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.
DECISIONS
THE WINDS OF CHANGE are stirring up both outside and inside. There’s a moment when the decision has to be made; some harmful habit has to be cut.
I wish I was going to Arthur Crowley’s Thanksgiving party with Dad this year. I’ve written about them before; real Hollywood-Beverly Hills elite sealed in sarcasm. Beneath their beautiful brittle bark, hearts were warmed, and humor unleashed. I’m of age now; where I could transform to their rhythm of raucous.
The sky is overcast, metallic gray rolling clouds are gracefully blowing the leaves. Nature has the wellness of change, it’s dark and then it’s light.
I gave Createspace the final approval to print this week. It’s not easy to let go and the fear of rejection fires an extra punch. What to do? Go for a walk and say over and over, I’m just a little bite of life in the greatness of living. Make your Thanksgiving a day of friendship, not politics, otherwise, the turkey will gobble!
One response to “DECISIONS”
Who would “reject “you??? That is the glory of self publication…..It is all about YOU baby!!!!! YOu are in control!!
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