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.
She closed the shutters to his wanting eyes and alchemized from a cocoon to a butterfly beneath a circle of friends in tune. She removed the photos, gifts, and letters and put them in a box to reminisce later. Talking out loud, “She takes just like a woman,” but she will not break like a little girl. “No more hours fanning the past; on this day, my view spans.” She sat peacefully by the fire into the night and let her broken wing sing as she watched the wood turn to gold.
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.
BOOKS FOR SALE FROM MY RESEARCH COLLECTION.
A few book sections are highlighted but otherwise in good condition.
HB $14.00 SB $6.00 + MEDIA SHIPPING. Minimum order of 5.
PICTORIAL BOOKS
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.
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.
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.
