Frequently Asked Questions

Rainwater is my married name, and my husband's heritage includes Cherokee descent. My maiden name is McGrath, and I am 100% Irish. All four of my grandparents emigrated to the U.S. from western Ireland in the latter part of the 1800s.

My initial reaction is to say that I have no idea where my ideas come from. But truth be told, there are sources. I always had an absorbing interest in American history. A close second was the pioneer period of the West. So it was natural for me to choose those times and settings for my novels. As mentioned in the About Me section, some of my ideas about the medical aspects of the stories came from personal experience. I was blessed with the opportunity to care for the bodies and spirits of soldiers and veterans while I served in the Army, including repatriated POWs and MIAs returning from Vietnam. Some of their stories and their nightmares have made their way onto the pages of my novels. A simple note in a medical record made by a nurse was the inspiration for a major plot turn in Arrow. But nothing has been more special than drawing on the circumstances and emotions that my parents experienced and wrote about in World War II. The scene in True Colors where Michael must decide whether to remain at his present position-and near his love-or answer a deep calling in his soul that would take him away is based on letters my father wrote after he had made a similar decision. In fact, some of that scene is taken word for word from those letters.

Certain writers have influenced me. Louis L'Amour. Grace Livingston Hill. Richard Paul Evans. But inspiration? I see that as something else altogether. On some level I am inspired by the beauty of creation-going into the mountains west of Denver usually gave me a boost for writing the mountain scenes in Arrow. Civil War museums and books and movies did the same for True Colors. Sometimes song lyrics serve to inspire, or even phrases from overheard conversations. But God was my Chief Source of inspiration for every scene of each book. I asked Him to write these books with me, and I offered them as my gift back to Him. I am certain I could not have written or finished them without Him.

Unlike most authors will say of themselves, my desire to write does not go back to my childhood. When called upon to write term papers or themes in grade school and high school, I did so with a genuine lack of enthusiasm. But I remember once in the eighth grade, we were given the assignment of writing a short story. I hated the whole idea of such a monumental--and not to mention what I thought was a worthless--mandate. We could write in any setting or time period we wished. The bad news was, it had to be written from the point of view of a person of the same age and gender as ourselves. Worst of all, it had to be written in the first person!! Now, that was taking this writing thing too far. But you didn't fail to turn in an assignment in those days, so I began to write. I wrote at first just to have something to turn in, and didn't care what grade I got. The more I wrote, the more I began to personally like the character and the story, but thought that anyone else would see it as dumb. Finally the day came when we handed them in, and I was done with it. The next week, the teacher had graded them and was about to hand them back to us. I sat there thinking about what I could do for extra credit to bring up my grade since I knew this one would sink me. The teacher said that before she passed them back, she wanted to read one that was an especially well written and gripping story. I knew who wrote it, the same girl who always got straight A's in every class. The teacher got about two sentences into the story when I realized she was reading mine. She read aloud about the 12-year-old girl who lived in the mountains of Appalachia with her widowed mother. A girl who never wandered more than a few feet from her dilapidated cabin, who rarely even stepped outside anymore, for she had recently gone blind. When the girl's mother became seriously ill, the terrified 12-year-old had to find her way down the mountain to seek help using her memory and her other senses. When the teacher was finished reading, my eyes peeked at the kids around me to see their reactions. They seemed mesmerized. Then she told who wrote it, and everyone looked at me in shock. Instead of feeling proud, I wanted to crawl under my desk. Now everyone knew what kinds of things went through my mind when I was alone and thinking up stories. I still have that problem sometimes-exposing my thoughts to the world.

My other brief stint as a child writer was also in grade school. My girlfriend and I co-authored a book based on The Black Stallion series. And I mean heavily based on. Can you say "plagiarize?" We didn't know the meaning of the word. Writing that story was fun for me, unlike the kind that was forced on me. But I never wrote for fun again until I was in my 30s.

All of my children were in school then, and I had time to read again. I read everything from Westerns to ancient history to The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Some of the novels I read were genuinely bad. Poorly written and uninteresting. I thought, I could write better than this! Right. Two decades of writing, studying writing, editing, rewriting, re-editing, etc, etc. later, the books made it into print.

I am a storyteller, and my stories are definitely shaped by my Christian world view. They are redemptive but not overtly theological. Biblical values and acts of faith are embedded in the story. It is my desire that hearts will be drawn closer to God through the "lives" of my characters. For the reader interested solely in being entertained, he or she has certainly come to the right place. Woven throughout these stories are elements of loss and triumph, committed love and long-haul character. You don't have to be a Chri-Fi reader to have a desire to indulge in wholesome, conscience-nurturing stories.