Home of The Naughty Stories Series
Born in Poole, Dorset, in 1965, Sedley Proctor grew up in London and was educated in Winchester and Nottingham. In the 1990s, he worked in fringe theatre and was involved in productions of Macbeth and Bertolt Brecht’s In the Jungle of Cities. His own play, Salt Lake Psycho about the notorious murderer, Gary Gilmore was put on at the now defunct Man in the Moon theatre in London, Chelsea. From the mid-nineties until 2013 he lived and worked as a teacher and translator in Southern Italy. In Italy he continued to experiment with his writing, devising an invented dialect, writing a blog satirizing the international politics of the early 2000s, collaborating on a screenplay with French writer, Claude Albanese, and performing his poetry in front of bemused locals and amused ex-pats. Apart from his own books, he writes under the aliases F. M. Frites and M. T. Sands.
If you go chasing rabbitsTell ‘em a hookah smoking caterpillarHas given you the call Jefferson Airplane “Ciao, cugi’!” Dino had paid one of his flying visits. He’d brought with him provisions: aubergines, courgettes, Zia’s homemade passata of tomatoes, salsiccia lucana and a whole rabbit. “Don’t put it in the freezer,” he said. “It’s already defrosting.” …
The Condominium meeting was in full swing when the plumber stood up and walked out, followed by Signor Campobasso. The administrator was not surprised; Signor Campobasso was constitutionally incapable of attending a condominium meeting without walking out, especially where money was involved. When, however, the Professoressa also stood up to leave, he screwed up the …
The British was an old-fashioned sort of language school. It had that very end of Empire feel. The doors were painted blue and red, and there were framed posters of a Union Jack, maps of the London underground and photos of the Beatles in the classrooms. There was a life size poster of a Guardsman …
Bembi had had a hard winter living in a derelict house by the railway tracks when Daniel told him about the priest at the San Rocco church. After the service the priest took him into his office and questioned Bembi about his faith. Bembi did not make any bones about it; he could not pretend …
La Uascezze was a bar in the old town, much in favour with the English Club and their hangers-on. Graham and Gavin and his mate, Sean, who was over for the week from Manchester, were down one end of the table drinking Effe beer when Graham leaned back in his chair. As he did, he …
Brothers Nicola and Michele Campanile were neighbours of Guglielmo’s cousin, Dino. They lived down a woody dirt track several kilometers from the local town in a shared farmhouse. On one side of the house, Michele lived with his wife; Nicola lived on his own on the other side of the house. Early one morning, when …
The beach at Rosa Marina had always been a good spot for Daniel. Cabin cruisers and yachts of the new euro millionaires would come and weigh anchor in the bay. All of society seemed to gather here along the shore in the afternoon sun: the good-looking teenagers of the alta borghese, the Russians, Germans and …
Ice, why hollow? – She wrote, from quibble to pun. And back again. Just for fun. This is how she remembered it, in hospital, drifting in and out of consciousness, under the influence, it seems, of sister morphine: As a special treat, after dinner, she was allowed to disturb her grandfather up in his observatory. …
In the room where no one came dreaming of Michelangelo there were four different videos that could be watched from low lying seats covered in felt. As I sat down to watch, I kept looking across at the others and glimpsing, through foliage, a man crawling around in a pig mask. Nonetheless, the bluesman was …
There is no world for me outside the walls of Verona, except purgatory, torture and hell itself. The rider came in the middle of the storm. He found them sheltering from the rain in the old trullo at the edge of the olive field that once did belong to her da. As he rang out …