Hello folks,

New here, so be gentle. Have recently completed a novel and started to submit it to various agents. The rejection slips have started to arrive, so I am trying to prepare myself for the inevitable home-coming of the realisation (that somehow I staved off for the six months it took to write) that actually, I am unimaginably talentless and in that respect alone worthy of awe, admiration and love.

Here is the first chapter. Interesting? Any empathy for the characters? Flat, lifeless and predictable?
http://www.writewords.org.uk/archive/11611.asp

What's surprised me about recieving rejection slips is that they're frequently written in such awkward English. I suppose it's an awkward old business, rejecting manuscripts, but in one case, of the three sentences the thing comprised, one started with a grotesquely dangling partciple, and another had 'due to' when 'owing to' would have been correct. Anyway.

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Good heavens. I went to bed late and awoke early in what turns out not to be a very humble mood. Excuse the curmudgeonality of the above.