A Prose Portrait for You!
Is it a great holiday gift? Or the greatest ever?
This fall has seen me make some delightful trips to delightful places, reader. From the Bloomington Book Festival to the enchanting Wild Geese Bookshop to the Anne West Lindsey Library, your very own paginated peregrine has been making my rounds of the bookish Midwest. And one thing has remained true throughout all my travels: my little prose portrait business has been booming. A huge thanks to all of you who’ve already ordered one!
Some of you have been asking me: Raf, I want a prose portrait for myself/my child/my partner/my parent but I haven’t been able to meet you in person. Can I order one online? My answer to that is: Yes, now you can! Simply fill out this order form with your info, make your payment, and expect your portrait in your inbox in 2-4 days!1
For a single protagonist, the rate is 30 cents per word with a minimum of 200 words; add 5 cents per word per protagonist. Payment must be made via Venmo or PayPal after you’ve filled out the order form and before receipt of your portrait. Please label payments “YOUR NAME Prose Portrait.” Portraits will be emailed to the address you provide. Please be sure to indicate on the form if your portrait is a gift.
The really good news? Prose portraits are even cheaper if you order them in person from me at an event! (And cheaper yet if you buy one of my books, too!) You’ll be able to do this at my next bookselling event at the Big Gay Holiday Market in Madison, WI from December 20-21.
And now, by popular demand, some of my favorite prose portraits of the past few weeks!
Nerd Romancer
A cyberpunk comedy-noir for Ivan and Sarah
Ivan and Sarah had been warned time and again that it was not a good idea to open a detective agency on the very postmodern mean streets of New BloomingTokyo. You’ll get eaten alive, their friends said. This place is the deepest crime pit in what remains of the United States. Plus, you two already have a family together – how are you going to maintain any semblance of a work-life balance?
Never mind that the kids were off to college and Ivan and Sarah actually wanted to open a detective agency together: it was hardly something their friends would understand, given as they were to quieter pursuits like bocce, Scrabble and fishing for isotopic fish in the denaturalized remains of the Neon Mississippi. And if they couldn’t understand that, then how could they possibly understand that it was precisely the danger Ivan and Sarah were after? They wanted to meet the seamy underbelly of New BloomingTokyo; they wanted to stare death straight in its hellish cyborgian face.
And plus, it wasn’t like anyone else was going to clean up the robot riffraff in town. There’d been serious trouble in Bloomington, Indiana ever since the year 2040, when the entire town had caved in like so much poorly-patched drywall. It turned out that it had no foundation, its superstructure held together with literal duct tape. After that, the investors had swept in, and Bloomington became Post-Bloomington and then Post-Post Bloomington and briefly New Tokyo and then New BloomingTokyo, which name the mayor had attempted to frame as a “cultural exchange,” but which Ivan and Sarah only saw as a failure of branding.
And the mayor was beyond corrupt. He was taking bribes from every organized crime family in the world from the Cosa Nostra to the Yakuza to a fringe group operating out of what remained of New Zealand called the Bassoonists. He’d been “elected,” if you could call it that, on a “restorative justice” platform, but from what Ivan and Sarah could see, all he’d restored was the entitlement of criminals of all stripes. From petty thieves to career grifters to some of the most depraved AIs around, New BloomingTokyo seemed to have it all.
Maybe it had been all the punk shows of their youth, or else the steely carapace one must develop if they are to survive either in academia or adjacent to it, but Ivan and Sarah would sooner shy away from examining the mayor’s wrongdoings than play a game of bocce.
Which was why, on a fateful and unseasonably crisp autumn day in 2062, it was with a strange kind of glee that Sarah bounded through the front door of her and Ivan’s house, a case file in hand. It had been mailed to their office anonymously, she explained, and was printed on dot matrix paper.
“What? Why so analogue?” Ivan asked in befuddlement. He was poring over some grisly photos of cyborg remains from a recent laser shootout, wires and valves and microchips in unholy arrangements that would have made the average viewer blanch. But Sarah didn’t flinch as she peered over his shoulder: by now, she’d seen it all.
“I know, it’s truly weird. Like, I don’t know – it’d be dated even in a cyberpunk novel that’s imagining the future.” She handed him the paper. “And just wait until you get a look at this.”
Ivan took the paper from Sarah, and she watched his eyes widen. He looked up at her, then back at the paper, and then swept the crime scene photos aside.
“So this is – if I understand it clearly –” he began to say, but Sarah cut in.
“It’s a HoneyBot. A con-borg who runs honeypot scams. A, um, pickup artist, if you will.”
“What the…?” Ivan shook his head. “Why does whoever sent this want us on this? Don’t they know we do, like, machinicide, racketeering busts, stuff like that?”
“I know, I thought the same thing.” Sarah took the paper back from Ivan and examined it more closely. At last she found the words she was looking for: KNOWN TO TARGET “ANALOGUE ENTHUSIASTS” OF SOME MEANS WITH PROMISES OF A LIFE WITHOUT SCREENS AND MACHINES. BOOK READERS, PUZZLE-DOERS, POETRY-WRITERS, &C. NONE ARE SAFE.
“My god,” Sarah whispered. “It’s a…nerd romancer.”
Ivan nodded morosely. “I see now,” he said. “This one’s personal.”
Nia’s Delivery Service
A Studio Ghibli riff for 22-year-old Nia, queer artist, cat lover, and ardent fan of K-pop and anime
Finally, the day arrived that Nia and her cat Coco had long been waiting for: the grand opening of Nia’s Delivery Service, the speediest supplier of pens, watercolors, colored pencils and K-pop merch in all of Tokyo.
Nia was a witch, or rather a wxtch, though she preferred to keep her gender-nonconforming leanings cryptic to all but a chosen few whom she felt she could vibe with on an artistic level. These friends saw beyond her facade, knew she was more than just good grades and her sweet teal cat-ear headphones. Really, she was a wxtch – a wxtch who knew the lyrics to every Blackpink song by heart – and the fact that only a select few knew this deep secret about her was highly comforting.
Of course, Coco was one of those select few, perched as he was on the end of her broomstick as they flew over the vast expanse of Tokyo, whose glittering architecture and bustling denizens looked even more animated when regarded from high above. Nia was on her way to deliver a BTS poster to a young girl named Yuki who lived with her parents in the Shibuya district, far from where Nia lived on her own little island just north of Odaiba.
“Oh, Coco,” she sighed, kicking her feet aimlessly as the lights below them twinkled. “I know I should be excited about the launch of the delivery service, and maybe I’m being greedy saying this, but it feels like kind of a letdown.”
Coco purred and rested his big black paw with its soft toe beans on Nia’s hand.
“I’ve been feeling so lonely on our island. I think I’m ready for more IRL interaction.” She grinned at Coco. “What if I don’t just bring stuff to people, Coco? What if I – I don’t know – help them solve their problems, too?”
Coco tilted his little kitty head in uncertainty, but Nia was on a roll.
“Like, what’s the point of being able to do literal magic if all I use it for is flying around? I want to actually change people’s lives! Like, I bet Yuki would love to meet BTS – maybe I could make that happen?”
Coco meowed his objection, but it was already too late: they had begun their descent, and Yuki’s apartment was already in sight…
A Library Murder Most Fowl
A Clue-style murder mystery for Trinity, Nicole, and Emily, the head librarians at Anne West Lindsey Library
It was on a bleary, stormy Saturday morning that the lights began to flicker in Anne West Lindsey library. The patrons, mild-mannered Cartervillians who’d been peacefully browsing the stacks mere moments before, all jolted with fear. When the electricity went out altogether, a blood-curdling scream could be heard from the mystery section.
The library’s emergency PA system was activated, and the robotic voice of the security system began to whisper soothingly: “Everyone please remain calm. There is absolutely nothing to be afraid of at this time. Please continue your pursuit of knowledge, and the electricity will be restored shortly.”
“How can we pursue knowledge in the dark?” It was the voice of a young kid adrift between the youth and teen sections.
The kid’s questions triggered some hue-ing and crying, which eventually dissolved into pure chaos, the patrons scrambling to the front door in an attempt to escape. But the front doors were locked, and when the lights finally flickered on again, what they found there shocked them.
It was the slumped form of Mr. Jehophus Pickle, Head Librarian Emeritus, a man so old that he was otherwise known as the Ur-Librarian. But instead of his grandfatherly vest and watchmaker’s spectacles, he was – could it be?
“Half-man, half-chicken!” one of the patrons shrieked, herself an author of several books about the hidden lives of peafowl. “It’s an abomination!”
As more patrons crowded around to inspect Pickle’s strange new form, there emerged from the shadows a figure even more unusual: gnome-like and stooped, though dressed like a member of the aughts Canadian alt-rock band Arcade Fire, in a blue flannel shirt and brown beanie.
“Hello, denizens of the library,” he hissed. “My name is Lucious the Storyteller!”
The appearance of this strange little man did nothing to calm the library patrons, though it did have the somewhat alarming effect of freezing them in place.
“It’s a mystery, you see,” Lucious explained. “Someone has turned our Venerable Mr. Pickle into a mutant chicken creature – and that very someone just so happens to be in this library!”
The patrons gasped and began to look among themselves. Curiously – most curiously indeed – they found that all three head librarians were absent.
Trinity Rowland? Why, she was in the YA room with what appeared to be a tiny gray cat in a miniature magician’s hat! Perfectly unbothered by the horrifying goings-on in the front vestibule, the cat slunk around the room as Trinity called after him: Porkchop! Porkchop! There they went, around and around and around in what seemed to be a endless circle of recursive insanity. No one had ever seen Trinity so possessed, and no one could remember ever seeing that gray cat lurking around the library before.
Nicole Young? She was in the travel section with her phone, suspiciously filming an over-long TikTok in which she was narrating the process of finding the perfect travel book. Fodor’s Complete Guide to Bali? No. The Lonely Planet Rajasthani Companion? Certainly not. Tennessee’s Must-See Butter Churning Spots? Not good enough for Nicole! She seemed intent on making some sort of grand escape, and curiously unperturbed by both Pickle’s dilemma and the patrons’ morbid curiosity.
Emily Bell? She wasn’t even in the library! She was running around outside on the back patio wearing a pair of sparkly butterfly wings, screaming in a most distressing caterwaul: I am the Fairy Queen! The circles she was making were quite nearly as intense as Trinity’s, though Emily was neither chasing nor being chased. And when the patrons chanced to make eye contact with her, they noticed her eyes were an unnatural green – almost alien in tone!
“So!” said Lucious, when the patrons’ gaze had come to settle on him once again. “Who turned Pickle into this most fowl experiment? Was it Trinity, in the YA section, with a cat named Porkchop? Was it Nicole, in the travel section, with her 1.2 million TikTok followers? Or was it Emily, skipping around outside with her sparkly butterfly wings?”
The patrons looked on in confusion, but Lucious only leered his strange, toothy smile.
“You cannot leave until you’ve solved the mystery!” he said, grinning…
I’ll be watching for your orders, friends! And hope to see you Wisconsinites in December :)
Please allow longer wait times for portraits of 1,000 words or more.