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.
GASLIGHTING GRETA
A thirty -five-year bond broken by, sudden estrangement, psychological abuse, foreclosure, and gaslighting. Financial and legal burdens are presented in dark humor while tracking Greta’s will to survive through the power of friendship.
Gaslighting Greta is a suspenseful and deeply personal true story about the mysteries people create, the truths we sometimes resist, the enduring power of love, and the unexpected freedom found through self-reckoning and forgiveness.
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This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
I chose a new theme, and it is more complicated than figuring out how to build a house if you’ve never done it before. None of the links’ work, the block that forces you to write inside its parameters and the template choices don’t operate without a manual. I’ve written to the “Happy Tech Engineer” 5 times. No help at all. I’ll be working on this.
This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
Writing feels rusty today. I plow deliberately through the blank mental soil to find a blade of substance in a week of tragedy and cultural chaos. In conversations with men and women about our fractured culture.
” It was never like this when I was growing up,” that is from a fifty-year-old,
” I won’t get on a plane, no way?” from a forty-year-old.
” I don’t talk about my views with anyone at work or out of work, except my family and friends.”
I replied, “Yes, we have to talk niceties, bland boring conversation. “
When I was growing up, there was more joking, laughter, and confessional conversation. I was thinking about my high school years; we talked a lot about emotions, our parents, our dreams, and our fears. I don’t recall restraining what was on my mind. Perhaps that is why the majority of the younger generation prefers social media friends, as they can be easily deleted or blocked. On my FB page and feed, not one follower or friend reveals their political views, including myself. Isn’t that so contrary to humanity? And political violence, I keep hearing we won’t tolerate that on the news, but we are tolerating it. Do we all need drones over our homes for security? An optimist would say, We can do better, and we will; a pessimist might say, I think it’s going to get worse, and a nihilist would say, Life isn’t worth fixing; it’s just worthless.
I’m still dusting off the pleasantness of the past with the polemic present.
This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
Truth is out of style, it rather went the way of a six-hundred page novel, bicycles built for two, print magazines, handwritten mailed letters and holiday cards, classic modesty, privacy, discretion, trust to a stranger (after you have googled and backgrounded the person) and many other authenticates we don’t have the time or patience to endure. I’m leaving out acronyms because those change daily.
We take short cuts, and improvise our way through the encrypted labyrinth of electronic devices and political divided modernism. We are in a revolution, it’s been coined Cancel Culture, that’s just a tagline. Our Democrats and Republicans, are trafficking disinformation. Not a day goes by that a political analyst or news anchor doesn’t say it. The parties have developed fox and hound instincts.
9/13 First basting of Autumn doesn’t drape the beaches; I’d have to go to Julian. I love Julian, once I got this wild idea to buy dozens of pies and set up a display in local grocery stores. I got a wholesale price and loaded up my tiny kitchen with pies. Then I took them to the grocery stores, and open spaces in shsopping centers. I sold them! What I didn’t do was get a contract so the Julian Pie Company joined in and signed a contract with the stores to sell them directly from their shelves. I ate a lot of apple pies that autumn.
IMAGINE the USA was your city. Go a step further and imagine it was your community. One more step, your neighborhood. What do you think? Are you safe? Are you prospering: emotionally, professionally, financially? Are your circle of friends, family, associates dancing jubilee? If I wake up hopeful, without muscle cramps, anxiety, a friend in crisis, and a new alert, I write. . The melody of writing is like playing a violin or a guitar, it marinates the suffering, conflict, threats, political disagreement, Antisemitism, and violence beyond my front door. I am thankful that I found this little quiet friendly complex of studios.
This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
I’m breaking and entering the past. I wrote this 4/26/2016 and didn’t publish it. I’m sweeping out documents to ease reviewing my folders and documents.
It is five in the morning on a Sunday in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This is the time when silence is my symphony. The Aspen tree leaves on the other side of the street are turning the shade of pumpkin. It may be a very early fall. I prefer to write in the morning, very early before even the farolitos’ lights go out across the street. When I write at night self-reckoning secrets seem to seep out like drops of water from a faulty faucet. At three in the morning, there is an old heartbreaking movie on the television, and a draft of solitude in my room and in my soul. These movies always make me feel better. They allow me to cry; as I shift my melancholy to the heroine of the movie: Betty Davis, Norma Shearer, or Susan Hayward.
I look over the rooftops through the living room window. Are there writers and artists stalking the rooms in the middle of winter night? Stationed beside the heater or kiva, in thick wool socks and heavy robes? Are they drinking tea to settle their thoughts or coffee to stir them up? I imagine there is another woman far away from the plains of the Southwest, in Russia, Europe or Asia who is also at a desk and writing down all that she cannot say during the day. It would be magical to know another writer awake at the same exact moment, is thinking something similar, something you save for yourself.
One woman is thinking of a different man than the one she faces each morning. Another woman is thinking how she could never survive without the one she has. I am thinking of the continuing discovery of self. Our needs change; with season, age, and exposure to contrasting, confrontational and complex situations.
I met several women this past week, well-heeled international travelers, on the road with enterprising spirit. They’ve lived abroad, met an assortment of celebrities, and made enough money to finance their leisure sprees. For a moment I imagined myself, with a large Prada tote bag, sitting in first class of Jet Blue keying in appointments with my Blackberry. Then the image evaporated. It’s like the daydream of another person, not who I am, My voyage would be an expeditionary life of someone like travel guru Bruce Chatwin.
There are moments of regret. The most pressing is that I refuse to settle down. This home is temporary. I know the feeling; it has been part of my baggage most of my life. I cannot trade it in for a new brand, its mine, and it gives me enormous drama, change, and adventure. It infuriates my friends; who continually must erase and insert new numbers and new zip codes next to my name.
The secret of what’s ahead in the journey. Wouldn’t you like to peek into ten years from now and see where you landed? There is still a dot of danger to my passions. Not the danger that comes with racing cars or extreme sports. My danger is in the incurable obsession to combine all the things I love in one package, place them all in close proximity, and live happy bold and free.
I’d have a mid-century black bottomed swimming pool and not far from the patio a grove of avocado trees. The tree house studio would be my private writing room. On the branches of the tree, wild colorful birds would flutter, and I’d watch them with joy. In the main house I’d have a library with a thousand, and one books, an outdoor dining table with plenty of dinner parties for twelve, a basement filled with rare wine, and an assortment of animals. There would be a little village in walking distance with a fresh produce market, a bakery, a jazz club, and a French bistro. After reading this a day later the house I described is similar to my family home, the one that burned down in the Bel Air fire. Realization! I’m still looking for home.
This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
“Today is postcard perfection, even now, with sunlight too harsh to look at, the trees with tongues hanging for water, and the dead plants in the garden. I think of the ocean, the look of the sea from watery suntanned eyes, in Malibu and Santa Monica or Del Mar beach, the splashing of waves around my shoulders as I sink beneath the surface. I’m going home to the flowered gardens and avenues of palm trees of Del Mar to see where and if I belong. I spend the days interviewing movers, making last-minute appointments, separating wardrobes, rummaging through my storage unit, and staring into an unknown future for the first time in thirty-five years without my partner.
This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
MY FIRST PODCAST
Pip: There’s a site called Adventurers in Livingness, and that title is doing exactly the work it promises — no hedging, no irony, just a full commitment to the examined life.
Mara: LouLou’s writing here pulls from journal entries and a work-in-progress book, and today we’re sitting with one piece — the insomnia of separation, what it costs, and what it reaches for.
Pip: Let’s start with the 3 a.m. accounting.
Mara: The post opens with a claim about emotional posture — that a fractured life shapes how we carry ourselves the same way physical posture does, and that the antidote isn’t neutrality but active love.
Pip: And the specific image that anchors it is the racetrack. She writes: “My heart is at the starting gate to love again, but the racetrack is missing.”
Mara: That’s the whole tension of the piece in one line. The readiness is there. The context for it isn’t. And what follows is an inventory of exactly what that missing context looked like — the particular textures of a particular partnership.
Pip: The list that comes next is where the writing earns its keep. It’s not abstract longing — it’s forensic. The shoulder a head bows to. The laughter that erupts in spontaneous passion. The man who finds humor in her attempts to open bottles with a dull spoon.
Mara: That specificity is the point. She’s not mourning a category of companionship. She’s mourning the precise choreography of one relationship — “feeling his eyes in a crowd, undressing or admiring me, for some folly or expression.”
Pip: Inventory as elegy. It’s a genuinely old form and she uses it without apology.
Mara: She brings in Henry Miller to close the emotional argument — from Henry Miller on Writing, the line: “Whoever greatly suffers must be, I suppose, a sublime combination of a sadist and masochist.” Her response to it is dry and immediate: “I think he’s looking at me.”
Pip: Self-recognition without self-pity. That’s a harder balance than it looks.
Mara: The piece ends in a different register entirely — outdoors at twenty degrees, three years of a doctor urging flu shots, her steady refusal, and his chuckle when she explains she hasn’t had a cold since 2012. It’s a side-step into the ordinary, and it lands as relief.
Pip: The body keeps its own ledger, separate from the heart’s.
Mara: What stays with me is that the piece refuses comfort without refusing warmth.
Pip: Longing that precise is its own kind of presence. More from this corner of livingness next time.
This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
MISADVENTURES OF TODAY… Job boards alerts for the JOB I am perfectly suited for, are in Tallahassee or Wichita and require AI experience, and about seven variables of programs written as unrecognizable anagrams. I am only in my fourth month of job searching digitally, days of in person interviews are akin to eight-hundred-page novels.
My resume is professionally edited, posted on all the legit job sites and about ten questionable ones. I write personal letters to the museums, galleries, foundations and event planning departments, no reply, or the feigned friendly formal answer, ‘Thank you for contacting us! We do appreciate your time. We’ve chosen another candidate.’ The algorithm cadets are pushing me in the slush pile. Can you blame me if at least one day a week I scream silently. The bot bounty hunters are shooting me. Set this aside and see my phone, the icons on the home page change weekly, by a phonebot, and google decided to sync five thousand laptop photos on my phone. Now when I have to scan for a return to Amazon because they sent me two fans instead of one, the scan is where?
On my knees praying this laptop continues to behave or I will scream outdoors and be reported within seconds by a resident because Solana Beach bodies seem to obey all the orders. I tend to test authority, like not renewing my driver’s license for two years, and lying to my Doctor about my state of mind, because he’ll advise therapy and I self-analyze myself about everything, so why hear it twice.
The new modest home serves me what I came him for, ocean breezes, quiet, and private, neighbors that seem to harmonize, we can just say hi, is ok. At the intersection where I live, athletic, toned, and tanned looking males and females run, jog, walk, bike the sidewalks and streets in identical outfits. Sort of like a stage play and it’s inspiring to see that health is the way to live, I just don’t remember that culture dominating when I lived here. What I don’t understand doesn’t bother me, it’s a curiously about moving back home and feeling misfitted. Those of you who know me, have heard me say this about every location I move.
The ocean breeze, fan blowing against the curtain panes, bougainvillea bushes that colorize my terrace, the phone calls from friends, and edits sent by my publisher tranquilize the BOTS AND BOOBOOS.
Misfitted and anxious for acknowledgement due to not having ten thousand followers or whatever is the number, an author’s marketing team (everything seems to be in teams) contacted me with an offer to represent my book, Cradle of Crime-A Daughters Tribute published in 2017. Here’s the first paragraph of the first email.
The idea at the heart of Cradle of Crime is one that I had never encountered framed quite this way before. A daughter’s journey into her father’s criminal past, beginning ten years after his death. Most memoirs about family secrets are written as reckonings, as confrontations with the truth, as attempts to understand how a parent’s hidden life shaped the child who was left behind. You wrote something different. You wrote a book that is not just about uncovering the past, it is about the impact of that uncovering on your own identity, about the humiliation, rage, shame, and acceptance that came with discovering that your father was Benjamin Bugsy Siegel’s best friend and business partner. And you built that entire idea around the truth that the secrets our parents keep are not just their own, they become ours, and that the work of understanding who we are often requires us to confront who they were, even when what we find is devastating. That reframe is everything.
Six emails later and digging through all the scam searches, I discovered BOT LITERARY HOAX. On my base she pitched me the marketing plan, without cost. Now I have a comprehensive skill set to use! Sample: Listopia, ARC team, enhanced keywords, categories, Amazon Ads, metadata overhaul, refresh, etc. I did not use any of these when I self-published. I thought about reporting them, No, they can hack me!
This week, another author marketing team contacted me with a similar, your story resonates with multiple markets you haven’t accessed. So, I decided to ask ChatGPT to run a check. One minute didn’t pass before this was returned. The opening sentence was, Luellen, I wouldn’t advise this company for Gaslighting Greta! BOT brilliance, he remembered from a previous question.
Absolutely. I can recreate the Michael Literary Team assessment we just did.
Website: Michael Literary Team
Overall assessment: HIGH CAUTION.
I would not send them money, your complete manuscript, financial information, passwords, or other sensitive material until the company is independently verified. I would not call it definitively a scam based solely on the evidence, but there are enough warning signs that I would not treat it as a conventional, established literary agency without further verification.
This was particularly interesting.
We found evidence suggesting a substantial connection between Michael Literary Team and Susan Literary Team, including:
That does not, by itself, prove fraud. But the similarities make the relationship between these organizations an important issue to investigate.
My assessment was essentially:
HIGH CAUTION — do not pay until independently verified.
The evidence is strong enough that I would not recommend treating Michael Literary Team as a verified, traditional literary agency at this point.
And importantly, the 75–85% figure we discussed was a “do not pay until independently verified” risk assessment, not a mathematical probability that the company is fraudulent.
I HOPE YOU FOUND THIS HUMAN TOUCH HELPFUL!
This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
A year ago, I bought a crate of flowers to plant in Follies House flower bed. After setting the plant to rest, I had a vivid recollection of Nana; my mother’s mother.
Nana was a petite woman, with long graying hair she pinned into a perfect French twist, a cute Irish nose, and a giggling smile. When I was growing up she lived with her second husband, we called Poppop, in a spacious California ranch house in Sherman Oaks, also known as San Fernando Valley. We visited her weekly, staying over one or two nights. Nana was always waiting for us to arrive. She greeted us at the door, she had something cooking, fresh candy in crystal dishes, and in the morning, she fried bacon and the aroma woke me and got me running downstairs. She scrambled eggs with lots of butter and served it with Irish soda bread. It never occurred to me that these weekly trips were the cultural mix-up of my Russian Irish heritage. This was Nana’s only opportunity to spoon-feed us our Irish roots. At home with father, bacon and butter were prohibited, and bread came in the form of a bagel. The food was only one part of the adventure. Nana’s home was filled with antiques, family treasures, and her garden was a masterful collection of east and west coast varieties.
After Nana had all her errands and household chores finished, she changed into slacks, flat shoes, and a straw hat and went outside to the garden. I would follow Nana while my Mother remained indoors; most likely talking on the phone with some degree of privacy. In the garden, Nana would trim, cut, and arrange her flowers. I kneeled down beside her and watched, while she talked. Nana had the gift of gab, and her thoughts poured out without my interruption. Between sentences, she would insert a self-effacing joke, regarding her silly hat, or her short legs. Her hands were swollen from arthritis, and she rubbed them from time to time, but she did not complain. As I planted my garden, these visions of Nana remained and grew more studied and complete. I had a memory of being assigned a school project to plant something in the garden. By this time, my Mother had moved us to an apartment and we didn’t have our own garden. I went to Nana’s and she helped me plant some variety of flowers I cannot recall. Each week I’d return to see how my plant was doing. Sometime after the assignment ended and we were walking in the yard, I looked to see how my plant was surviving. It had been replaced. I asked Nana what happened.
“Oh honey I hope you won’t be mad at me, but the little flower died, so I planted a new one. It’s my fault; I didn’t look after it properly.”
Nana taught me the things my mother didn’t have the time to teach; like cooking, cutting flowers and arranging them, making coffee, and setting the table. She made all these chores enjoyable, and I loved to follow her around the house and watch her change the beds, and prop up pillows, and fold the guest towels. It never occurred to me until now, that I adopted her domesticity; the sublime gratification of adorning a home for the comfort of family and friends.
The plants did not blossom, the jasmine, roses, and other varieties all wilted and turned brown. I buy silk flowers.
This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
AI and OPEN SOURCING ALL WEEKEND ON THE NEWS. So, I asked AI to sketch a picture of me with an uploaded photo. This is more than shocking, it’s groundbreaking. I can be that woman on any platform. Obviously, I’m a late comer to the AI refinery.
This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
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