It’s funny. As an author you work and work on a new book, you write, revise, get copyedited, read galleys, proofread again and again. You see the finished product, it arrives at your doorstep in a box of 20 advance copies for you to do with what you will. On publication day you know the book is out in the world. And yet until you walk until a store and see it with your own eyes you don’t know it for real.
So I had a little time to kill in Pleasantville, New York before going to see The Wind Rises, directed by Hayao Miyazaki. My favorite local indie outfit, The Village Bookstore, lies just across the street.
You go first, I said to Gil. See if it’s there.
Then I thought that was lame. Screw your courage to the sticking place, I told myself, and ventured in. There my book lay, and it was displayed in good neighborly company, alongside Donna Tartt, Sue Monk Kidd, Anna Quindlen and Isabel Allende.
I mildly asked the store clerk if he’d like me to sign some copies while I was there. He seemed delighted, found me a pen, and when I said I hoped people would be interested in Savage Girl he had an answer that made me blush, glow, beam.
Well, he said, I think so. All those people who learned to love your writing in The Orphanmaster.
Now that’s what I call a night at the movies.
Jean Zimmerman 
Thanks so much.
You’re in wonderful company! Isabel Allende, Anna Quinlan Sue Monk Kidd! Congratulations.
We women, we sell ourselves short. We think that to own our own abilities and to speak highly of ourselves is to be less than demure, boastful, or some other such tripe. Dang, woman, you can WRITE! Own it! You are awesome! YOU are fabulous. Square your shoulders, hold your head up high, look everyone else in the eye and say, “Yes, I’m Jean Zimmerman. I wrote that. Ain’t I just grand!”
I can only imagine!