Now available as an Audible Audiobook
The Sense of Blood Ink by Nick Spill
Nick Spill has written nine stories about love including
The Sense of Blood Ink, an unusual love story.
A young woman knocks on an author's door at his isolated house in Florida. Thirty years apart they do not understand why they so are attracted to each other, until it is too late.
Listen to the stories on Audible.
The Jaded Trilogy
The Jaded Kiwi: Part one of the Jaded Trilogy
The Jaded Kiwi: Part one of the Jaded Trilogy
The Jaded Kiwi: Part one of the Jaded Trilogy
Dr. Mel Johnson and her boyfriend Henry Lotus help a Maori activist Wiremu Wilson escape a police blockade and become involved in a series of interlocking plots between the criminal mastermind of Auckland, Terry Turner, two groups of Maori drug dealers, a Chinese New Zealand family with greenhouses of sinsemilla and the relentless police inspector Bernie Grimble.
Dr. Mel must decide how far she will go to protect her friends and keep her boyfriend, Henry Lotus whom she has just rescued from New York.
Bodies mount up and fires burn as the great marijuana drought of 1975 descends into a maelstrom of betrayal and violence.
The first story in the Jaded Trilogy, The Jaded Kiwi, reveals a rapidly changing New Zealand where the aggressive seizures of marijuana crops grown by Wiremu Wilson goes terribly wrong and the so-called war on drugs is both declared and lost with unintended tragic consequences for all involved.
The Jaded Spy: Part two of the Jaded Trilogy
The Jaded Kiwi: Part one of the Jaded Trilogy
The Jaded Kiwi: Part one of the Jaded Trilogy
Alexander Newton, the curator, is sent to Auckland to escort Captain James Cook to the Auckland Art Gallery. On opening night, the priceless portrait is stolen. Alexander must find the painting to save his career, but he also has to deal with a Soviet spy whom he has been clandestinely photographing. He meets Dr. Mel Johnson who proves irresistible to him when he is invited to her female-only martial arts school.
A Maori Land Rights group led by Wiremu Wilson claims to have kidnapped Captain Cook and is holding the painting ransom for lands that were seized before and after the Treaty of Waitangi, and Wiremu has the authorities in a panic.
To further complicate Alexander’s stay in Auckland he must deal with Dr. Mel’s boyfriend, and his missing scientific notebooks that are wanted by the FBI and the KGB, as well as the intrigue between the Security Service and the New Zealand police.
Alexander has to come to terms with being a spy, betraying his friends and deciding how far he will go in his new government job. He struggles to discover who he has become and what he must do to win Dr. Mel’s heart.
Set in 1976, The Jaded Spy is the middle story of the Jaded Trilogy and is a window into a vibrant changing New Zealand, with the growing Maori Land Rights movement, student riots, the Soviet spy scandal and a political party that will do anything to stay in power and destroy its enemies.
The Jaded Widow: The Revenge of the Queen of the Auckland Underworld. Part three of the Jaded Trilog
The Jaded Widow: The Revenge of the Queen of the Auckland Underworld. Part three of the Jaded Trilog
The Jaded Widow: The Revenge of the Queen of the Auckland Underworld. Part three of the Jaded Trilog
The final episode of the Jaded Trilogy is an interwoven twisted tale of spying, policing, art curating, and the marijuana growing underworld, all set in an authentic mid-1970’s backdrop. Prepare for high tension, breathless action, and to truly root for the good guys (and even the not-so-good guys)
Barbara Turner in The Jaded Widow is New Zealand’s most diabolical villain as she plots her revenge on the Chinese sinsemilla growing family who killed her husband.
Alexander Newton, art curator and part time spy, is in love with Dr. Mel Johnson but is coerced to work with Inspector Grimble. Alexander infiltrates a massive pot network under the guise of promoting his Maori art exhibition. Caught cheating with a lusty librarian, Alexander promises to investigate a massage parlor for Dr. Mel and win her back.
Inspector Grimble closes in on Barbara Turner’s schemes, the Chinese harvested crop and Wiremu Wilson’s large marijuana enterprise.
Alexander must decide how far he will go to expose the massage parlor, reclaim Dr. Mel’s trust, and come face to face with the dangerous Barbara Turner and her psychotic brother.
60 second book trailer for The Jaded Widow
The Jaded Widow: The Revenge of the Queen of the Auckland Underworld. Part three of the Jaded Trilog
The Jaded Widow: The Revenge of the Queen of the Auckland Underworld. Part three of the Jaded Trilog
The final episode of The Jaded Kiwi Trilogy is an interwoven twisted tale of spying, policing, art curating, and the marijuana growing underworld, all set in an authentic mid-1970’s backdrop with high tension and breathless action.
Prepare for a manic climax.
Short Stories
The Palace in TriBeCa
Dolphin Kicks Cactus Pricks and K-129
Dolphin Kicks Cactus Pricks and K-129
In New York I met and befriended an extraordinary man. An artist and lawyer who was a cross between Marcel Proust and Freddie Mercury, Gary was completely outside my ordinary frame of reference. He died young from what was then an unnamed epidemic, one of the first to die of what became known as AIDS.
Dolphin Kicks Cactus Pricks and K-129
Dolphin Kicks Cactus Pricks and K-129
Dolphin Kicks Cactus Pricks and K-129
I traveled with a group of Californian psychics to swim with dolphins in the Sea of Cortez.
Instead, I witnessed the psychics turn psychotic. I barely managed to escape Mexico with the wife of a former Navy SEAL, a Greenpeace activist and a hippie left over from Haight-Ashbury. The story is based on events that happened in August 1980 and includes once TOP SECRET material about a missing Soviet submarine K-129.
RELUCTANT Q
Reluctant Q: The quartermaster’s tale of survival in the Burma Jungle in WWII
George Spill was a 30-year-old conscript from London when he was sent to India in 1940. He was out of shape, had never fired a gun in his life and left behind his pregnant wife and son.
He rose up the ranks to become the Battery Quartermaster Sergeant for the only medium field artillery unit in Burma. For months he was the highest ranking NCO in the malaria infested jungles of Burma where they were dug in, surrounded by Japanese forces intent on killing them.
As part of the Forgotten 14th Army, in the Royal Artillery, George, nicknamed “Q” managed to supply his troops with food, medical supplies, rum and ammunition. At times they were cut off from all help and relied on supplies dropped without parachutes from low flying aircraft.
He had many adventures and close encounters with death in Burma. A quartermaster, he inspected the local Army brothel, beat Merrill’s Marauders in a game of water polo, liberated a fleet of American trucks and fought off wave after wave of suicide charges from desperate Japanese in some of the largest and bloodiest battles of World War II.
As one of the few to survive in such extreme conditions, this is George’s uncensored story told from the perspective of a reluctant war hero with a sense of humor and awareness of the horrors he and his mates endured.
Front cover of RELUCTANT Q
The Way of the Bodyguard
The Way of the Bodyguard: How to be a bodyguard. Knowledge not Gossip.
It is the oldest and most dangerous profession, with great rewards and the ultimate risk, death. Nick Spill takes us on an action-packed and at times hilarious journey inside the world of bodyguards where he protects the famous, the infamous and the anonymous. Written for those who are curious about what bodyguards do as well as protection professionals present and future, The Way of the Bodyguard reveals the skills and techniques to be a consummate bodyguard while Nick Spill recounts his experiences that soar from the mundane to the volatile and violent.
More than a manual or a textbook, the book explores in human terms what it takes to be a winning protector in a dangerous world. The Way of the Bodyguard explores how to be a bodyguard and protect your client and the mental and physical skills Nick Spill describes so deftly, translate to all professions. He provides strategies for success for everyone, whether they want to become an excellent protector or live their life to the fullest. If you are curious about what it is like to be a bodyguard, want to become one or seek to escape into a world of unknown threats and logistical challenges, there is much to learn from the entertaining stories in The Way of the Bodyguard.
The Way of the Bodyguard by Nick Spill
REFLECTIONS ON THE TRANZALPINE
Kiwis, Art, Death, Coffee, Sex
Kiwis, art, death, coffee, burning books and sex. Nick Spill meditates on his return to New Zealand to give a talk at the Auckland Art Gallery. On the TranzAlpine train, he reflects on the Cambridge Five, Nicolas Poussin, Peter Wells, James Bond, Yukio Mishima, Geoff Dyer, Martin Edmund, Patti Smith, and Dashiell Hammett, not to mention the murder of Simon Buis, Chekhov’s and his own gun. He tells stories about many famous Kiwi artists, including Rita Angus, Andrew Drummond, Claire Fergusson, Ralph Hotere, Colin McCahon, Raymond McIntyre, and Cliff Whiting. He includes photographs from his original artwork of the 1970s and his journey through New Zealand in 2019. As a famous young lady once said before she saw a white rabbit; what is the use of a book without pictures?
Join Nick Spill on a trip down the rabbit hole.
REFELCTIONS ON THE TRANZALPINE by NICK SPILL