The characters in this collection of 21 short fictions hum with restlessness. They pine for lost loves and pop music romances, Hollywood heartthrobs, and sunnier towns. They flee from failed relationships and looming violence, adulthood and other deaths. Written with dark humor and incisive, voice-driven prose, Kara Vernor’s stories will stick in your head like a song.
Now available at Split Lip Press, Powell’s, and Amazon.
View trailer here.
Included at The Millions in “Recommended Flash Fiction from the Editors of 100 Word Story” and “A Flash Fiction Roundtable: Short but Never Small.”
Reviews at Empty Mirror, San Diego City Beat, Alternating Current, Pidgeonholes, The Takeout, decomP and This Blog Will Change Your Life.
“Reading Kara Vernor is like being in a fast car that reveals the deepest secrets of its passerby. You rubberneck and yearn for more. You’re spinning, you’re flying, you’re exhilarated and sad and brimming with thrill. Hail this book and hold on tight.”–Lindsay Hunter, author of Ugly Girls
“Kara Vernor’s Because I Wanted To Write You A Pop Song is hilarious, dark, and beguiling. These wonderful stories crackle with hard-earned wisdom and wit and will, like all the very best songs, become forever etched on your heart.” –John Jodzio, author of Knockout
“The stories in “Because I Wanted to Write You a Pop Song” dazzle and tenderize. They are strange little worlds that invite you in…Kara Vernor writes with gut, heart, and striking beauty.” –Jensen Beach, author of Swallowed by the Cold
“If I could leave a few things in a capsule for the civilization coming next, I think I’d maybe pick Kara Vernor’s stories. Beings of the future might know us that way: how we thought; how our words arranged themselves on our tongues when we were only half thinking; what we were after, and how messed up that all was, but how vital in a deeper way. Like some of my favorite writers, Vernor is able to bring to the page a voice you’re shocked to recognize, for it seems so totally new. All of the stars, is what I’m trying to say. All of the hearts and cherries.”–Scott Garson, author of Is That You, John Wayne?
“Kara Vernor says so much in so few words with these stories that I felt myself becoming a better reader as I read them. Her writing feels like a knife, cutting through so many of the falsehoods of American life and leaving only the truth, somehow leaving it both gently and determinedly at the same time. The stories in Because I Wanted to Write You a Pop Song do not flinch and do not seem to even remember how.” –Siamak Vossoughi, author of Better Than War (winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction)
Kara Vernor 