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.
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 gangster daughter is ripped from comfort and innocence into confronting her father’s nefarious gangster life as Ben Siegel’s friend and partner. Ten years after her father took his own life; Lily discovers she must break the code of silence, to free herself from shame and distrust. When that trust is tested against her father, who controls her mentally, Lily is faced with standing up to him.
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.
Once again after a lengthy and gushing nourishment of his body and mind, I return to this mask of myself. Sunken eyes and droopy cheeks; a hollowness that overwhelms the spirit.
The insomnia of separation from a man’s thunder. When his shoulder hooks my head, and tweaks my worries like soft bread. The mind that directs me when I am driving directionless, and maps my journey, and to walk beside me, a guardian of my fragility. The voice that encourages me, and applauds my success, rather than let it drip from jealously or preoccupation.
More to come.
How the laughter erupts in a moment of spontaneous passion.
My observation of his secret revealed, unknowingly.
The gestures of him shaving, and the modest vanity after I re-wardrobe him.
Feeling his eyes in a crowd, undressing or admiring me, for some folly or expression.
The humor he finds in my misguided attempts to open bottles, and packages with a dull spoon,
and figure out electronics.
How he will pardon and pamper my unwarranted fears of stalkers, misplacing my Progressive Prada glasses, and falling down the slippery wooden stairs.
The man whose balance evens my wrinkles.
Let’s the light into my eyes.
Opens my shell with wonder and tenderness.
WHY I write this is because the danger of reversing the purest form of love is tempting me. This dragon argues with me for dressing up, for believing in love, for wanting romance, for giving the guy next to me a chance, and for dating. She tries to stop me from waving at neighbors, for whistling winds of change, hope, and all those iridescent rainbows I lived with my man, and now are like submarine weights to lift each day.
It’s like taking down the Christmas Ornaments, and returning to the blemishes of winter.
Yes, the dragon sees me in the mirror, and maybe you, but we cannot allow her to trample over our feminine skin.
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 appreciated him coming back to look after me while I was temporarily flattened by a silly back spasm. I know that he would have preferred staying in Taos with his new lover. I also know the feeling of being split in two-known it for two and half years when I was with John. Sometimes I felt like Anais Nin who had a husband, she didn’t sleep with but who supported her writing, and then accepted her lovers like Henry Miller, Gonzalez, and Durrell.
That mixes up the cocktail of love so at one moment, you know whom you love, and whom you want to be with, and the next day, it is all clouded, opaque and vague as a dirty olive martini. It is frustrating to know that my love for Rudy is bygone for what we both need now. Sometimes, it just crushes me in the knees and I beg for answers. He is sheltering me from the truth, but I know the new woman in his life could be serious. I know that, because I know him so very well. I am prepared; at least I’ve faced the insertion of someone else in his life, who will encapsulate his time and thoughts. If only I had the motivation to script this, or book write it, because it is, extraordinarily unique. It divides the weak from the strong when it comes to love. Nothing ruins a man more than love, and I mean woman too. It is the one force in our life that can leave us heartless or make us heartwarming.
When life imitates art; I’ve read the diaries of Anais Nin so often, they must have invited themselves into my life.
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.
Now. I don’ feel like writing, and haven’t for a month other than scribbling in the journal and on napkins. When I run from the pen, then it is time to write. I bought the refills yesterday, and three writing pads. What I discovered, going straight to the laptop is constipating; I must first write in long hand allowing the flow of urgency to ink and not having the option of making corrections.
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.
His eyes widened with the surplus of understanding that comes after you’ve accepted an unimaginable pain. Why is it that
tragedy teaches us more than triumph?
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’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’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’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’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.
Only minutes after the Olympic closing ceremony and your song, I asked, will they tribute John?
AND YOU DID IT. YOU DID IT PAUL. AND JOHN WAS LISTENING.
WE CAN ALL BE CHAMPIONS. YOU DON’T NEED A COMPETITOR, YOU HAVE YOUR CONSCIENCE. LET THOSE 85 COUNTRIES, AND THOUSANDS OF PERFORMANCES INSPIRE YOU TO BE YOUR OWN CHAMPION.
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’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.
