About

Who is Lane Casteix?

I was born in New Orleans under a curse: I like to draw, which was forever getting me into trouble in grade school and high school. My grandfather, an educator, thought he could take advantage of that and prepped me to study architecture, so I studied fine art with a minor in beer instead—or maybe it was the other way around?

My grandfather gave up.

I came to my senses and realized making a living in fine art was an iffy thing, or really more of a not-very-likely thing. I heard about a great program in advertising design at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), and that sounded professional and maybe even profitable. So I transferred and changed my major to advertising design—but I kept the minor in beer and doubled down by joining a frat, Kappa Sigma.

Eventually, I graduated and married my high school sweetheart. Over 50 years and two kids later, she is still putting up with me.

After four years in the Air Force, I landed a job in advertising in New Orleans where I had the privilege of working with people much more talented than I am designing many award-winning packages and product promotions. I am still there. Only instead of being a graphic designer, the other inmates let me think I run the place. I’m retired now.

Hobbies? This is where it gets confusing. I had my painting period. Most of them are hanging in my home. Then it was my pistol-shooting-competition period, followed by my rifle-shooting-competition period, followed by my deer-hunting period. In there somewhere was my Jeep-riding period, when my elder son and I would trash my Jeep on the weekends in the Bonnet Carré Spillway. After that came my Bible period. I am still in that one.

All my life I have made up stories in my head to entertain myself, and since I’m an incurable romantic at heart (eyes water during chick flicks), my stories usually have a romantic plot. Lest my head explodes, I decided the folks inside needed to come out, thus my writing period.

I live just outside New Orleans with my wife, and sometimes my two granddaughters, by the younger son and daughter-in-law who live nearby, spend the night. The elder son, daughter-in-law, two more granddaughters and a grandson live in West Texas. And should I even mention I have five great-grandkids, too?

Pets? I have four useless feral cats (make that five, a new one just showed up), one of which doesn’t even like me, and two chickens that produce only an occasional egg to convince me I need to keep buying feed for them. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of naming them, which guaranteed they would not see the inside of the gumbo pot.

That’s about all I can say about me, except I like writing this stuff and hope you enjoy reading what I write.

UPDATE: I am now sans chickens. Something got my last two! I’m in avenge mode now!