Alan Whytock Smith

Algernon Dearly Loves Patsy was the start.

I was living in Bremen, and spending many evenings in Hegarty's Irish Bar.

One night after several Becks, I wrote this short story (1 page) where Algernon walks into the store, and sees Patsy Love, tennis starlet, standing in a shaft of sunlight. When he tries to speak to her, she brushes him off sharply, so he drops his wares and walks out.

The story grew round this - he was in a hardware shop to buy his incendiary materials.

But why would the tennis starlet be there? The original twist of Algernon being an arsonist and stalker did not explain her presence.

Then I was out of action for a while following a back op. With nothing else to do but lie in my bed, there was time to think of reasons why she would be there, and once I started to write them down, the next stage was to expand the 1 page story into a larger book. This kept on expanding until I had my first novel, Algernon Dearly Loves Patsy.

It was rough, though. Rough in the middle as well as the edges - it was written in Dundee vernacular, and I had not been in Dundee for some time, so did not really serve its purpose. It was not easy reading.

No matter; I sent my book off to Stephen King, with some background on myself (from Dunning in Scotland). He never got back to me. However I like to think he left a mention for me in 11/22/63 - Harry Dunning writes an essay which is rough and raw, but the English teacher Jake Epping the teacher is affected by it and gives it an A grade. (Even if SK never saw my book, it's a good story)

I changed it. I took out the vernacular, made up a fictional location - instead of Dundee (although many of the place names remain the same), Sidlaw city was the new setting, and I added a few more hooks for the next book.

This expansion made it about 110,000 words. I eventually got an acceptance by a publisher, but the book price if it went on to publication, would have been too high - who wants to read a new author at 13 pounds a pop? Also, I wanted to extract the first part, and make a separate book of the protagonist Algernon's young life.

So, this is how Algernon Dearly Loves Patsy was retired and two books, a novella of the kids' youth (The Wrath-Wraith), and the full novel of the Sidlaw city psycho and his sister (The Fire-Bird Syndicate), came about.

Next book Comatose Dreaming gave the same problem. Too large and still growing.

I split it into two - Azuri Blue and Into The Valley.

All are self-published here. Took a break. Now in 2026, I am working on a screenplay.