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Who we are.
Nan McCarthy
Rainwater PressNan McCarthy has worked in the publishing industry since 1983, where she began her career in Japan as editor of the weekly magazine This Week on Okinawa. Upon her return to the U.S., she was the managing editor of Personal Publishing, a magazine dedicated to emerging publishing technologies in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. She subsequently worked at software company Quark Inc. as a creative services manager, where she was responsible for the company’s advertising, marketing, and sales materials while also helping to launch the company’s book imprint, Quark Press.
Nan founded Rainwater Press in 1992 while working as a freelance computer journalist for Publish, MacWEEK, Dynamic Graphics, Step-by-Step Electronic Design, HOW, and other graphic arts- and publishing-related magazines. In the early days of Rainwater Press she also wrote advertising, p.r., and marketing materials for companies in the high-tech publishing industry such as Adobe, Extensis, Monotype, Letraset, and Scitex.
Nan wrote and produced her first book, QUARK DESIGN, in 1995, a designer’s guide to page layout software published by Peachpit Press in the U.S. and Graphic-sha Publishing in Japan. She wrote the e-mail epistolary novels CHAT, CONNECT, and CRASH in the mid ‘90s, publishing the first two novels in the series, Chat and Connect, under her own Rainwater Press imprint and selling the books directly to readers via the Rainwater Press Web site. After receiving coverage in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and People magazine as one of the first authors to successfully market and sell her books on the Web, Simon & Schuster purchased the rights to Nan’s cybertrilogy, publishing the books in 1998 and selling translation rights to foreign publishers across the globe. In 2000-2002 Nan wrote, produced, and published a memoir of her father’s life, LIVE 'TIL I DIE, under the Rainwater Press imprint. Nan was able to share finished copies of Live ‘Til I Die with her mother, who helped research the book, just weeks before her mother’s death in early 2002.
Currently Nan is working on a cookbook called Recipes For My Sons: instructions on cooking & life. She also writes an opinion column, Midwest Voices, for The Kansas City Star. Nan continues to sell copies of her books directly to readers via the Rainwater Press Web site while also making appearances at book clubs and other speaking engagements where she talks about writing and publishing.
Personal stats:
Nan was born in Chicago in 1961, growing up in the south suburbs and attending an all-girls Catholic high school. She graduated from the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) in 1983 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Advertising. A few weeks after graduation she married Pat McCarthy, who also grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago and attended University of Illinois. Pat is currently a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps. Due to Pat’s career in the military, Nan & Pat have lived in a lot of different places over the course of their marriage, including Memphis, Tenn.; Okinawa, Japan; Denver, Colo.; Illinois; Virginia; and Kansas. With their two sons, Ben and Coleman, they now live in Overland Park, Kansas along with a beagle named Hannah, a long-haired chihuaha named Yoda, three cats (Thunder, Pepper, Scat), and a bearded dragon named Ozzy.
In addition to writing, Nan loves being with her family, watching her sons play hockey, visiting with friends, reading, going to movies, walking the dogs, cooking, playing the piano, listening to music, exploring new places, riding her pink Schwinn and sitting on her screened-in porch doing crossword puzzles.
Fore more info, you can also visit the FAQ section of this Web site.
Just for Fun: Click on the photo below!
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