Good morning, all!
It's been a while since we last hosted a guest, but now that my own life is getting back to normal I'm hoping to get back to helping you learn more about the faces behind the books.
J.C. Winchester is a life-long reader who is fortunate enough to enjoy a life in the mountains where he balances writing with riding, hiking, and fishing. Although it's his transgender fiction that's likely to be of the most interest to readers here, he is a diverse author of several themes and subjects.
♥ Thanks so much for stopping by, JC! For those who may be new to you and your work, can you tell us a little about yourself?
Thanks for having me! I am an erotica author who writes over most of the span of erotica. I'm most well known for my two series,
Shelley and
Fraternity Fluffer. I also recently started a new transgender series,
Roommates Delight.
When I'm not writing I'm usually working on my house or feeding some of the many animals on my property, including horses, ducks, and chickens. We like to live a slightly simpler lifestyle, preserve foods, cook from scratch, and raise animals. When not on the property we do a lot of hiking and camping, and are slowly getting into kayaking and stand-up paddleboard (SUP).
♥ When did you begin writing and what prompted you to write erotica?
I've been writing on and off for about twenty years now. I was fortunate enough to have a couple of English teachers who were very writing intensive and liked to enter their classes in local contests. Through them I was published in one of the local papers several times and placed in one of the contests, which gave me the confidence to continue.
I had stumbled across a free erotica site when I was a teenager and enjoyed reading the stories there. Over a few years I'd forget about it, then come back to the site, wrote a little for an offshoot of the site that did choose-your-own-adventure stories, then became busy, and for a long time didn't have much of a muse going. About three years ago I remembered the site and wandered back onto the forums where an old friend of mine coerced me into joining their Survivor contest, which was a year long and I placed 4th. Been hooked since.
♥ Your work has been described as literary erotica. What is it, for you, that's most essential to elevate an erotic tale to a level where readers see some sort of traditional literary merit within it?
A good, solid, story line that doesn't necessary focus on sex, but incorporates it. All too often erotica writers have a sex scene in mind and you can tell the entire story is them very focused on getting to that scene without enjoying the ride.
♥ The 'Shelley' series was your first foray into the realm of transgender erotica. What was it that first attracted you to the idea of a transgender character or experience?
I was writing in the Survivor contest and part of the challenge was to put stories in every category on the site. One of the categories is transsexual/crossdressers. I was curious and read through a few of the stories on the site, finding that most of them dealt with futa characters, forced crossdressing, and very dominant male-to-female transgendered people. I was quite curious how they would take a character who was more feminine. The series continues as I learn more about the struggles of living a life as a transgendered person and the joys as we progress as a society.
♥ Your latest tale, 'Roommate's Delight', seems a very different sort of transgender story. What did it allow you to explore that the 'Shelley' saga hasn't?
Different mindsets and stages of life. Dakota, the main character in
Roommate's Delight, is younger than Shelley and much less comfortable with who she is. She's also much less experienced at having a love life. While Shelley is exploring herself, she has a more stable base, most notably she has Matt who has a good job and loves her dearly. Dakota doesn't have those things. They also have different goals in life, for Shelley she's a bit more interested in settling down with Matt while Dakota is full bore into college and making a career for herself.
With Dakota I also plan to spend more time exploring the different types of sexuality, something I dabbled a bit with Shelley but haven't focused on. Dakota's in a better setting to really explore individuality and each person's sexual identity. Shelley's storyline is about to take a sharp turn after the events during the Halloween story, sending it off in a very different direction from Dakota's story.
♥ If we can talk about you for a moment, I know you're a "seeker of adventure" and a "long time lover of the outdoors." To what extent have your own life experiences influenced your writing?
You know I think the biggest influence was my time in the Navy. There are a number of people who will imply that having served during
Don't Ask Don't Tell that perhaps these things make you uncomfortable. To be blunt, I served with a number of people that we knew were gay, lesbian, and at least two that enjoyed crossdressing in their free time. Know how much we cared? We didn't. It only mattered to us if they qualified their watchstations and were good workers. I had already been fairly open minded towards others but the experience certainly allowed me to become very comfortable with people and their individual sexual identities.
The outdoors features rather prominently in many of my stories, when I can it's a setting that I prefer to work with. It doesn't suit all of the characters or stories well, but it can really make an ideal backdrop. It's also an underused setting but one so rich in experiences and emotions that it begs to be used. I've done quite a bit of hiking, camping, rafting, and love to share those experiences with others so I do that through my stories.
♥ Do you have a muse, someone whose image or memory drives the romance and passion in your work, or do you take inspiration where you can?
I take inspriration where I can. One of my favorite hobbies is just to observe how people interact with each other. We all have our little habits and changes in facial expressions as we interact.
♥ I know you list several authors as friends on your website, but is there an author who influences you the most?
Indirectly I love
Jim Butcher's writing style so I try to take lessons from his books as well as his talks and essays on writing.
Directly would be
Patient Lee who has taught me a number of lessons on the English language and made a large number of suggestions on how to improve the flow of my stories.
♥ Finally, I know there's a Halloween story coming up for Shelley, but what else can we look forward to in the near future?
I have an erotica horror novelette coming out in the anthology
Erotica after Midnight. The novelette features a vampiress who is trying to revive her master by sacrificing those she views as corrupt souls to the gods.
For the rest of the year I'm hoping to finish off a novella with the vampiress above, a stand-alone Christmas novella, and three more novelettes with Shelley, Dakota, and Lisa from the Fraternity Fluffer series.
A huge thanks to J.C. Winchester for stopping by today. If you want to learn more about his work, please do check him out at:
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