Unique and funny – a surreal look at the fallibility of the male ego

Smug Dad forms part of what the author has called “The Boyband Sandwich Trilogy” with noughties prequel How to Murder a Boyband to be published by Cranthorpe Millner directly after Smug Dad and contemporary How NOT to Murder a Boyband almost complete serving as the sequel, so the two Boyband novels as the sandwich with Smug Dad the meat in the middle!

Having taken a full twelve years for Jason Roche to take his story from conception to publication, the author has created a unique, disturbing, lewd and laugh out loud funny book with a protagonist, Douglas Perfors, that will strike chord with every modern father.

Perceptive and capturing all the nuances of what it means to live a ‘perfect’ life, Smug Dad spans a range of literary genres. And, not wanting to keep his audience waiting, the prequel and sequel to his “The Boyband Sandwich Trilogy” are already in the publishing pipeline, as well as plans for a spin-off to the Smug Dad narrative.

A highly original piece of writing from a very exciting debut novelist, Smug Dad is testament to the adage that slow and steady can definitely win the race. 

Jason Roche says:

“What makes Smug Dad unique is that it is disturbing, surreal, redemptory, ribald, and nihilistic, straddling multiple genres and emotions … you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll wince, you’ll lament, you’ll hurl (or at least reel back in abhorrence), you’ll attempt to spot the twists, you’ll try deciphering the spoonerized titles, you’ll cheer! I hope! With a unique yet distinct feminist angle and a set of compelling female characters Smug Dad might change the concept of a supervillain / superhero forever!”

“Smug Dad began life on a muggy summer’s day 2009 in Muswell Hill, North London with the final edit a mere 12 years later, a surfeit of life, keyboard tapping, missing train stops lost in the telling, blocks, hiatuses, self-doubt, children, provision, reality and good times in between. The memory of wandering upstairs to start this idea I was immensely excited about, a slight calm in the parenting battlefield apparent, is as vivid as if it were yesterday, the blank page daring me to take the plunge. As a Dad myself there was reference to the familiar paternal base of Smug Dad but with the more vicarious and outlandish elements it was fun to exercise the more fanatically phantastic and uncompromising places of one’s imagination.”

All throughout school I loved writing, English Creative Writing being the highlight class of my academic schedule. Writing stories has long been my tumultuous bedfellow, a trail of experimental English essays leaving a bevy of (sometimes) smiling, head-scratching, admonishing and adulating in equal measure English teachers but perhaps signifying tangible belief and recognition at age 16 when, posed with only 30 minutes to write a school essay, I wrote a satire on Biblical beginnings (entitled “The Garden”) and, without a second read (timeframes missed in those days were deadly), it went on to win a national award – The Alan Paton Creative Writing Competition and was published including in national newspapers, leading me astray towards the completely false belief that the first draft achieves anything real!

In my spare time I’m prone to other forms of writing, specifically film and television screenplays and daring to dream even further having embarked upon a soupçon of independent filmmaking, the foundation of which I’m hoping book trailers, montages and family anthologies edited in DaVinci Resolve will serve as the equivalent of Fincher’s music video introductory path.

To be published directly after Smug Dad is the prequel – How to Murder a Boyband … the complete guide to the extrication of the phenomenon, iconic with celebrity-obsessed fans everywhere … Boybands, set during the early noughties in London at the peak of Boyband hysteria. I wrote the first drafts of Boyband in my twenties – that’s my apology to the world! Boybands were so big and iconic I wanted to write a story which dealt with their supposed demise and celebrity self-destruction.