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.
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.
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.
When and why does privacy replace honesty. Do we have more lies to hide? I find conversations starched, and drafty. When I go out to socialize, I’ll bring a book, one that speaks truth and stage it for attention.
My problems are cornflakes compared to what is in the news: racism, sexual allegations infiltrating the most unimaginable perpetrators, suicides, corruption, mass murder rampages and the politics are so degenerative I fear we have lost all civility. Our souls are at risk, and our consciousness is poisoned because the message is this: if you apologize, you can be exonerated. In a way, the news reminds me that I have very little problems in that zone, as I’m incapable of crime and racial prejudice. I am guilty of gullibility, raffish behavior and selfishness… that’s not the full list!
After checking emails, I searched for something, you know the feeling, one track goes in a dozen directions with popups, andI landed on this page. It’s Yellow Advertiser. Wrong name for Today in History, but I love this! Early morning history honking.
10BC: Birth of Claudius. 30BC: Marc Antony (Marcus Antonius) commits suicide aged 53. 10BC: Birth of Emperor Claudius (Tberius Claudius Caesar AugustusRead more
306: Constantine I is proclaimed Roman Emperor by his troops. 1261: Constantinople recaptured by Nicaean forces under Alexios Strategopoulos forRead more
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.
Friends are bookends that bind our stories; some novellas, some poems, some cinematic, each friend serves as a bookend to our personal history. When I’ve lost my way and need direction my friends motorize me like a little engine, and when I fly without wings, they ring the bell to come down to earth. At times, arguments arise, and my friendships stray, but true-life friends never leave you behind. Sometimes, years may pass, and then one day, you get a call or an email or send one yourself,. The flushing of that particular squabble in history vanishes. You can start anew; at the same time, it is not.
The essence of friendship never burns out. It is our galaxy, celestial agility. Are you experiencing a startling outpouring from friends who’ve left your life only to suddenly show up on your social media or a personal email? Are your friends calling and writing more often? I’m constantly examining some unfamiliar events in life, a new trend, a cultural change. Seems like every topic can be mixed with politics, sometimes the mixture is explosive. I’ve halted the political discussions, and so have my friends, as they are more critical to my livingness than politics.
PHOTO CREDIT PHILIP TOWNSEND. The first time the Beatles met the Maharajah.
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.
HOW ONE SOLDIER CHANGED THE COMMUNITY OF SOLANA BEACH, CA
For many of us, the idea of aging is frightening. We have been led to believe it brings pain, loneliness, and idle time for regressing mentally. Remedies, products, prescriptions, and escapes offer youthful looks, energy, and vitality. The thought of aging is brutal; we pretend we can buy youth. What if you met a man who told you he could do everything today, at eighty-four, that he did all his life without injections, medicine, special diet, or specific training?
What if I told you all his family, including his brothers, mother, and father, is gone? His wife died twenty years ago. That he lives alone and is not lonely. He claims he is the happiest man in the world. Would you want to meet him? He wants to meet you. He would like to be everyone’s neighbor. He has much to teach in a country of strangers about meeting neighbors and making friends. We who know proclaim him an inspiration, a legend, an angel. And to that, he always replies, “I‘m just a regular guy.”
Maurice Roberts has lived in Solana Beach since 1936, and his recollections of the area are intact. I recorded his history and began writing everything down. Next week, I will startthe first in a series of historical perspectives.
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 made friends with sadness a long time ago. When my senses are faced with tragedy, war, a friend’s hardship, a crying child, or a lost cat, it resonates with emotions I cannot control. I feel that today. The street where I live is lifeless. The residents are not behaving as they have the last three years. Once those leaves turn they all come out in gardening gloves and jackets and place mums on the porch steps. They bring out blowers and try to keep time with a tremendous showering of leaves and begin decorating their homes in flamboyant fashion for Halloween.
Last year, activity flourished as renters and owners placed their hay stacks, witches, pumpkins, and lights in prominence. I think it’s an unofficial traditional contest between neighbors.
Maybe this is our Great Depression and it is more than the economy, inflation, and uncertainty. I think we are all flustered and frustrated with the fall of politics, it feels more like who has the best strategic offense.
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 600-page novels, bicycles built for two, print magazines, street theater and many other authenticates we don’t have the will or patience to seek. We take shortcuts and improvise our way through the encrypted labyrinth of electronic modernism. We are in 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. They wand me up.. and I line it down with opera and wine. Be creative, I say is the best booster.
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 FEEL A SENSE OF GUILT to seek pleasure, amusement and escape. This weekend fifty-seven innocent people shot in Chicago; Nyiah Courtney, a beautiful six-year old in W.DC, a violent riot in Los Angeles, a woman and son robbed before falling down a flight of concrete stairs at the Subway station in NYC, and in Tucson: “The gunman parked his silver SUV by the park, got out of the car and opened fire on the two paramedics who were inside the ambulance, Magnus said. The 20-year-old male EMT who was sitting in the driver’s seat was struck in the head and the 21-year-old female EMT who was in the passenger’s seat was shot in the arm and chest.” Bullets’ targeting fans outside the Washington DC Stadium will be what everyone remembers.
That’s all I could handle this morning. So, why aren’t I talking about it with friends? ‘ I don’t watch the news anymore’ is what I hear and so my feelings remain unspoken. Maybe because I do not have a family, or the man I could love, and so my emotions stretch to a world of strangers in pain and agony.
It is not depression that leads my day, it is mild shock, anger, and a halo of sadness for the cloud of hate, crime, corruption, and divisive storm looming over.
My heart is especially raw for the youth, embarking on adulthood, the unsolved immigration crisis, and knee-jerk mask attacks on one another.
The words of condolences: ‘We pray for your family, you are in our hearts’, lasts how long? Do they get a phone call from a Lawmaker or Member of Congress? It seems laws have to be passed. Instead, all I see is a game of power. A solid gesture by the government to rename streets after the victims, a monument, or a wall with their names, so we never forget is my suggestion.
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 you’re a writer, then I imagine you are either writing a screenplay, historical book, or commentary, or you are in the other class; how does reimagining the USA come into my writing without offending someone. For me it is too soon, my thoughts are awry, like blowing leaves dropping from their branch in Autumn. There is shock, fear, and distrust rattling our recent liberation from the directives, warnings, citations, fines, crumbled businesses, life savings, and jobs from COVID-19. I’m still mourning three million lives unexpectedly ending in a hospital without any family.
My chutzpah does not rise to the occasion of revealing my opinions, because I don’t want to be found, and renounced because I said pregnant instead of birthing mother. I hope someone writes a new dictionary we can keep in a safe place in case we are asked to speak. Those of you in your late sixties, I mean is this welcoming or alarming? Have you had this conversation,
“You’re a Republican! or You’re a Democrat!”
Talking about Politics today is like revealing your net worth. The most pitiful, aggravating, incendiary, and the repellant outcome is that today everything is, whose side are you on? This is not my kind of party. Maybe ask the Pillow Man to join in on a hearing or vote in congress, and afterward, have a pillow fight and some cocktails.
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 made a list of the horrors, corruption, and confusion that dismantled the ordinary into extraordinary. The notebook is on top of my desk, on top of the entire works-in rewrite documents. All the other tributes to my success or failure are stored mentally; I have to look and hear the world. I am addicted to news alerts, commentaries, panels, and interviews. Along with the experts and analysts I listen to, my own voice and opinions are exploding.
I am not Charlie, Kayla, or Kyle’s wife. I am a writer of interior battles. My writing has never steered towards Politics. It is a freeway I never understood; a freeway my father told me at a young age was not to be trusted. A subject I avoided in college, and a topic that fumbled my thinking during my young adulthood rap sessions.
How faraway those years grow everyday. We chanted peace and love, in our kooky outfits, and our imaginative minds. I was full with Lennon, Dylan and Joni.
How much longer can I remain silent? There is a blockade of conversation about politics; it goes up like a digital wall, as soon as I meet a stranger. I was in La Posada Hotel the night the terrorists captured the Kosher Deli and Coffee House. I went to record by hand, the reactions of people I pick out very impulsively. A sort of lightning rod hits when I go into public and select my conversations. I may meet someone I have to write about.
No one had time to really absorb the truth of this historical moment. We may read, or watch the news, shake our heads, and then tuck our children into bed. I feel that our lives our complicated more with finances than any other single threat. Most of us just want to take a vacation. So what can they expect of us. Do we have a voice? Do we have a fax number to the Administration? Sometimes I dream of one representative in every state of the Union grabbing the microphone, and all digital devices, and shouting out, “Stop the war Republicans and Democrats! IMAGINE IF WE WERE UNITED… JUST A LITTLE.
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‘am stalked by a sensation of revolution; the upheaval of a crusted and molded foundation erupts and the contents spill into chaos. The spillage of this eruption is sparing political leaders. Everyday they appear more childish and temperamental.Your referee whistle is blowing, and spinning your diatribe into tongue twisting hollow promises.
The annoyance of conflicting orders robs me of my Aladdin (magic moments), and the mental sweep to clear out my conscience. I feel like time is stained with stop signs, alerts, and too many laws. What happens is subtle, but when so much time is placed in soulless activities, life looses it’s Aladdin. Even if you’re sitting at the local bistro and dining al fresco with perfectly agreeable friends, and chanting; our souls ache for reprieve.
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.
[contact-form subject='[SMILEY%26#039;S DICE’][contact-field label="Name" type="name" required="1"/][contact-field label="Email" type="email" required="1"/][contact-field label="Website" type="url"/][contact-field label="Comment" type="textarea" required="1"/][/contact-form] I’m a creative nonfiction short story writer, and a columnist on arts and lifestyle. I have never said one word about politics; I am not a debater, academic, or political science major.
Do to an act of nature, lightening, I lost Cable for a month. This was when Syria broke. No one talked about it here, and I felt the communities disillusionment. When my service was repaired, I turned on the news. I felt more insulted than the time a young boy told me my legs were hairy. Who did you think you are kidding? You want us to watch both sides fisting each other like a street gang! Please someone tell them, the Press, chill out a bit and stop turning the news into a talk show. You talk to us as we were mutes. The Government has evolved as false as who we see in the mirror. If you are plain you see beautiful, if you are beautiful you see plain. I see you government, and I am ashamed.
I haven’t read the papers since June. This Thursday I went to the bank to make a deposit to cover my negative, and I looked at the newspapers on the customer coffee table., My eyes shut after two headlines. How much more can we take? I really have lost track of priorities.
Should I get a job because my writing remains unrecognized. I need a retirement guidance counselor. I don’t like the title of financial advisor; they sound too rigid. Should I respond to the dreadful vacillation of American Policy. How much more debating can they do? It’s like when I worked in corporate real estate. The meetings I attended and had to present were progress reports on whether I was an effective employee. I don’t know how I lasted as long as I did; my act was good, and I impressed some of the boys, but communication was too formal to bring out honesty. Maybe that’s what has evaporated in our
government, or am I seeing it differently because I’ve aged into it slowly. I think it started when the cool shit act came about. Some artists have it, Musicians, yea they got it, gangsta’s got it, but they always had it. Those of us who feigned cool acts, became feigned. Rambling now. Got to sweep fall leaves and
start editing 350 columns.
I’m listing to Nessun Dorma, and oil treating my hair. I was thinking how much I detest all this multitasking. I can now handle five projects at once; write, sweep mop the floor, water plants, contemplate resolutions to my finances, all the while feeling my nerves tighten, and even though I stretch four times a day; this crushing operatic play in life is overstrung. I watch those Sandals vacation commercials and practically cry because how many of us haven’t had a vacation in years, or a chance to
play a round or golf or read More Magazine all the way through?
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.
What is this nonsense? Am I really listening to a national complaint against,
Christmas? Who needs a job? Whoever you are that started this, dig yourself a hole in the ground and meditate for a month.
I’m half Jewish, half Catholic-all I know about my mother’s religion is the holidays. They remind me of her, and how the two weeks transformed our home, because she happy, really looking forward to seeing her mom, and sisters, and nieces and nephews….
Whoever you are, watch Hallmark television. We are saps for comfort.
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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