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 and contributed artifacts connected with her father’s history to the Las Vegas Mob Experience.
Smiley’s next book, Gaslighting Greta, will be published this year. A personal story that reads like fiction centered on gaslighting, betrayal, friendship, and the struggle to reclaim one’s identity. 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.
After I published this last story, I spoke with White Zen, my palgal in Santa Fe. She said the last paragraph of the story made her cry. Juxtaposed between the writers Zen of exporting such feeling, and the sadness we both shared. White Zen had a Thinker too. I guess there are more of them than I knew.
Having had six true loves in my life, who impregnated me with knowledge generosity, and loyalty is what made me so unprepared for the Thinker. He does resemble Macedonio; the first man to peel off the woman in me. They both have charisma, mystery, and good dark looks, Macedonio is dead now, and the memories of him still glisten; like the day in Golden Gate Park under the cherry blossom tree.
What I miss most, is the giggling, dancing, folly-maker that the Thinker pulled out of me as If I were a puppet. He called me Puppet because that’s how he saw me. I’ve got to get my Jojo by tomorrow. I love Thanksgiving as a day with admissions of selfishness and greed. I need to be washed away into thanks that I am here with a mouthful full of food, and a napkin.
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.
The throw of the dice this week lands on the tip of the diving board. The pool was serene and powdery blue and I was enticed by the sensual shift of waves and sunlight. I took a leaping dive off and swam for eight weeks.
Beneath the surface glaze I held my breath and when I opened my eyes there was a man sitting on a rock, posed as The thinker. I asked him what he was thinking and he said, ‘the universe brought me to you.
I shimmied at this rhetoric of mysticism and then suddenly, he swam towards me and wrapped me around his back. I held on to strong neck and ran my fingers through his mane of hair. We floated away beneath the weight of reality, beyond limits and caution. We swam towards the underbelly of Santa Fe. All kinds of sharks, sweet dolphins, brainy lobsters, wondrous whales and tasty little shrimps. We swam with them in a pack and chided their gossip and questions. Swimming with the underworld fascinated me and I hung on as we passed through darkness and luring beasts of prey.
Soon we were alone again and fondling; almost one from head to toe. My breath sieged into his and we swam through layers of fantasia. Suddenly he leaped forward and couldn’t hold on. I was dropped off on a rock that splintered my skin. I watched as he soared above me and waited for his return. I was so cold that my eyes blurred and shut. When I opened them a lazer like light appeared in the distance and pulled me up to the surface. My arms wrapped around the raft and familiar hands took hold of mine. Friends paddled me to the shore. I can’t see the Thinker anymore but I see him in the memory; swimming towards uncertain adventures in livingness.
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.
There is assurance that most of all, above the tasks, aspirations, dreams and commitments; we are dead beats without love. The feeling has to pass through our veins and arteries, as often as possible, from one suitor or another. You can love a moon in a black sky, as much as man in black suit. I believe the feeling it gives us is medicinal. It gives us something no other prescription can. That is why when sickness comes, all the love pours out from friends and family.
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 think of men as the solid substance in my life; the ones I’ve loved have always
acted as guidance counselors to my wavering fluid steps through the maze of decisions. If you’re a dreamer like I am, you know what I am talking about. We live in a blurred world of reality and what we imagine and the lines are blurry. It’s easy to cross-over to imagination and where that leads us can be more dangerous than the actual occurrence of events.
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.
If undeniable love only happens once, and then it’s gone, what do you do? Shop, count your money, travel, remodel your kitchen, volunteer, protest, have babies, read, or disappear into your illusions, and your art. Be enlightened, shine in your art, in what you loved always, in the froth of 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.
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.
