Strangely Funny II Authors: Meet David Bernard/Goudsward!

Aaaannnnd our press is back with Strangely Funny II, the followup to last year's collection. It's already available in print and e-book formats on Amazon and Smashwords.

I'd like to introduce you to an author who has appeared in both anthologies. David Bernard is the pen name of David Goudsward, a native New Englander who now lives (albeit under protest) in South Florida, a paradoxical place where, when temperatures drops below 60˚, locals break out parkas to wear over their shorts and sandals. Fans and detractors alike will enjoy the Florida-set "Goldy Luke and the Three Gators".

When did you know you wanted to become a writer?
I started writing back in 1975. I was in a local theatre group and started correcting errors in the script – I’m not talking grammar. I’m talking about dialogue so bad it confused the word ancestor for descendant. That was my “I can do this, and I can do this better” moment. I immediately set out with a cohort and we wrote the production for the next summer’s children theater group. More or less wrote plays through high school, switched to radio plays when a friend started a pirate radio station. I flirted with an internship at a newspaper and stayed with non-fiction after that. I didn’t return to fiction until 2010 at the insistence of my brother. By that point, I already had seven books out on non-fiction topics.

Do you think certain genres lend themselves to a humorous twist?
I think most genres lend themselves to humor, but I also think there’s a difference between humor and parody. I rarely find making fun of a style lends itself to hilarity unless it’s done by someone well-versed in the nuances of the genre; this is also why so many spoof movies bomb. Then you look at Robert Bloch – the man could integrate humor into horror so seamlessly and subtly that it bumps the horror up a notch.

Plotter or pantser?
I’m sort of a hybrid – I start all stories with an idea that I just run with, making me a pantser. But I’m also a stickler for as much accuracy as possible in details and chronology, so if I’m doing a story in a historical setting, I’ll plot out the real world events occurring during the story. More often than not, the outline will give me a new angle to consider. But pantsing makes it hard to meet deadlines on calls for submissions, since I really have no idea where the story is going until it arrives. Many a half-finished tale has been abandoned at a missed deadline until a later publisher sent out a call for submissions for stories of a similar ilk.

Thanks for talking with us!

David's most recent works include short stories in anthologies such as Once upon an Apocalypse and Mortis Operandi. His newest nonfiction book is Horror Guide to Massachusetts from Post Mortem Press.