Eoin Colfer, author of the best-selling Artemis Fowl books, and Niall Colfer, archaeologist and songwriter, grew up between a Norman castle and the Hook lighthouse in Slade, Co Wexford, in a family of five boys. There is 10 years between them. Reading, acting, painting, copying album covers and drawing cartoons was what they did for fun in their house, prompted by their father, a primary-school teacher, and mother, who taught drama. They remain a close family, including first cousins from New Ross, three of whom are in Niall's rock'n'roll band, Salthouse.
EOIN
I still half-see Niall as a little blond guy in green wellies. There was a lot of rough and tumble among the four older brothers, but I don't remember ever having an argument with him. We've really grown closer in the past five or six years, now that he's making his way in the world.
Paul, the eldest, is a computer engineer; Donal - the handsome one, apparently - is an architect; and Eamonn has just finished his first screenplay. Niall was always seen as the good one; the rest of us got into trouble, especially Donal. Anyway, the day came when Niall finally did get into big trouble, and was grounded. Soon afterwards, he climbed up into the attic and then fell out of it. Donal claimed Niall was a genius, a criminal mastermind. He wasn't seriously hurt, but he had to lie down and get lots of sympathy, and whatever he had done wrong was immediately forgotten.
He's very much where I was five years ago, trying to make a breakthrough in the arts world. I know I am partisan, but I really think Salthouse will make it. I love to go to the studio when I can, or to gigs, and I listen to them all the time in the car.
I got my first taste of Niall's music when Jackie and I were away [ he and his wife spent four years travelling: a year in Saudi Arabia, a year in Italy and two years in Tunisia]. The family sent us a tape which they called Radio Saudi - sort of a mock radio broadcast. Sometimes our post was read and censored, and we were lucky that this package wasn't seized, because it was full of skits, like Hall's Pictorial Weekly, and Eamonn did a good, you know, racist, imitation of a Saudi accent. Anyway, on the tape, my parents interviewed everyone in the family, there was a version of Neil Simon's play Plaza Suite - pronounced schweet - and it ended with one of Niall's songs. We felt very far away, so you can imagine how much it meant to us. It's just good that it wasn't confiscated, because it had all these jokes, like about where we were hiding our liquor.
Niall is on a dig in Kerry at the moment, and I'm leaving for a book tour in the States next week, so we don't see each other as often as we used to, but that means that when we do get together we have a lot to talk about. I know it may sound unusual to want to see your brothers, but we are lucky that way. It has been a good year for the Colfers: Dad's book on the Hook peninsula sold out in its second printing, and I think the band is blazing a trail.
Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception, volume four in the series of five, will be published by Puffin next month
NIALL
Eoin was the mystical big brother who could do everything. He has an exterior now of being very calm, but when he was younger he was a tearaway. I loved his music.
One time, when he was big into Queen, he spent hours, days even, painting their logo on his bedroom door . . . and then another brother pointed out that he had left out a letter. Funny to think a writer would leave out a letter, isn't it?
Eoin is very supportive. He is the only person who would listen to my guitar solos. I played a solo for him for 10 minutes straight, and he claimed he loved it. God forgive him, but he has even pinched a few lines from my songs.
When I was growing up he was away or on his travels, but his taste in music was always a big influence: Led Zeppelin, Queen, Bowie, Neil Young. Halfway through reading his first book, Benny and Omar, I realised he was majorly talented, and we all told him he'd have to take up writing full time. Now he's saying that to me about my music.
He understands children so well. The day our photograph was taken I went with him to a reading in Liberty Hall, and the kids were looking at me with veneration just because I was sitting beside him. They think he's some kind of god. I guess it's up to us to keep him in his place.
When I read his books I can hear his voice. I always know when he is laughing.
Dream by Day by Salthouse is released by RMG Chart/Interactive Music