There's clearly a market for 'tragic life' autobiographies and memoirs, we all know that.

Unfortunately, I've written a comedy memoir which I suspect, because it is not easily slotable into any obvious category (I don't see a comedy memoir section in W.H.Smiths) is allowing me to build up a lovely collection of email rejections from agents.

However, oddly, the very first person I submitted it to requested to see the full manuscript. It was to a reputable Scottish agency, highly regarded in the industry with a collection of well known authors on its books. There are only four agents working at the agency and the person I submitted my initial 50 page submission to, within two weeks, asked to see the full manuscript. Sadly, two months later he rejected it. He did not criticise my book at all, but stated that a few months ago he had taken on somebody else who had written 'an equally wonderful, but very different, memoir and I have just spent the last week reading the glowing rejections from publishers...'

Since then I have submitted it to four more agents who have dismissed it without requesting to see the full book. But I tell myself, to keep my hopes up, that I must have done something good, I must be on the right track, to get that first initial full manuscript request.

The thing is - I *could* make mine more tragic. There are a few dark things that happened to me as a child that I could dip into more, but I'm just not sure. The general writing style of the book is one of irreverent humour and it is hard to, for example, write about child abuse using the sort of off the wall humour that Peter Cook was so famous for and with which my humour could be compared to.

Anyway, I digress. Just sharing my limited experience of submitting to agents here

Why not upload it here and see what reviewers think of it. It will help you, at the very least, with a final polish, and may throw up some useful suggestions.

One thing I would say is that relentless joking can be as wearing as constant tragedy. Sometimes dropping a tragic or poignant anecdote into a humorous mix can work very well and be all the more affecting because of the juxtaposition. Achieving the right balance is the key. the long and the short of it

As a matter of fact, agents do look on here and sometimes chase up authors for a full ms! If you finish the month in the top 3 'novels' (a memoir would count as that), you'll get a professional crit from an editor from Orion or Random House. Check them out on the Professional Critiques Forum - the in-depth crits are very detailed and well worth having. I think agents and publishers probably prefer that you've gone to the trouble of editing your own work according to reviews - it saves a lot of bother for them! the long and the short of it

The professional critiques are definitely worth it. Natalie set me in the right direction for who I should market my book at, as well as other things.

I'd love to know the percentage of requests for full Mss that then go on to be taken on. My anecdotal evidence is virtually all get rejected in this two-three month period between initial submission and the full. It's been my experience too.

Now either the initial sample is so highly polished, but the rest of the Ms lacks the same standard, or maybe the book in full isn't what the agent imagined it to be from the sample (in which case what is your synopsis doing exactly?) or what was zeitgeist in feel two months prior, has now gone past its sell-by date.

I'd love an agent's take on this mysterious twilight time. "A,B&E", "Not In My Name" and "52FF" (flash fiction anthology) all available on Amazon Kindle

"How a psychopath makes sweet love. I can get you ringside. Royal box even."