Ah, late August -- when many people go on vacation and spend leisure time with their families. Which reminds me that some families have or had more than one author!
The most famous example of this, of course, was the Bronte household that included three sister novelists for the ages: Charlotte (Jane Eyre), Emily (Wuthering Heights), and the underrated Anne (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall).
But they weren't alone in blood being as thick as ink.
Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo) had a son of the same name who wrote a couple of books and many plays. Rebecca author Daphne du Maurier's grandfather George du Maurier penned the Trilby novel that's best known for its controlling Svengali character who became a dictionary word.
Then there's Alice Walker (The Color Purple) and her daughter Rebecca Walker, John Cheever and his daughter Susan Cheever, Kingsley Amis and his son Martin Amis, Richard Matheson (I Am Legend) and his son of the same name, brothers Frank McCourt (Angela's Ashes) and Malachy McCourt, and brothers Rod Serling and Robert Serling.
The late, great Rod Serling is best known for his amazing TV series The Twilight Zone (for which the elder Matheson wrote a number of episodes, including the classic "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"). But Rod also authored short-story collections. His older brother Robert turned the knowledge he gained as a UPI aviation reporter/editor into some workmanlike but appealing novels such as the best-selling The President's Plane Is Missing.
I haven't forgotten the many dual-author marriages. Certainly, it's not surprising when one writer weds another! Among these scribbling spouses are Nora Ephron and Nicholas Pileggi, Stephen King and Tabitha King (who are also the parents of two author sons), and Joan Didion and the late John Gregory Dunne (whose late brother Dominick was an author, too).
And how about the writing foursome of Mary Shelley (Frankenstein), her poet husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and her parents Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin? Or the sibling threesome of novelist Henry James, nonfiction author William James, and diarist Alice James?
Who are your favorite writers related by blood or marriage? Can you name some related authors who aren't mentioned in this post? Meanwhile, given that the died-too-young Brontes didn't have children, I will NOT end this post with the book-title pun Jane Heir.
Screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett won a Pulitzer for their original play based on The Diary of Anne Frank, though they were famous for films such as The Thin Man, It's a Wonderful Life and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
Dayna and Robert Baer were once CIA Operatives; they wrote The Company We Keep. Robert Baer's book, See No Evil was made into the movie Syriana...
I'd say a writer married to another writer is a logical pairing, and good writing runs in the family because the skills on which good writing is based, i.e, a love of reading, a capacity for observation, detachment from your own emotions when under stress, the compulsion (yes, it's a skill) to write down events as a lens to viewing them, is a shared familial trait. Is it environmental or genetic? Probably both...
Michael Palmer and his son Daniel Palmer
Lisa Scottoline and daughter Francesca Serritella
James Lee Burke and his daughter Alafair Burke
Ann Patchett and her mother Jeanne Ray