Dennis Smith has been the resident lifeguard and swimming coach at St Andrews’ East Sands Leisure Centre for 35 years.
He even met his wife there, when they were just 23 and 17.
“She came in with her cousins, to the pool,” recalls Dennis, 56. “She took part in one of my aqua aerobics classes – I was about four stone lighter back then! And she just heckled me from the back.
“It was fun and games!”
Now the pair have two daughters, aged 19 and 16, and Dennis has helped teach hundreds more of the children in St Andrews how to swim, or be a rookie lifeguard.
But despite being a familiar face to many swimmers and parents in the Fife town, Dennis has a whole other life off the poolside as an author under pseudonym Robyn Smythe.
“It’s a bit of a Batman/Bruce Wayne thing,” chuckles the St Andrews native as we meet at the leisure centre on his break.
“I’ve always been interested in writing, going back to secondary school. Then sadly Covid came around and I had time on my hands.
“So mostly for my mental health, I just started writing.”
‘It’s a good way to process’
Now he’s released the first novel in his mystery-based ‘Legacy’ series, Fallon: Failure Is Not An Option, as well as a children’s book, The Animal Tea Party.
In fact, he reveals that the latter – a ‘no sense’ tale of talking animals – was originally nested inside the former, as a story that protagonist of Fallon tells his granddaughter to soothe her from a nightmare.
“I got the first two books for the price of one!” smiles Dennis. “I found I absolutely loved doing the kiddies’ story, because it’s got my sense of humour in it.”
The Animal Tea Party has already gone down a storm with Dennis’ swimming groups – so much so that he’s written several more children’s books fulfilling requests from his pupils to “put me in your books” – with parental consent, of course.
One of the stories even takes place at a swimming pool just like the one at East Sands.
“I’m not just a lifeguard, I’m a swimming teacher as well,” he explains.
“And one of the books I’ve got in the works is Eric The Rookie Lifeguard, about a 10-year-old kid who comes and does his rookie lifeguard training at a fictitious pool, inspired by this place.
“A lot of the staff are caricatures of the staff here,” he adds with a chuckle.
Indeed, he admits that writing his darker Fallon novels is a great way to take his anger out when faced with difficult customers at his day job.
“I’ll walk along the poolside and something might happen, and then like Poirot my grey cells might start firing. If a customer’s annoyed me, they might become a victim in Fallon, and I can really take my anger out – it becomes nasty!” he laughs.
“But I’m absolutely loving it. It’s a good way to process.”
Family above all
Now just three years after he started writing, Dennis has got a whopping 25 more manuscripts waiting in the wings, including kids’ stories, Fallon instalments and even spin-offs.
“The Fallon books are called the Legacy series, and they’re all linked,” he explains, adding that the series sprawls from the First World War right up to the present day.
“It’s about a family, and I had a rough idea of where I was going with it from the start.
“It’s also a legacy for my kids, because when I go to the great writing room in the sky, I want to have them financially secure, once the books kick off.”
Indeed, family is at the heart of Dennis’ writing – even down to his choice of pseudonym, which he views as a tribute to his son who was “taken too early”.
“Smythe is obviously just the posh version of Smith, but Robyn, there’s a history behind that,” explains the author.
“It’s actually the name of my son who sadly didn’t make it. He got to 20 weeks in the womb and we had to have a termination in 2001.
“I had to ask my wife if the pseudonym was OK, but she was happy with it.”
And Dennis’ eldest daughter Molly, a student teacher who shares a name with the granddaughter character in the first Fallon novel and The Animal Tea Party, is already helping to promote her dad’s legacy by sharing his books in her classroom.
“They have a quiet time, so she brought out Tea Party, and for the next hour, the kids were just mesmerised,” he smiles.
“She explained the story behind it, that Molly in the books was actually her, and when she finished reading, the kids gave her a wee round of applause.”
Fallon Part 1: Failure Is Not An Option and The Animal Tea Party by Robyn Smythe are available to buy now from Waterstones. The second Fallon book, Family Above All, will be released on November 30 2023
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