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.

SMILEYS DICE ON THROWING ALL THE DICE


 

Adventures in Livingness

Upper Lanai
Upper Lanai

MALIBU- ISLAND
I was flipping channels one night in Santa Fe, New Mexico where I live. I stopped when the opening scene of Don’t Make Waves with Tony Curtis and Sharon Tate. Her name in the credits;  Introducing Sharon Tate. So I lay back against the warm sweat soaked pillows, turned on the A/C and watched. The first scene was on Pacific Coast Hwy in Malibu. Tony is in a car crash with Sharon Tate. The appearance of Sharon was that of Bo Derek in the film 10. A vine like body swimming in golden flesh with long honey sand hair draped over her shoulders. The flashback to the Mason Murder was soon replaced with this heart shape faced delivering sinewy gestures that matched her feathery voice. The film came out  in 1963 and the coastline was as pure and unmarked as Sharon; a winding highway empty of cars, cafes and promenades. This is the Malibu I remembered from my adolescent adventures to the beach to watch the surfers.

The scenery unfolded into breathtaking views of the coves and hillsides surrounding Malibu, like organic sculptures  drenched in sea-foam as waves broke. Within a few minutes I bolted up in bed and paused the film.

That’s where I’m going! My journey was given a name. I had a month marked out for a vacation away from Santa Fe while my house was rented to a family of eight. It was a month before the guests would arrive and I still had not penned in my destination.

I went to sleep half way through the movie mumbling to myself; Malibu, Malibu Malibu.
Please God, let me land in Malibu.

The next morning I fished for vacation rentals on the INTERNET and got hooked into
homes, cottages and condos for not less than $1000.00 a night. One estate rented for
thirty thousand a night.

I switched to Craigs list and scrolled down the postings, armored with Russian determination. A posting in bold black came up – MALIBU ISLAND. I clicked through the photographs and prayed. This is how I found my  room  in Malibu;a private room with an outdoor shower  in an estate home perched on the hills above El Matador Beach. In this house the owner, Chantal, also lived.   I booked the month without more than a day of what if’s and what nots could be expected.

To be continued.

 

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