Called “one of the innovators of the short short story” by Publishers Weekly, Peter Cherches has published three volumes of short prose fiction with Pelekinesis since 2013, most recently Whistler’s Mother’s Son (2020). His writing has also appeared in scores of magazines, anthologies and websites, including  Harper’s, Bomb, Semiotext(e), and Fiction International, as well as Billy Collins’ Poetry 180 website and anthology. His latest book is Things (Bamboo Dart Press, 2023). He is a native of Brooklyn, New York.

Peter Cherches Fan Fiction

I was visiting my friend Carlo in Verona—Italy that is, not New Jersey. Carlo is a translator, English to Italian. Occasionally he gets some plum literary projects, but his bread and butter these days is fan faction, Dracula in particular. He was working on Dracula Visits Disney World during the time I was staying with him, his lovely wife Monica, and their two unbearably cute dogs, Chinotto and Ulisse.

            After I had settled in with a glass of wine, Carlo told me some startling news about my own work. Shocking, surprising, flabbergasting. Carlo told me that his publisher had approached him about a new translation project. The publisher had said, “The writer, or should I say the character, because they are one and the same, is not very well known, even in his home country of the USA, but somehow a major international market in Peter Cherches fan fiction is all the rage, and we’ve won the contract for the Italian editions. Are you game?”

            Carlo, he told me, told his publisher, “But I know Peter Cherches! The writer, the real one! He’s a wonderful writer, but I’ve already discovered there’s no market for his work in Italy. Short quirky fiction just doesn’t sell, they tell me, come back when he has a novel.”

            “Yes, yes,” said the publisher, “I know that Cherches himself is a financial risk I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, but I’m telling you, the work inspired by his work is pure gold. This is going to put our house into an entirely different category. Not Baldini & Castoldi, maybe, but Luigi Castelli Editore will no longer be a laughingstock of the publishing industry!”

            “So that’s the long and the short of it,” Carlo told me. “I’m to be the Italian translator of a series of Peter Cherches fan fiction.”

            I didn’t know what to say, to think, but I wanted to know more.

            “How many titles are there?” I asked Carlo.

            “Apparently they already have around 20 under contract, from all over the world. One of them is actually a nice tie-in with our Dracula series, my publisher says.”

            I asked Carlo, “Do you have any of the English editions? I’d like to take a look.”

            “Sure,” he said, “I have a bunch, take your time as long as you’re with us; after ‘Dracula Does Disney World,’ I still have to get to Dracula Contests the Election Results.”

            “If you don’t mind, I’m going to the guest room to start reading these,” I told Carlo, and left the living room.

            The first title I read was the English translation of one from Japan, Peter Cherches Attempts to Apologize. The plot was pretty simple—almost as simple as most of mine. In this story, Peter Cherches, an expat in Tokyo, fears he has done something to offend his old friend Gary Feld. I’m not sure where the Japanese author got that name, but in school I did have friends named Gary and Feld, though no Gary Feld. Cherches is so ashamed by his treatment of Feld that he starts to avoid him. This goes on for months. One day he sees Gary Feld on the street. Hoping Feld didn’t notice him, he rushes over to the other side of the street. But Feld did see Cherches, and he runs across the street to confront him.

            Cherches is trembling with fear at the encounter. “Why have you been avoiding me?” Feld asks. “What have I done to offend you?”

            “Offend me? But it is I who have committed the offense, and I sincerely hope that you will accept my apology.”

            “What do you have to apologize to me for? You have done nothing to offend me.”

            Feld is taunting me, Cherches thinks. He only claims I’ve done nothing to offend him in order to humiliate me. He simply does not want to grant me the honor of graciously accepting my apology. I can’t let this go unpunished.

            So Cherches punches Feld, a left uppercut that knocks his old friend to the pavement. While I’m left-handed in real life, I doubt I could knock anybody out with a single punch. I was beginning to learn the joys of fan fiction.

            “Why did you do that?” Feld yells.

            “I’m so sorry,” Peter Cherches says. “It was all a mistake. I’m beside myself with shame and disgust. Will you accept my apology, dear friend?”

            “Of course I’ll accept your apology, dear friend Peter Cherches. You are the most loyal of friends, the most gentle of men. I know you would never punch me on purpose.”

            And so, a happy ending for all involved. Cherches and Feld hug, and with their arms slung over each other’s shoulders they amble over to Ueno to drink beer and eat grilled mackerel together.

            I couldn’t deny it, that was a pretty good Peter Cherches story.

            The next one was from The States, and it was a romance novella called Peter Cherches and the Heiress. It begins at a party honoring a writer friend of Cherches’ for a prize he had received from the government of Luxembourg for his positive portrayal of the tiny country in one of his novels. At the reception Cherches keeps staring at a beautiful woman, elegantly dressed, late forties, he guesses. In the course of mingling, their paths cross. “You’re Peter Cherches, aren’t you?” the woman asks him.

            “Yes, as a matter of fact, I am.”

            “Oh, I love your writing,” she says. “And that character you write about, Peter Cherches, he’s hilarious. I can’t get enough of him!”

            Peter Cherches was really getting turned on. If this beautiful woman couldn’t get enough of the Peter Cherches character, maybe she’ll feel the same way about the flesh and blood Peter Cherches (not me, of course, but Peter Cherches the writer of Peter Cherches stories in the story), he thinks. But the Peter Cherches of the story, like me, is a shy guy, and he doesn’t have the guts to ask the woman for her phone number. It wouldn’t be easy in any case, he thinks, but on top of my natural reticence she’s clearly got plenty of dough, and here I am a poor schlump.

            But fate intervenes, and the woman hands Cherches a card. “Here’s my number,” she says. “Do give me a call. I’d love to get together sometime. I know we’d have so much to talk about. Toodle-oo.” And she walks away.

            Peter Cherches looks at the card. He recognizes the woman’s name. She’s the heiress to a department store fortune. Often on TV or in the news. That’s why she looked so familiar.

            The next day, after many aborted attempts, he finally gets up the guts to call the heiress. She’s delighted to hear from him. “I hoped you’d call. Are you free tonight? I’d like to take you to my favorite restaurant.” Peter Cherches is ecstatic. Then he wonders if she expects them to go Dutch. He doubts he could afford his own share at her favorite restaurant. But he decides to leave his fate in the hands of fate.

            The restaurant turns out to be that vegan place with the $400 prix-fixe. At least I have some ham and cheese in the fridge, he thinks, as he ponders the near future.

            Their bubbly repartee over champagne is intoxicating, and Peter Cherches feels like he’s in a fairy tale. Then the heiress speaks the dreaded words no man ever wants to hear: “I want you more for your mind than for your body.”

            “Couldn’t we split the difference?” Cherches replies.

            All right, not as good as the Japanese story, but I had to admit, there’s definitely something to this Peter Cherches fan fiction thing.

            And I resolved, then and there, in Carlo and Monica’s guest room in Verona, that from here on in I’d use the nom de plume Arthur Iglesias, continue to write the same kind of stories, but pass them off as Peter Cherches fan fiction.

            If recognition must come through the back door, so be it.