My Unofficial First Novel That Nobody Talks About

The cover to the 1998 Jon Lymon novel The Lace Partnership

Not even me, until now…

It’s the distant cousin the family doesn’t talk about. The one that brought shame upon the family in the dim and distant past. The entity that was swept under the carpet or stashed in the loft to gather dust and be forgotten about.

The Lace Partnership was unofficially my first novel, written 14 years before my official first novel The Diamond Rush.

I wrote The Lace Partnership back in 1998, a time when I was more into writing short stories, many of which make it into my Seven Slinky Shorts collection.

It is, therefore, my only novel from the 20^th Century.

Back in those days, I was more into style over substance. I was greatly influenced by the brilliance of Martin Amis and Joseph Heller. I didn’t know much about the theory of writing novels. I didn’t care for rules. I was dead set against the use of speech marks. I wanted a story based in my home town of Croydon, South London.

All of which make The Lace Partnership the most indie of my titles, a book that traditional publishers would never touch with a barge pole and other long implements – such as the pole used in pole vaults.

That didn’t stop me sending it to agents and publishers back in the day. I remember sending my cover letter and synopsis inside a cigarette packet – which makes sense when you read the book. I got plenty of complements for my marketing, few for my writing.

Anyway, The Lace Partnership is available to read here, warts and all. It's the work of a green novelist with little respect for established ways of doing things. It’s a dark comedy about a plot to fix the result of the 1997 UK general election and should be an enjoyable read for smoking nihilists who are prepared to not just suspend their disbelief, but fully expel it from their system.