Facebook offers a donate application. Click on that and key in Texas or Houston. I chose Houston Food Bank. Red Cross and Salvation Army are available.
Category: LIFESTYLE
https://readersfavorite.com/book-review/cradle-of-crime
CRADLE OF CRIME – A Daughter’s Tribute-Revised Edition Now Available.
The multifarious odyssey of learning the language of a gangster’s daughter began in 1966. While completely uninformed of organized crime, my father was active in the Los Angeles rackets; gambling, extortion and horseracing. Though I had been exposed to reports my father had a gangster connection, I denied any truth to these comments. My teenage years were spent in much the same way as my father; hiding my activities, lying, and avoiding truth.
SAM SHEPARD & THE FILM SHEPARD & DARK.
I’ve had bar chats with Sam; many Santa Fe locals claim friendship; he’s our Santa Fe Shepard for independent thinking, accessibility, dust-bowl prolific honesty and still a flush hand of rugged classic looks. The last time I saw him, he was sitting next to me at Geronimo, writing in his little notebook and eating steak. He put his fork down when I said ‘Hi Sam.’ He talked about his novel (Inside Man), his Kentucky ranch, and showed me his new cell phone. When he held it, it was like a man holding a gun for the first time. Nothing about him was robotic, on cue, or predictable. When he gave me his phone number and said ‘Call anytime,’ I resisted throwing myself into his arms; now I wish I had.
When Shepard & Dark opened in town for three days, I was out the door within hours. I figured the movie theater would be packed, so I brought earplugs. I take my films too seriously and refuse to be interrupted with slurping and munching. Into the first scene, my concentration was bulletproof; I would have protested if anyone said a word.
Beginning with the footage; incredible home-made movies and photographs of early Sam. You will see him as a youngster on the ranch where he is raised, and Sam leaving home as he kicked his way through puberty. Then we see that chiseled frame of masculine sensitivity as a young playwright in Greenwich Village where you meet Johnny Dark. The dialog between the two men and the dramatization of their adventures through home movies and collected letters they exchanged over a forty-year period broke my heart. I felt the pain inside of Sam as if we were best friends.
It is as honest and genuine a continuum of conversation between two men that I’ve ever witnessed. The subjects: their father’s, destiny, fate, women, writing, dogs, tragedy, and loss. It is a wrap of cinematography, humor, philosophy and a pool-of-tears-ending.
Yes, there is a dusting of emotions on Jessica Lange.
Several lines I recall, in particular, to paraphrase Sam:
We can change our lives, our work, our wardrobes, our women, but we never really change. Our essence remains constant. I’ve always felt outside the whole thing, sometimes more than others. As a writer, you have to be selfish with your time. I’m always moving, going on the road, I didn’t know that was how my life was going to turn out, but it did.
TAKE A PASS ON THE PAST
AWAKENING TO AN UNFAMILIAR REALITY. Ten years and two months I’ve nested in one place. Where once the red white and blue lights twinkled on the house and along the spruce tree, music circulated a crowd of friends and neighbors on the porch, and we danced in the street. It’s all wrapped up in a journal, words that I can read if I wish to remember. I don’t. The past crawls up my spine like a spider trying to weave me into its web. 
SARATOGA SPRINGS 2012
Clarity, comfort, security, ambition and love are broken wings. I have to redesign how I think, calculate a direction that will return me to adventures in livingness.
WHERE IS THE ANSWER
The answer is absent. It’s not in a book, a song, a friend or an attorney
. It’s not online, offline or any other line. Abstract, out of my reasoning skills. Where is it? Come to me in my time of need.
MY BOOK DEBUE IS COMING TO THE CITY OF LAS VEGAS-THE MOB MUSEUM
BARNES & NOBLE
BOOK NEWS!
You can order online or by special order in any Barnes & Noble Store.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cradle-of-crime-luellen-smiley/1125198798?ean=9781537456034
http://www.artistfirst2.com/ArtistFirst_Crime_Beat_2017-04-13.mp3
Author with local roots reveals father’s mobster history
BOOK SIGNING
There was this one bookstore in Del Mar that I browsed every week. The owner was a sweet New England woman. Her collection and arrangement likened to going into a candy shop as a little girl. Over stuffed chairs, benches and a roundtable for readings and workshops were not unused. People spent hours in her salon of literature. Right next door was the Pannikin Coffee House that catered to loyalists of aromatic coffee, pastries and slouching. I ordered coffee, sat outside on the walkway and read the book I had just bought. Almost every time I bought a book the cashier commented, ‘ I love that book, or that looks interesting. ‘
At that time I was working on one of the first drafts of my book. I browsed every new display title, imagining someday my book would be sitting upright on a table. I remember the day I drew up enough courage to tell the owner about my book. She raised her brows and smiled, ” Well, you’ll have to do a book signing when it’s published.”
After a year or two, she quit asking how my book was coming along, and I quit going into the bookshop.
Today twenty-three later, I am signing my book at La Posada Hotel. This is why I am remembering those days in Del Mar, when the dream of completion seemed light years away. ‘You have to dream baby’ Carlitos Way.
ADVENTURERS IN LIVINGNESS 