What kinds of writing did you see your parents, siblings, and other family members doing as you were growing up? What did they read, where, and when?

I couldn’t find a pic that satisfied my personal requirement for this post.  It was this or cat pics.  I chose the lesser evil.

Anyway…

My parents were somewhat of an antonym to stereotypes at the time.  My mother was (is) an auto-mechanic, my father was a nurse, and I have memories even from early childhood of them pouring over either technical manuals or medical texts.  My father in particular would sometimes involve me in these studies, and would talk with me about various aspects of anatomy and medical procedures he found interesting.

My mother had to deal with a great deal of sexism in her field (successful female auto-mechanics weren’t exactly common in the 80’s.  They still aren’t), and her literacy in the field helped to ensure she had a place in it.  She did this by doing what those in major technical fields have come to know well:  adapting to new techniques and technologies, ultimately to advance in the field and stay gainfully employed.  To that end, she was one of the forerunners in our area to learn to repair automatic transmissions, with a specialty on repairing the then-new (and to most of the old guard, foreign), now-common versions with electronic interfaces.

Reading was also an aspect of their entertainment, though my memory of that is a bit more vague.  My mother enjoyed fantasy novels, my father liked science fiction.  Both of them liked horror and would often share books, and was a large factor in my first exposures to all three genres.  I like to think I would have gravitated toward those three genres on my own, but I probably did take a large influence from both of them in that regard, as I write my first novel involving many aspects from all three genres.