle of Crime: A Daughter’s Tribute, published in 2017. The memoir explores what it was like to grow up as the daughter of a man connected to organized crime while trying to reconcile her love for her father with the secrecy, fear, and criminal world surrounding him.

Smiley’s work has appeared in publications including the New York Post, MORE Magazine, Southern California newspapers, and Authorlink. She wrote the newspaper column Smiley’s Dice—Adventures in Livingness, which earned a Blue-Ribbon Award from the California Newspapers Association for her Growing Up With Gangsters columns.

Her interest in her father’s history also led her to become a researcher and commentator on organized crime history. She has participated in television, radio, and documentary interviews.

Smiley’s next book, Gaslighting Greta, will be published this year. A personal story that reads like fiction. Her own website describes the project as exploring a woman whose life is destabilized by gaslighting and psychological manipulation.

Her writing career reflects a recurring theme: using personal experience and research to uncover the truth behind complicated relationships and extraordinary lives. From the secretive world surrounding her father and Bugsy Siegel to the deeply personal territory of Gaslighting Greta, Smiley’s work transforms difficult experiences into stories of survival, discovery, and ultimately reclaiming one’s voice.

Luellen Smiley is an author whose life has given her an unusual perspective on secrecy, manipulation, family loyalty, betrayal, and survival—and she uses that perspective as the raw material for her nonfiction storytelling.

SOCIAL MEDIA SPARKS MY EMOTIONS


real socializing
real socializing

Our society has led us to the path of non-involvement. FB did that,
Email did that, cell phones did that. Yea, I love em’  for the
thing they knew we’d love them for; a delete button.

We, I mean most of us that don’t control millions of political decisions, cannot handle much more. But we could save ourselves from a real famine, a civil war , or  war on our country.   Who  would come to our aid? I really wonder.  I bet on us; the ones who’ve always struggled.
We are not involved with each other anymore; it’s like having a manicure to break out of a relationship, and if you lose your job you won’t have enough money for a manicure. So you don’t lose your job; you work  eighteen hours a day and get paid less than your staff.   But nobody cares; not unless you go viral or if you have a million   Blog stats. Social media. Then you will go somewhere; you will have a job. Artists, are  digital: writers, photographers;  musicians. Who knows whose who anymore.  I think Theater is the only venue left of our physical   involvement.  Theater is life; and no one walks out without having something to say.  I also include: dance, concerts, opera, poetry readings, performance artist, and comedians.  I prefer to see it live!


2 responses to “SOCIAL MEDIA SPARKS MY EMOTIONS”

  1. Hi, Good commentary as usual – I sure do agree with you that live is better, even looking for date ( have to tell you about Mary’s “Friends First” meeting people group – They are at La Po one Friday a month – in a private room with name social tags, I’m sure we’ve seen them and mocked them, but hey, they are out there meeting people live instead of cruising match.com! Cute picture of your birdies – out here it’s like THE BIRDS, They attack my windows, a nest under from porch portal so now attaching my car windows & mirrors and the front door. Yikes, they are crazy! G

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