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Because I Wanted to Write You a Pop Song
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.
"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
"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 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)
"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'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
"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 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)
"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?
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
76 pages, Paperback
Published June 3, 2016
471 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
December 25, 2022
Finally bought myself a copy of this one when I saw Split Lip was hosting a book bundle deal. I'd been eyeing this one up for a long time and I'm glad I grabbed it. It's everything I anticipated it would be - short heady stories full of love lust and longing, damaged women, fucked up relationships, all of it proudly showcasing its hard earned bites and bruises.
Do you read flash fiction?
What do you like best about short story collections?
Do you read flash fiction?
What do you like best about short story collections?
December 3, 2016
I can’t say enough about Kara Vernor’s 80s-feel infused chapbook about teenage boys and girls, about lust and pseudo-love, about coming of age. There are malls and carnival rides, house parties and video stores. Parts of these stories read like your favorite John Hughes movie scenes. Others are much darker, but always with traces of Vernor’s dry wit. Her use of language blew me away, sentences like Pop Rocks exploding off your tongue. She gives us smack-in-the-face opening lines like, “And then one day your molester turns up as a contestant on Wheel of Fortune,” and too many other perfect sentences and passages to share them all (e.g., “I’m pear-shaped and she likes apples. I’m dirty blonde and she likes them clean;” “her Chevelle rolling like a lazy eye too far to the right;” "Janey’s [hair] runs the center of her back, a slick, braided spine”). Vernor is one of my favorite writers and there is no doubt I’ll be coming back to these stories for inspiration.
July 19, 2016
I will repeat here what I said in my blurb because it rings even more true today: "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."
April 21, 2018
An excellent collection full of sentences both beautiful and dangerous. With each story in this slim collection, I trusted Vernor's powers more and more and was rewarded on every page. Favorites include The Rumor Was, Four Hands, Usually on Sunday, and Visitor, Transistor.
October 3, 2016
Ah, I LOVED this collection. Kara Vernor is sentence-level great and story-level gifted. A singular, dark, skewed, yet clear-eyed vision of the world. Perfect, compact stories to read and reread. Very highly recommended.
November 15, 2017
LOVE! LOVE! LOVE!
June 14, 2016
This is more than a collection of 21 stories, this is an introduction to 21 unique people. Kara Vernor is able to leave you inhabiting the world of each of them within a few paragraphs. Many of these characters will be like no one you've ever met before, but you'll come to feel you've known them for years.
The writing is incisive -- there is a distinct purpose in each phrase -- but it is not spare. These are watershed moments at flood, washing over you with volume to swim in or to simply float and be carried along. Either way, this book is exhilarating.
The writing is incisive -- there is a distinct purpose in each phrase -- but it is not spare. These are watershed moments at flood, washing over you with volume to swim in or to simply float and be carried along. Either way, this book is exhilarating.
July 16, 2025
I'm late to the review game here. I read this when it came out and blasted right through it the way one does a new favorite album on repeat taking long drives. I've since re-read this collection and it's one I keep on my good bookshelf. What can I say that the other good reviews haven't? If you dig sharp, expert level writing and story telling and music-infused fiction, this is for you.
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July 23, 2020Not to stretch what may feel like an obvious comparison too far, but the stories feel like pop songs, small gems of ideas spun into narratives that are primarily short, fast and full of jabs, which leave the reader's head spinning.
February 19, 2017
mad at myself for reading this so quickly, but I couldn't stop. going to read it again and try to take sips, rather than gulps.
May 5, 2021
I am stunned at how beautiful the prose is in this little book. Each sentence is perfectly crafted. My fave stories are “thirty four” and “David Hasselhoff is from Baltimore”
December 22, 2018
Earlier this year I was reminded of the power of concise prose after reading Kathy Fish’s “Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild,” which was published in the Jellyfish Review last year. It’s a devastating response to mass shootings in America.
Kathy Fish writes flash fiction, and for those unfamiliar with the term, flash fiction occupies territory somewhere between a very short story and a prose poem. They tend to be less than 1000 words long (often very less). They also pay careful attention to language and tell a story while subverting many of the so-called rules of narrative.
Think stories that start in the middle of conversations or end ambiguously. Stories that eschew exposition and narrative arcs and sit in your imagination like an intricately braided knot.
This is hardly revolutionary. In its quest to propagandize consumer culture, advertisers have figured out that less is decidedly more. Flash fiction is perfectly suited for the Internet where a writer can marry their art to the zeitgeist and put it out in the world.
But it can be a tough sell as a book—unless the author has a distinct and arresting style, which is the case with Kara Vernor’s Because I Wanted to Write You a Pop Song. Published by Split Lip Press, Vernor’s collection is fresh, funny and ferociously clever.
One story opens with preparations for a high school dance and climaxes at the end of the second paragraph with, “When they posed for the picture, he picked her up like a new bride, her face flushed and shiny, his mouth at her ear. It was this photo that circulated during the search.” The final sentence simultaneously spins the story in a dark new direction and plays off the title, “Prom Queen Found in Lake.”
In one of the longer stories in the collection, “Four Hands,” which runs four pages, Vernor tackles the perils for pre-adolescent friendship. “Janey has the longest, blackest hair in all of fifth grade. She’s also the biggest bitch. I’m onto this, how the longer your hair is, the meaner you are. I cut mine at the shoulders, so I can go either way.”
The stories in Because I Wanted to Write You a Pop Song are full of sentences like these with language that leaps off the page and scenes that lodge in your imagination.
Kathy Fish writes flash fiction, and for those unfamiliar with the term, flash fiction occupies territory somewhere between a very short story and a prose poem. They tend to be less than 1000 words long (often very less). They also pay careful attention to language and tell a story while subverting many of the so-called rules of narrative.
Think stories that start in the middle of conversations or end ambiguously. Stories that eschew exposition and narrative arcs and sit in your imagination like an intricately braided knot.
This is hardly revolutionary. In its quest to propagandize consumer culture, advertisers have figured out that less is decidedly more. Flash fiction is perfectly suited for the Internet where a writer can marry their art to the zeitgeist and put it out in the world.
But it can be a tough sell as a book—unless the author has a distinct and arresting style, which is the case with Kara Vernor’s Because I Wanted to Write You a Pop Song. Published by Split Lip Press, Vernor’s collection is fresh, funny and ferociously clever.
One story opens with preparations for a high school dance and climaxes at the end of the second paragraph with, “When they posed for the picture, he picked her up like a new bride, her face flushed and shiny, his mouth at her ear. It was this photo that circulated during the search.” The final sentence simultaneously spins the story in a dark new direction and plays off the title, “Prom Queen Found in Lake.”
In one of the longer stories in the collection, “Four Hands,” which runs four pages, Vernor tackles the perils for pre-adolescent friendship. “Janey has the longest, blackest hair in all of fifth grade. She’s also the biggest bitch. I’m onto this, how the longer your hair is, the meaner you are. I cut mine at the shoulders, so I can go either way.”
The stories in Because I Wanted to Write You a Pop Song are full of sentences like these with language that leaps off the page and scenes that lodge in your imagination.
July 10, 2016
These tiny stories are sharp, funny and fierce. They say so much about the world we live in, the men who pin girls down just to teach them lessons, the girls who pray hard because they want to be good girls, the prom queens and lesbians and girls who play with guns and women who play with men.
I loved this collection. I will return to it again and again for so many reasons – for Kara's mastery of flash fiction and untenable command of language and tenderness and ferocity in such a short space. This collection is inspiring and breathtaking and I cannot recommend it enough.
I loved this collection. I will return to it again and again for so many reasons – for Kara's mastery of flash fiction and untenable command of language and tenderness and ferocity in such a short space. This collection is inspiring and breathtaking and I cannot recommend it enough.
October 2, 2017
Each piece of flash prose in this collection feels like a B-Sides compilation of unrepentant stories that evoke what it feels like to be a woman both broken and in love, and most importantly, able to laugh about it. This collection resonates with a 90s, Generation X nostalgia geared to stimulate the whimsy of falling in love, and the vulnerability that comes from wearing your heart on your sleeve. While some stories seem like love stories on the surface level, at a deeper look they question the sanity of love and sexuality.
June 3, 2016
Kara Vernor is a brilliant and incisive writer whose work is suffused with humor, both dark and light. She is a master of short fiction. This is a book I will return to again and again when I am writing flash. I can't wait to see what she writes next.
*Full Disclosure: Sure, I'm her publisher, but I thought all of these things before I got a crack at her book.
*Full Disclosure: Sure, I'm her publisher, but I thought all of these things before I got a crack at her book.
November 15, 2016
Phenomenal. This collection of flash fiction hooks a finger around your heartstrings and tugs you irresistibly through landscapes of longing, twisted beneath a brilliant California sky. Vernor's ability to evoke desolation and humor in the same grim stroke marks her as a literary treasure. I'm looking forward to her next collection.
February 22, 2021
Flash Fiction that is not for the faint of heart. These tales of angst, lust, and redemption are topped off with well written irony. Peeling the underbelly of emotions without any wasted words, Ms. Vernor's collection is a great read that hits home for anyone who has felt thrill and despair woven together!!
April 26, 2018
This was exactly the book I needed. A cold burn of flash fiction, honest and undecorated. When my kids ask me what life was like when I was a bright young millennial grad with no job prospects and ideals of love based on pop culture TV, I will hand this over and smile as I reminisce.
January 9, 2022
A collection of short stories (like 2-3 pages each) that left me wanting more to be interested or moved. Frequent themes include assault and misogyny. Of the short stories, “Lesbionic” was my favorite.
August 19, 2016
I'm writing a full review of this for Alternating Current.
August 27, 2016
Kara Venor has a quick wit and unique view of the world. Her flash fiction/short stories are strong and cunning - she always hits home. This is a must read!
May 16, 2018
Deeply enjoyable. Some of these character you'll never forget.
March 10, 2019
This book of flash fiction was perfect. I wish it were four times as long. The varied and fantastic little stories had me repeatedly saying ‘Wow’ out loud to the dog.
March 19, 2022
Short story collection, mostly flash, with lots of nice twists and weird characters and situations.
Disclaimer: I am the Publicity & Reviews Manager for Split/Lip Press.
Disclaimer: I am the Publicity & Reviews Manager for Split/Lip Press.
December 2, 2020
“What if it wasn’t God? What if it was Circus Circus?”
June 21, 2024
5 stars = I hope I'll be able to write flash fiction like this someday!
When I first picked this book up, I tried to read just a story or two at bedtime. Well, that didn't go so well. It was like being a kid again -- Just one more story, Mom! I did manage to control myself, and read it in spurts over 3 days.
One thing I noticed: I recognized myself in this book, because so many of the characters have parents who are split up. And it's not laid out apologetically: Vernor will just jump in with "my father's girlfriend" or something that tells you that this is not a world of nuclear families, but still something completely normal. I really appreciated that aspect of these stories.
Highly recommended!
When I first picked this book up, I tried to read just a story or two at bedtime. Well, that didn't go so well. It was like being a kid again -- Just one more story, Mom! I did manage to control myself, and read it in spurts over 3 days.
One thing I noticed: I recognized myself in this book, because so many of the characters have parents who are split up. And it's not laid out apologetically: Vernor will just jump in with "my father's girlfriend" or something that tells you that this is not a world of nuclear families, but still something completely normal. I really appreciated that aspect of these stories.
Highly recommended!
September 17, 2024
These stories simmer with teen-angst, urgency, and the ghosts of bubblegum lip gloss, perfectly capturing a period of youthful restlessness, recklessness, and invincibility. All at once, I'm right back in my Nissan Sentra, driving too fast with my friends, the windows down, Terror Twilight playing on a portable CD player, ignoring the skips, on the prowl for something, anything, to do. Darkly funny, you can sense the danger and inevitable heartbreak waiting on the next page. Everything here feels lived in and true, the sentimentality earned. Much like a classic pop song, a mighty work in a tiny package.
April 6, 2019
These little stories are pretty unique in many ways. They each have a very distant perspective that all hone in on a specific feeling that the speaker is having.
I would say the stories in this book are dark but speckled with humor and certain peculiarities.
Very quick and odd read. I enjoyed it.
I would say the stories in this book are dark but speckled with humor and certain peculiarities.
Very quick and odd read. I enjoyed it.
September 22, 2024
haha, read this for dj, he’s reading it for english class…ended up really liking it?? the writing is so refreshing and so brutal at the same times. so many insane stories and interesting takes in one tiny book, i enjoyed
May 6, 2017
I read this slowly to savor the stories. Very favorites include "The True Love of Magnum PI" and "Four Hands." Find your own!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews