To all the Veterans out there

Thank you for your service, thank you for being the one to offer Uncle Sam that blank check. I know what it takes, 6 years I offered that check and thankfully never had it cashed in full. So thank you again, and I hope your commands gave you liberty early today. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTs6a0ORdQU&w=560&h=315]

NaNo update

So I'm changing my goal a bit for NaNo, just to write 50K words this month between the number of stories I work on. Reality kind of reminded me that I don't in fact have all day every day to write. Ah well :) Current NaNo word count stands at 13,988. Anyways, the current project is my Winter Contest story for Lit, with a working title of "Greedy Christmas". Savannah's a workaholic, VP of her firm with visions of someday taking the top seat. She's weary of the holidays and the constant barraging for good will towards others. One drunken night she gets a visitor...

So begins NaNo

This weekend starts NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel during the month. This month is fairly busy for me, particularly since the Literotica Winter Contest will kick off on the 10th, but I'll give a fair crack at it. I urge anyone who has the inclination to start writing to give this a shot, it's free to join in and there are plenty of friendly folks to give out advice and cheer you on. You can find more information here: NaNoWriMo . Feel free to join some of the Lit authors participating in the Literotica Hangout in the Erotica forums and follow along with my progress under the name JC Winchester. Happy writing!

Dirty Dozen Wilderness Challenge

For those of you that have been reading my stories for a while, you may have guessed one of my favorite hobbies, besides writing, is hiking. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act which created the Wilderness Preservation System and initially set aside over 9.1 million acres as Wilderness and not subject to human intervention. In celebration of this Act the Southeast office of the Wilderness Society is hosting a hiking challenge. The challenge runs from September 2014 to September 2015 and is to hike 10+ miles per area in 12 wilderness areas. For signing up they will send you a sticker, complete the challenge and they'll send you a patch and you'll be eligible for other prizes like hiking the most miles, the most states, best photos, and best descriptions. For more information, follow this link: http://www.southeastwilderness50.org/dirty-dozen/ Happy Hiking!

Quick update

Phew, after a marathon writing session of a few thousand words, Witches Brew is finished being written. It'll get a couple of days to sit before I start editing and creating the cover for it. With any luck it should be ready to go to Smashwords next weekend. Be sure to swing by the blog to check for updates! Till it's up here is a little preview!

The sound of a waterfall not too far off caught his attention, beckoning him towards the sweet smell of water. The louder the rush of water falling became, the slower he moved, goose bumps forming on his skin as he felt heavy air wrap around him.  As he slipped closer to the source of the water the air began to fill with droplets of water, forming a mist and cutting down on his vision. Going by sound alone he picked his way through the trees, toe feeling the ground for firmness before every cautious step. When the tip of his shoe found water instead of earth, Dylan drew his foot back and slowly raised his eyes.

Before him lay the stream coming from a small pool of water, babbling lazily through the maze of tree roots and rocks. As he continued to look up the pool of water began to take shape, an elongated oval turned white with foam at the opposite end. So drawn into the falls he was, that Dylan almost missed the shock of long, wet, auburn hair draped over a pale back, reaching almost to the waist of its’ owner. Eyes wide he openly stared, taking in the sight of the nude figure, water coming halfway up her ass just low enough to reveal the shapely curve. Her arms almost blocked his view of the side of a full breast, with a little sag, and capped with a small, pink nipple.

So enthralled he was with the vision before him that Dylan almost missed the husky voice call out, “well, it seems this little spot isn’t quite so hidden as I’d hoped it was.” The sudden sound of the voice startled him out of the daze, his foot slipping on the moss coated roots and down to his ass he went. Sitting at the base of a tree he blinked rapidly, feeling his cheeks grow hot as they filled with blood. “I…I’m sorry…” he stammered.

Story Updates and Life

Just wanted to put up a little update. Life is still quite busy at the moment so for now my writing time is quite limited. Some days I can put out a few hundred words and some days I don't get any writing going. Still working and wanted to update my current projects: 1) Witches Brew. Dylan takes a last hike before the start of the fall semester. Along the way he runs into a mysterious, older brunette that leaves him wondering if he found someone that never quite left the Back to the Land movement. If only it were that simple...

This will be a novelette that is intended to go on sale at Smashwords in time for the Halloween season -crosses fingers-. It is currently sitting at about 4,500 words in length.

2) Hurricane Party. Scott is a former member of the Coast Guard, still adjusting to the civilian life. Instead of getting to enjoy a Halloween party he's having to bunker down for an incoming hurricane. He still might just get to have that party though...

This will be a novelette to be published in the Literotica Halloween story contest. It is currently at 1800 words.

3) Shelley's Not a She Chp. 5. Currently in the planning phase, I have a few ideas floating around and will most likely start putting words to electrons once I have the Smashwords book published.

Busy

Just wanted to post up that the reason there hasn't been any new work posted for the last few weeks is that I've been swamped with a project at work. Hopefully the end of the project will come in the next week or two and give me some time to get back into writing, but for now I just wanted to let everyone know that I haven't given up writing or left, just been very busy. 

Story Length

Something I always wondered about was how long stories had to be for various classifications. Ran across an article that discussed story length and included the following numbers from the Science Fiction Writers of America:

Short Story - Up to 7,500 words

Novelette:7,500 to 17,500 words

Novella: 17,500 to 40,000 words

Novel: 40,000 words +

Determining page count for an e-book seems to vary all over the place, but the most common numbers appear to be 250 or 300 words for each page. For ease of calculation, when I estimate the length of an e-book, I will use 250 words per page as that seems to be fairly accurate.  

There's writing and then there's Writing

Years ago I used to write just for fun, on Lit's choose your own site, Chyoo. It was a lot of fun but real life interfered and so I quit writing until last year. I happened across an old friend on the Lit forums who convinced me to give the Survivor contest a shot and last year it was a lot of fun, got me to experiment with categories and find that there were some categories I didn't expect to enjoy writing in so much. So, I signed up again for the contest this year and have found it honestly to be very different than it was last year.

This year, 2014, is to be the last year of Survivor according to Laurel. It seems to have spurred on some writers while others are fading off. I find myself becoming more disappointed with poor scores, more in that I feel that I can do better. Instead I know I'm pushing myself too much to produce and now that I am sure that I am out of the top 5 [there is one person I know of sandbagging on purpose], it feels kind of like a weight off. As such my production levels will most likely drop and I am going to focus more on the big flaw that reviewers have mentioned, my grammar. 

For those who have patiently awaited chapters in their favorite story and bared with me through stories that were not up to the level they should have been, thank you. I hope that future stories will be more in line with the level you expect of me.

Writing chapters

This month I've put up two chapters to stories on Lit, one was the fourth chapter in the Shelley's Not a She series and the other was the second chapter of the Ms. Pryde series. In the case of the latter it was a planned series while in the case of the former it was a one off series that's gone much longer than anticipated. One is meant to be more series while the other is being written more as a stroke lark. Being that these two contrast so much I thought I'd explain a little behind the thought process of the pair. 

Ms. Pryde's story is partially to serve the pregnancy fetish, which seems a little under served. Personally I find pregnant women to be quite gorgeous, What it is specifically, I'm not sure, but they are. I recall reading some years ago that there was a Playboy photographer who preferred to work with women in the early stages of pregnancy. This series is meant to be simple snapshots in time as Alexis Pryde builds up her business, from start to up and fully running. Chapters are meant to be a little shorter, more like updates as time progresses on. 

In comparison Shelley's story is one about a young MtF transgender as she finds her first lover as a transgender and searches for acceptance. Though, I am trying to include more sex in the chapters, as it was pointed out they needed. I approach each chapter in this series as it's own individual story, generally over a weekend period of time. For me, Shelley is actually one of the harder characters that I write and I tend to find myself taking much longer to write each chapter. An average story would normally take 1-2 weeks for me to write, but chapter 4 actually took about 2 months from conception to publishing. For chapter 3 I actually wiped out over a thousand words after letting it mull for a couple of weeks upon realizing it wasn't going where it needed to. No other story have I had to do severe editing like this. Perhaps I've just set lofty goals for this series, but with some of the feedback it feels like people are rather attached to this couple so it does sometimes make me think a little longer on what I plan to do with the characters.

Just kind of a glimpse of the thinking that goes into the stories. Honestly I probably spend more time thinking than actually writing, trying to sort out just how a character would approach a situation and how to have them react to experiences. That and loads of research, as I get further into writing I've been finding myself doing more research on a variety of topics. But for now, I think I need to head back into doing some more Goth research. Happy reading!

Clarification on the Smashwords book

Before anyone asks why A Weekend in Appalachia is available on both Literotica and Smashwords, it was used to give me a chance to explore self publishing. Once the Literotica 2014 Survivor contest ends I expect my output will drop as I'll be continuing to try to focus more on improving my writing skills [and allowing more time to edit stories]. If you enjoyed A Weekend in Appalachia on Lit I highly encourage you to check it out in it's Smashwords format [it's free there] as I took some of the feedback from the readers of Lit and rewrote the ending. 

Ebook Copyrights and DMCA

Today Manu, one of the site owners of Literotica, posted in the Authors Hangout instructions on how to file a DMCA copyright infringement with Amazon. Amazon keeps track of the number of DMCA filings against authors and publishers and if enough are collected, they will ban that person. Here is a link to the very detailed instructions on how to follow through with the DMCA: http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1055555

New Chapter posted!

The fourth chapter of "Shelley's Not a She" has been posted to Literotica! You can check it out here: www.literotica.com/s/shelleys-not-a-she-ch-04

This story is an ongoing story about a MtF transsexual and her male lover exploring her sexuality and opening her to the wider world of sex. Along the way she is learning to accept herself and deal with the realities of some of the things in life that she will have to face.

Introduction

Hello there! 

I'm the author behind the pen names J.C. Winchester and JagFarlane.

For those not familiar with the name JagFarlane, it is the name I use on the website Literotica where most of my work currently resides. It is a free adult stories website and if you enjoy erotic stories I highly recommend you try it out. There are thousands of authors on the site ranging from those just beginning to seasoned, published veterans. 

The name J.C. Winchester is used for anything I publish outside of Lit. Currently that means publishing through SmashWords.

I plan to use this blog to update where I am currently at with stories and when stories are published.