Aw shuck, guys ...
Thanks for all your lovely comments and emails about 'The Novel'. I blush.
It is just an exercise, though, so don't expect too much!
Once you've signed up, NaNoWriMo asks you to categorise your work, and so it's going to be 'chick lit', though in a mindsurge of foolish ambition I started out shooting for 'mainstream lit', for which I attempted a Joycean stream-of-consciousness cathartic ramble that went on for about 1500 words and left me feeling like a stunned mullet, so I retreated to safer (lower) ground.
As my characters are my age, there really should be a category for 'chook lit'.
I've managed to get my woman and my man to meet -— and, of course, they're in Siena! — and now I've gone and given the poor guy food poisoning, so there's lots of rushing off to the loo, and stopping the Fiat so he can throw up over the poppies, or in the sun-kissed olive grove. Really, I may not be cut out for this caper at all. It's going to be hard to get her to fancy him now she's seen him at his lowest ebb, and in a streak of realism, I've given her house dodgy electricity and dreadful plumbing ...

:: I've just finished reading this and I heartily recommend it.
It's the perfect combination of a great story, a little history, and lots of fascinating information about life on a train circus in Depression-era America.
There's a fantastic cast of eccentrics, as you would expect of its setting, and a far from ordinary main character with whom you can feel quite safe as the narrative takes you into the dog-eat-dog world of showmanship, poverty, prohibition, crime, corruption, madness and cruelty.
But it's far from unrelenting negativity. There's also a love story threaded through it all, providing much-needed warmth in the chilly world Ms Gruen has created so well.
This would be a great book club read - lots of themes, parallels and references to chew over.
(Please note Costco price sticker!).

:: David is growing a moustache as part of Movember, which raises money for prostate cancer research. All the Bondi guys seem to be doing it, so it's going to look very 1970s in there once growths start to mature. Dave's is looking pretty tatty at the moment - and there are still 22 days to go.
Dave's incipient mo makes him look like a cop (remember Homicide, and Matlock Police - Reno 911?), and I offered him $100 to shave it off, but he wouldn't be in it. I reckon this Movember lark gives guys a legitimate reason to try to grow a mo, and (a) see if they can, and (b) satisfy any curiosity they may have about how it might look and what colour it's going to be. Dave has silver-white hair and his mo is coming out the same colour as his eyebrows: dark. It's not a good look, but bless him.