If the name Rick Riordan sounds familiar — it should

Port Aransas has a connection to the international success of author Rick Riordan Jr. and his Percy Jackson series of books, one of which has been turned into a big-time movie.

Riordan’s father, Rick Riordan Sr., lives in Port Aransas.

“It’s been pretty amazing,” said Rick Sr., a 67-year-old former teacher who works as a realtor and is married to Sandra Oshman. “We’re obviously proud of him. It really has been amazing. Someone will walk into my office, and I have all his books there. They’ll say, ‘Did you write those?’ They’ll say, ‘We’ve read those!’ ”

Rick Jr.’s books have included the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series. The title character is a dyslexic boy who learns that he’s a demigod, and he goes on to battle mythological creatures in the contemporary world.

The first book in the series, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, was made into a movie. Released in 2010, the film grossed $88 million, according to imdb.com, a Web site that chronicles a wide variety of movie-related subjects.

Rick Jr.’s work has earned him many distinctions, including multiple spots on the New York Times best sellers list. He has a new book, The Son of Neptune, coming out Oct. 4. Three million copies will be cranked out on first printing, the author’s Web site said in an Aug. 18 update. That’s the largest first printing in Disney World Publishing history, according to the site.

Rick Jr. was born and raised in San Antonio. His mother is Lyn Belisle, who today lives in San Antonio, where she teaches computer applications and graphic design at Trinity University. She and Rick Sr. divorced in the 1970s, when Rick Jr. was a child.

Rick Jr. never has lived in Port Aransas, but he visited with his family when he was a child.

“Some of my earliest memories are of camping on the beach, designing a flag to fly over our tent as if we were founding a medieval castle,” Rick Jr. wrote in a blog on his Web site, www.rickriordan.com. “We’d feed the seagulls, build amazing sand castles, and eat sandwiches with sand in them (for the longest time, I thought that’s why they called them ‘sandwiches’).”

Even as a kid, Rick Jr. showed a talent for writing and musicianship, his father said. Rick Jr. started college at North Texas State University in Denton, planning to study music. But then his interests veered more toward writing.

Rick Jr.’s success as a writer “kind of slipped up on me, because I always thought he was more of a musician,” said Rick Sr., who moved to Port Aransas in 1999.

Rick Jr.’s first book was Big Red Tequila, published in 1997. It was a fictional crime story set in San Antonio.

Upon reading his son’s first book, Rick Sr. was “blown away,” he said. “He was quite humorous and really spun a good tale.”

Rick Sr. gives his former wife much of the credit for his son’s development as a writer.

“He is very close to his mother, and she was an English major, and she was very instrumental in is writing,” Rick Sr. said, adding that Belisle also is an artist.

Rick Jr. graduated from the University of Texas with a double major in English and history. He later worked as a teacher within the San Antonio Independent School District, at the middle school level in New Braunfels, at a San Francisco school that included elementary and middle school-age kids and at St. Mary’s Hall, a private school in San Antonio. He kept writing books while he was a teacher.

It was when Rick Jr. quit teaching to concentrate on writing that his father realized his son must really be making it in the world of books. Rick Jr. loved teaching, but he had just finished his first Percy Jackson manuscript, and a number of publishers were interested in it. So were some movie studios.

“It really got into a bidding war between publishers and also between (studios),” Rick Sr. said. “That’s when he quit, because he not only sold the book to the publisher but also the movie rights.”

Rick Sr. is a reader of his son’s books. They’re stacked on a file cabinet in his office at Coldwell Banker Island Realtors.

“With the books he wrote for adults, I enjoy them, I think, because they are just good, unique stories and mostly about San Antonio, so that’s kind of fun,” Rick Sr. said. “With the Percy Jackson books … he doesn’t talk down to kids, probably because he was a good teacher.”

Does Rick Sr. have any advice for parents out there who would like to see their children reach such success someday?

“If you read his blog,” Rick Sr. said, “he attributes a lot of his success to … the fact I always read to him as a child, and his mother did, too.”

For Father’s Day this year, Rick Jr. wrote about his father’s influence on him in a blog on his Web site.

“I still have the battered copy of ‘Tales of the Western World,’ now long since out of print, from which my dad read me Native American myths and tall tales from the pioneers. These started my lifelong love of mythology,” Rick Jr. wrote.

“When I became a teacher years later, I would often extol the importance of reading to children at home,” Rick Jr. wrote later in the same blog. “Having parents who read is critical, because modeling that behavior will show children that reading is an important and enjoyable part of family life. What I don’t often acknowledge is how much influence my dad had on my own development. He took the time to read. He loved stories, and he instilled that love in me.”

Rick Jr. also wrote: “My dad was both a creative person and a storyteller. Like my mom, he was also a teacher, and worked in the San Antonio public schools for many years. Really, the foundation for who I would become was laid in those early years, watching and learning from my father. Without a strong role model like him, I doubt I would’ve ever become a writer.”

Questions? Comments? Contact Dan Parker at (361) 749- 5131 or dan@portasouthjetty.com.