Ep. 6 | Fact to Fiction with thriller author, NV Peacock

In this episode of Spirits Uncorked, hosts and sisters, Elizabeth and Erica, sit down with UK thriller and crime author, NV (Nicky) Peacock! Join us as we delve into how real-life horrors inspire Nicky's gripping tales. We also discuss the true case set at Lake Lanier, of a grisly, bizarre murder that left a severed head lost in the lake's depths.
Nicky shares a creepy, haunted experience of her own... and we announce the giveaway winner!

Nicky Peacock
The Red Rabbit Hole Podcast

www.LanierGhostTours.com
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Digital artwork by Laura Horne
Theme song written/performed by Elizabeth Grimes
Theme song mixed/mastered by Billy Gewin

Transcript

episode 6 - 8_26_24, 6.40 PM

[00:00:00] Imagine. Lake Lanier, with its haunting beauty and dark history, has captivated the minds of countless screenwriters, authors, and documentary makers over the decades. The mysterious depths, the unexplained tragedies, the eerie echoes of the past, all have woven a tapestry that is as unsettling as it is compelling.

But have you ever wondered how creatives take these real life events and transform them into gripping works of fiction and art? In this episode, we delve into that very process, with none other than true crime enthusiast and thriller author, N. V. Peacock, otherwise known as Nicky Peacock, she has a way of turning reality inspired events into page turning stories that keep readers on the edge of their seats.

Together we will explore how true events inspire her craft, and then we'll dive into an actual case where Lake Lanier serves as the chilling backdrop, a story of murder, betrayal, And a severed head lost in the depths of the lake waters. We're getting to the bottom of the Lake Lanier mystery. Dive in with us.

[00:01:00] Hey, and welcome to 

Erica: Spirits Uncorked. Welcome 

to Spirits Uncorked everybody. I am your host Elizabeth. I'm here with my co host and sister Erica say hi Erica 

Erica: hello everybody. 

And we are here with an incredibly special guest. From way across the ocean. So far away. We have author NV Peacock, otherwise known as Nicky Peacock here with us.

Nicky, welcome. Hi, 

Nicky: guys. You okay? I don't feel far away. I feel like I'm like in the room across from you or something. I know, but you're you're six hours ahead, right? I am. It's seven o'clock here, 7 p. m. [00:02:00]

Erika and I, to do this episode, we have to day drink our wine, but you're drinking at a reasonable hour, so.

Nicky: Oh shucks, I have to day drink. I know, right? Who says I didn't start at 1 p. m.? Yeah, exactly. 

The first thing we have to do, and then everybody, is tell us what we're drinking. So, Erica, would you like to start? What are you drinking today? You're 

Erica: not going to like this. It's not wine. Oh gosh. I'm drinking a beer.

It's Aslan Brewing Company. It's called Volcano Sauce and it's a sour. And I'm drinking it because I already had it and I'm broke because I just moved and I have no money. Okay. That makes sense. Somebody sponsor us. 

Sponsor our wine drinking habits so we can afford Yes. I'm drinking a French wine called, I'm going to butcher it, I don't know, La Ville Ferme, which means the old farm.

And the reason I got it is because it has a cute picture of a chicken on the label. [00:03:00] So we had a wine expert on last week, Nicky, and she taught us like, you're supposed to isolate the things that you enjoy, and then pick out a taste that you don't like to like, train your palate. So what I do like about this is it tastes like tangerine.

What I don't like about it is, afterwards, it gets a little bit bitter. I still like it pretty well. So Nicky, tell us what you're drinking. 

Nicky: I'm not a massive wine drinker, I must admit, but I'm drinking a Riesling, which I believe is German, and it's quite sweet and crisp, from what I can tell. Oh, fantastic.

Okay, 

Erica: very nice. So we're all doing fruity drinks. Yeah, mine's a fruited, yeah, mine's a fruited sour. I'm at least on board with that. 

Nicky: I was going to do the Dracula joke of, I don't drink. Wine, but then it doesn't really mesh when you have a wine glass full of wine. 

Sorry. [00:04:00] Well, we're super happy to have you with us, Nicky.

And for our listeners, Nicky is a author from the UK and she's got three, would you consider them horror novels? Thriller novels? What's the primary genre? True crime? All of the above? 

Nicky: It's, it's hard because everybody seems to sub genre thrillers, so I would say they're crime psychological thrillers, but I always, I'm quite dark in how I write and generally how I think, so it's there, there's a touch of horror in all of them.

Yeah, and they're called The Brother, Little Bones, and The Thirteenth Girl. Indeed. So, she's also the co host of her own podcast called The Red Rabbit Hole. And that is a really fun podcast. Everyone should listen to it. You guys sound like you're having a great time. 

Nicky: Yeah, we do. We go off topic a lot, though.

I always say this is the perfect podcast for people. People with ADHD and Attention Deficit Disorder, because we're everywhere. I totally feel that. 

And just [00:05:00] the title. I mean, just the title. You just kind of go down this way. Oh, let's go down that way. Let's go down this way. 

Nicky: Yeah. I mean, you end up down one rabbit hole, you end up down a whole warren, a whole weird warren of crazy.

And that, that's unfortunately what we tend to do, especially when we have a guest on. Oh, yeah. 

So Nicky, is there anything else that our listeners should know about you? 

Nicky: I also, well, when I started writing, I started writing Youth Adult, which was more horror than anything else. It was I did two series, The Battle of the Undead, which was vampires versus zombies.

And I also did The Twisted and the Brave, which was dark twists on classic children's novels, like The Wizard of Oz and Treasure Island and things like that. 

Elizabeth: Oh, so what's your 

writing journey been? Like when, how long have you been writing? And, you know, when, when did you start? Why did you start? Has it been your whole life?

Or 

Nicky: Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty cliched like that. It's been like a life dream to always write and I think I come from a very working class background. My family is my parents. My mum only [00:06:00] works part time and my dad is actually disabled and has been disabled since I was four years old. And it was very much a case of I couldn't really afford to go to university or anything like that and I had to start work when I was 16.

So, I kind of felt like it was beyond me, if you know what I mean. And it took a while and it was about 12 years ago that I was, Thinking, no, I really do want to do this and I'm going to take it seriously. So I started paying for a distance learning degree in creative writing. And I did that while I was working and then started writing books and short stories.

I wrote a lot of horror short stories that was published, especially in the US. And from there I got the youth adult novellas published. And then I wrote my first kind of proper 90, 000 word chunky novel, which was Little Bones. And next thing I know. Harper Collins, one of the biggest publishers in the world, was emailing me saying we want to publish your book.

And I was like, 

that's amazing. 

Nicky: That's so 

amazing. Yeah. Congratulations. 

Nicky: Thank you. It was, it was a very [00:07:00] surreal experience because it happened over COVID. And we had a lot of lockdowns here in the UK and I was working from home using my own mobile and I kept getting this number come up, this London number and I was like, I don't know anyone in London.

I ain't answering that. And that was them trying to give me the call and they want to publish the book. Me an email saying, why don't you pick up the phone? You're just ignoring the phone call, that's amazing. Who that is. They didn't leave a voicemail. I'm always 

Erica: like, I'll leave a message. 

Nicky: No, nothing. I was just like, this is a London number.

I thought it was one of those scammers, you know, you've been in an accident kind of thing. And I just wasn't really bothered and I wasn't even thinking about it because I'd put it into like this open submission just before lockdown happened. And when then everything kind of kicked off in the UK, I was kind of slightly more bothered about my family and bothered about keeping everyone safe and not losing my job and, you know, and just keeping money coming in.

And suddenly then there was this kind of, we want to publish your book. And I was like, no, [00:08:00]

so, our primary topic on our podcast is about this lake here in Georgia. Yeah. Mm hmm. And it's a haunted lake. It's one of the most haunted bodies of water in the United States. And it's got a very fascinating and dark history in which the lake was built over It was built over several communities, and lots of tragic things happened in this area before the lake was made, which leads people to believe that it's haunted or cursed because it has a very high injury and death rate.

It's a beautiful place, but lots of crazy stuff happening there, and so we talk about all this. And I found this case and I thought it would be a really good one to discuss with you because you are so inspired by true crime and true events. I wanted, I wanted to discuss this with you and see as a writer and a creative person.

Do you see a book in this? So this [00:09:00] happened in 1997. There's this man named Michael Lejeune and he was a drug dealer. And his friend, I don't know if he was really his friend, but his name was Ronnie Davis, owed him about a quarter of a million dollars, and Lejeune shot his friend in the head over this debt, and then he, Lejeune and his girlfriend, In an effort to hide the crime, they took Ronnie Davis's body to a cemetery, and, well, first they dismembered him, including his head, cut his head off.

And they buried him in a cemetery around Lake Lanier, but they decided burying the head would be a problem because the bullet was still in the head. So, he, they took the head to his parents lake house to try to get the bullet out. It's true. They couldn't get the bullet out. So instead, they put the head in a bucket, and then they put cement over the bucket, and then they threw the head in Lake Lanier.[00:10:00]

So. 

Erica: It's not a bad idea, I guess. I mean, you 

know, they were trying to think about the forensics of it all. 

Erica: Yeah. So, they made an effort. 

Yeah. So, he was arrested, and thanks to the testimony of his girlfriend, who basically, you know, turned on him and gave witness against him. 

Erica: Good for her. Yeah. 

They put him on trial, and this trial was even crazier than the crime.

Did you read this part, Erica? Okay, so at the courthouse, he's on trial for murder. And while they're at the courthouse, this other violent offender named Brian Nichols was on trial for his violent crimes. He slips his handcuffs. He gets away in the courthouse. He gets the gun from an officer. He kills the judge, [00:11:00] the court reporter, and like three other people.

in this courthouse massacre. And he escapes, like he actually gets away. They do capture him eventually. And he claimed for reasons of insanity, like he was, he said he was under delusions and he was trying to escape, you know. I mean, it's not that big of a delusion, but. But he said it, he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity because he said he was delusional.

But he got convicted and everything. But, this other case that was going on, the Lejeune murder case, the trial, the jurors were so obviously shaken by this. It was like a mistrial. Like nobody was going back in the courthouse. So that case, it just ended. And then it just kept going and going and going.

And it's still going to this day. And the Georgia Supreme Court has just recently agreed to review and possibly overturn the conviction. Because they, they were claiming something like a search was unlawful at the very, very beginning or something. And the head has never been found. [00:12:00] So they just admitted 

Erica: to that's what they 

did with the head?

The girlfriend, yeah, in her testimony. Okay, 

Erica: okay. 

Now the Brian Nichols case, there is a book and a movie about that. 

Elizabeth: Oh yeah. One 

of the hostages Wrote a book. It's a nonfiction book, but she wrote a book and then they made, the book is called Unlikely Angel, the untold story of the Atlanta hostage hero.

And then it was made into a movie by Paramount Pictures called Captive. Cause I guess he took a bunch of people hostage and this one hostage, you know, I guess made a connection with him and got him to turn himself in. 

Erica: I'm gonna have to look that 

up. So it's a pretty bizarre case. And of course, it had to happen with Lake Lanier as the backdrop.

The backdrop, of course, gives us something to talk about. Yes. 

Nicky: Well, these guys, they weren't exactly criminal masterminds, were they? No, I guess in [00:13:00] 97, they didn't have the whole system. CSI, you know, franchise to, to bet the farm on regarding, you know, forensics and, and what you, you know, the capabilities of the kinds of science and the police departments at the time.

And especially if I guess it's a small town police department rather than a big city one, they're not going to have the resources anyway to do much. 

Right. So I'm curious, Nicky, when you write, do you Are your characters more like masterminded criminals, or are they just kind of, kind of sloppy? Whoops, we better kill him and try and get away with it.

Nicky: They tend to be more masterminds, just purely because that's what people want to read about. If I'd have actually, that whole story, if I'd have pitched that to my agent and editor, they'd have laughed at me. None of that would be real, so I wouldn't have got away with that as a storyline. There doesn't seem to be a lot of motive going on.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of well, I mean, I suppose taking him to a graveyard is quite clever, because especially if you bury a body [00:14:00] in with another body, nobody's going to look there, because they're very, they can't get exhumation orders, I'm assuming, very easily. So that would have been reasonably clever, but then messing about with, you know, Like dismembering and then doing that with the head, you know, there's DNA in 97, so that wouldn't have messed his identity at all.

If that was what they were trying for, or whether they just thought it was the bullet that was going to be the kind of tattletale as to who did what, but then again, if the police didn't have the gun, they couldn't then match it to the bullet anyway. So they might as well just throw the gun in the lake.

Elizabeth: Yeah. 

Erica: I also think like maybe dental records, but if you have the body, you have, yeah, you got the DNA, you have everything you need. So I don't know. It 

sounds more like, it could be. Along the lines of Fargo, you know, almost comedic, comical kind of, yeah, 

Nicky: not really. Well, I mean, I can guess that in those kind of situations, it depends on what kind of crime it was.

If it was premeditated, then I would say there's no excuse for being [00:15:00] so slapdash. But if it was sort of a crime of passion and it just happened randomly and then they panicked, then I could kind of forgive a little bit of, you know, because nobody knows what they react like in that situation. Like you said, like a Fargo situation where you, you didn't mean to do it, but it happened anyway.

Yeah. And then you're kind of just going, Oh my God, what's going on? That's exactly what it sounds like. So I can, I can kind of see that too, but even then, you know, if they, they walked in those worlds of being drug dealers and they, they walked in the criminal world, I would have hoped they'd have had slightly better heads on their shoulders.

Is that too much? Yeah. 

Erica: No, that was good. I don't know. I mean, people. Yeah, you're right. In that situation, what are you going to do? And then, quite frankly, generally speaking, I don't think that people really understand what the cops are going to be looking for. So they probably thought they were doing an incredibly good job at getting rid of the head.

Well, they did do a good [00:16:00] job getting rid of the head because no one's ever found it. 

Erica: That's gross. 

And you swim in that lake. 

Nicky: Do you? Yeah. 

I do. It's a big lake. 

Nicky: It is. It is. Well, should I tell you something about burying a body in concrete? So one of my, my very dear friends is another author called Jane Isaac and she wrote a book that was based on a very sad case over here in the UK about a baby that was found in concrete in someone's garage that is, was eventually identified.

She, when she was writing the book, she didn't have a lot of forensic knowledge about what would actually happen to a body in concrete. So what she did was she got the Sunday ham. And buried it in concrete and left it for like months on end and then decided she was going to open it up and see what would happen to it.

So what actually happened was she opened, her [00:17:00] husband. Chipped it out, opened it up and she said, first of all, the smell was horrific and it went across her neighborhood and bearing in mind it was a summer day where everyone had their windows open. So probably from then to now, her neighbors hate her. And she said it was like watching one of those time lapse things that it just literally, it was fine for a second.

It looked normal. It looked like, you know, like it was the day it was put into the concrete, but then it decayed, like, almost instantly. She said it was like watching, like, the oxygen got to it, and then it suddenly, it was just like completely decayed, and it smelled so bad that she sent her husband out with it in a plastic bag to bury it in a nearby field, and he had to drive with it out of the window of the car, because it smelled so bad.

Can you imagine? Somebody, somebody sees, like, they smell this horrendous thing, and then they see him, like, burying something in a bag. Okay, 

Erica: yeah, I was gonna say this looks really creepy. 

Nicky: So yeah, that's basically what happens. So as soon as the concrete, so if they find that [00:18:00] head, they'll crack it open, obviously, because people might not know what it is.

They'll crack it open to see what's in there. They'll find the head, and it'll be fine for like, A second, and then it'll decay into a horrible, smelly mess. 

Even if it's been in the, even if it's been in water for like, 

Nicky: Yeah. Nothing gets through concrete. It's sealed, yeah. It was so sealed, she left the bucket in the garden.

Her two dogs didn't go anywhere near it. You know, they couldn't, couldn't smell anything. Couldn't, you know, and if the smell can't get out, nothing can get in. Yeah. Until you let in. That's dedication. You let the air indication. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. I mean that's, that's one of the, the, you know, the smallest thing she's done for her books.

Oh, oh wow. For her. That . 

Nicky: That's so gross. Oh my god. I 

Can you imagine if that head is ever found? I mean 

Nicky: Can you imagine what else is down there? You know, the stuff that you don't know that was thrown in. 

Erica: Oh 

Nicky: yeah. 

Erica: I know that initially when we were looking up Lake Lanier, there was a lot [00:19:00] of divers talking about feeling like they get pulled, there's strange currents, because there's full buildings down there.

There's, there's so much structure, and it's very strange, like. 

And cemeteries are still, I mean, they, the government did move some cemeteries, but there's no way that they could have moved all of the graves, so there's graves under there. 

Erica: Yeah. 

And then on top of that, I think the number is 27 bodies that, of drownings or accidents, have never been recovered.

Erica: Yeah, there is a lot of death there. 

So as a writer, I'm just curious, Lake Lanier, that kind of setting, does that get your like, creative juices going? Like, ooh, this would be a good setting for my next novel. 

Nicky: I just want 

her 

Erica: to 

write a book 

Nicky: about Lake Lanier. You know, at least I can write off the holidays there.

Yeah, there you go. Yeah, I mean, all Lakes of water any kind of expanse of water can be really quite inspiring anyway, because there's always something that's going on around there You know, there's [00:20:00] always Something that's happening. I mean Ted Bundy used to lure a lot of women around water, didn't he?

And You've got like the Green River killer. I Don't know whether you ladies have ever heard in the UK about the Manchester pusher. Mm 

Elizabeth: hmm 

Nicky: It's, I mean, it's not even an official case. That's the most frustrating thing, but it's all about so in Manchester, as is a lot of other cities in the UK, there's lots of canal systems.

Erica: Yeah. 

Nicky: And in Manchester, they have three times the amount of canal related deaths than any other city. Three times. 

Elizabeth: Hmm. 

Nicky: And a lot of the, the victims are men, young men. So it seems to have like a specific kind of MO, let's say, a specific kind of victim. And they tend to be all around the same place around these, there's some, you know, LGBT clubs that it tends to be around and there was a Channel 4 documentary on it [00:21:00] that even had, there was some poor lad that was ringing, literally ringing his mum telling her he's coming home and then you could hear him getting pushed and the police still won't admit that there is something going on.

They're saying, Oh no, people fall in, people fall in. I thought, nobody's that drunk that they fall into a canal. Oh no. No. Wow. So that's kind of not even. That's kind of a perfect crime too, isn't 

it? Like, just shove somebody in. 

Nicky: Well, yeah. And, and also the canal is quite steep. So once you're in, you're kind of, somebody has to help you out to get you out.

And if it's very cold, if it's in the winter, the water is so cold that hypothermia is going to get you pretty quick as well. So you're not going to be able to swim out of it to get out. So it is the perfect weapon for someone who perhaps isn't, you know, physically strong or just enjoys that kind of murder.

But I noticed as well Is it this? The happy face or the smiley face murders that you've got in the States. Smiley face, I think. The smiley face, because there's a happy face killer, isn't there? So the [00:22:00] smiley face murders, they're all water based and there's the smiley face. 

Elizabeth: It's 

Nicky: right next to in the graffiti, wherever they've been kind of, the bodies have been found in the body of water.

And again, they're all young men. So I just kind of think that's a bit weird. 

Is there a CCTV cameras in the canals? 

Nicky: Oh yeah, that's a good 

question. 

Nicky: I would be surprised if there wasn't. But there's, you know, I kind of, yeah, I think the police are kind of, there's a lot of cases in the UK where the police have just not paid attention.

They don't want to pay attention because obviously then it becomes a case they don't want to work on. I actually had something similar in the brother where there's a serial killer out there and there's one forensic person that has checked the DNA and his DNA is at every crime scene, but because there's no other connections, the police are like.

No, you've, you've, you've done that. You know, you've made a mistake in the lab. This, this, this can't be right because they don't want it to be right because the amount of work and then the pressure [00:23:00] that's actually on them, then the public pressure to bring someone to justice for it is huge and nobody wants that.

Of course. Yeah, it did make me laugh. I know I shouldn't laugh, but I, I, I did that. The other name for this killer is Jack the Dipper. Oh my God. I know, which is classic really, but there you go. I know. That's the newspapers for you. Yeah. It's the UK. We're the most, we've got the most CCTV of any country.

Really? I know. Quite small. I don't understand why, but it doesn't seem to help us in anything we do. Interesting. So, the only thing it seems to help is I don't know whether you guys have ever caught the show Hunted? 

No. 

Nicky: No? No. Oh, it's hilarious. If you can ever get it in, in the US, it's a UK reality TV show and basically they, they bring like, 20 normal people out and then they, they set them as fugitives in the UK.

And follow them around and then they set like [00:24:00] X army and police and Met and our kind of secret service people all to try and track them down. They get to like a certain location at the end, then they get a share of a hundred grand. High stake, hide and seek. I would totally do that. Yeah, but it's so annoying though because they always do, they must be told to do this because I can't imagine anyone stupid enough to have let the show run for this long.

It's been going for many, many years. Really? Yeah, they always contact their family. 

Erica: Oh, 

Nicky: and it's like, 

Erica: oh, 

Nicky: just say, yeah, 28 days without talking to your parents. Yeah, exactly. They always have something like it's their wife's birthday or their children's bar mitzvah or whatever. And it's like, it's like they're not committed.

Yeah. Just let it go. Stay out of sight. I get a hundred grand because I'm sure that kid or wife will be much happier with the money than just five minutes with you. Seriously, I could be on that show. I'm going to look that up. But we're going. [00:25:00] It's very entertaining. It was very entertaining. I mean, you got to keep moving.

That's part of it. You can't just hide somewhere. You have to keep moving because you've got like a cameraman with you. Oh, yeah, that's true. Which kind of stands out a little bit if you're trying to hide. Oh, good. 

Erica: Yeah, no, that's very fair. Oh, that would make it difficult. I really think I could do this, but I wouldn't want a cameraman following me around.

That's funny. They probably become like best friends with a cameraman. Like, what are we going to do? Worst enemies. You're thinking positive, Erica. Yeah. 

Yeah, 

Erica: or this camera man's trying to out you. He's like following you around. He's like, Oh, here's the camera. 

Nicky: Hey! It's probably like wildlife documentaries.

They're not allowed to interact with the subjects. I know you're like, save the animal! 

Elizabeth: And 

Nicky: they can't. And they can't. It's hilarious. We have a show [00:26:00] called Gogglebox. Have you ever watched that? No. No. Sorry, I've gone way off subject, but Gogglebox is basically watching people watch television. Oh my gosh, that's right up 

Erica: my alley.

Nicky: Yeah, it's like the reactions of normal people watching the television program you've probably just seen, but then watching someone else's reaction to it. 

Erica: That kind of reminds me of some of like, I don't know if you're on TikTok, but there's some lives where it's like people in other countries. I don't know.

And I always have this one that pops up. I don't know what my algorithm is doing to me, but it's like these two guys, they look like maybe they're in India. I don't know. And they're just in water and it's just their head sticking out and they're just sitting there staring at the camera. 

And they probably have thousands and thousands.

And 

Erica: I click on it. So I go into the live and everybody's like, what's going [00:27:00] on? What is this? You know, everyone's freaking out thousands of people like they're making money there and people are sending them money and they're just sitting there in this dark body of water. With her head sticking out. And I'm like, we should do that in Lake Lanier.

We should just do that and then we'll be rich. We'll probably 

Nicky: die, but it's fine. You'll get dragged down by all the souls in the graveyard. 

Honestly, that's what people say about it. That's 

Nicky: what people say, yeah. 

They even say like when they're swimming, they 

Erica: feel like 

expert swimmers. Feel like I can't swim in Lakeland here.

I feel heavy. I feel like I'm being pulled down. I feel weird things like 

Erica: A diver that kind of, a diver. 

He's a professional diver in Lake Lanier. I forget it's his last name is Buchanan or something, but he was in, he was quoted in a newspaper article that I read saying when I'm diving in Lake Lanier, it's because it [00:28:00] does get very dark and murky.

He said, I'll be reaching out and I'll feel like an arm or a leg and it doesn't move. 

Erica: Where I grew up, there was like a little pond, and me and my best friend would go swimming in this pond. It's very small, it's disgusting. That is disgusting. You swim in that? Just don't judge me right now. I was young.

I remember like reaching down into some mud, and I felt something really weird. I picked it up and I cleaned it up. It was a golf ball, but I thought it was an eyeball. So I'm holding it and I start screaming and Brie's standing right next to me, my best friend. She's sitting next to me. I'm like, Well, and I'm screaming and then I realized it's a golf ball, but and so I'm not scared anymore, but I kept playing it up and I threw it at her.

And she like lost her mind. There's also several times where I would just get out of the water and [00:29:00] remind her that she was swimming. Coming in a lake all by herself and there's something really scary about that. She would just start screaming and get out. 

It's not a lake, it's barely a pond. It's basically, it's really, it's like a runoff.

Nicky: Yeah, it is. Oh, I was gonna say, did you ever watch that horror anthology creep show growing up that had the lake in it? No, It was a Stephen King and there was like a lake monster, but it wasn't like a Nessie kind of monster. It was like just a big kind of, I suppose, expanse of rubbish and like oil and stuff that would envelop swimmers and, and just kind of suck them up.

And every time you guys are talking about the lake, I just imagine this. 

Yeah. So you mentioned Stephen King. Is he like one of your Inspirations? Or like, who would you say are kind of your inspirations for other writers and authors? 

Nicky: I, I went a little darker than Stephen King growing up. [00:30:00] I preferred a lady called Poppy Zedbright.

She has a skill of making the most grotesque things sound beautiful. So you've got to read her just to kind of see her writing style. And I preferred like Richard Layman. As a, as a writer, and a little bit of Jack Ketchum, I think was a little, you know, was a little bit more my, my kind of speed. 

Erica: I've always wanted to write a book.

I think everybody probably has in their life. But one of the things I know that me and Beth have talked about is you have to be able to write like, nobody you know is ever going to read it. And I really would struggle with that. So how do you get past that? This like maybe a mental block of knowing that your whole family or everybody you know is going to be reading this book.

Right 

under a pen name. 

Erica: Yeah. I, I don't know if I could get to a level of being able to write what I really want to write, knowing that so many people that I know or care about might read it. Like, I don't know why that's such a thing. Strangers? Cool. That's fine. Do you [00:31:00] feel like that, Nicky? Or? Maybe it's my 

Nicky: own kind of mental block.

No, I get it too. You guys have probably got nicer. Family. Because mine don't read my books. My mum does. My mum reads my books. My boyfriend's never read a single book of mine. Oh, 

wow. Or a story. 

Erica: Okay. 

Nicky: He's not 

even committed to a story. Well, probably not many people we know listen to our podcast, Erica, so we can say whatever we want on our podcast.

Erica: We act like people really care about, like, us, but. 

Nicky: It's always the thing, isn't it, that if you act like, oh, no one's going to care, I'm just going to go nuts. It's always something someone will then grab onto. So 

Elizabeth: yeah, 

Nicky: on the, the red rabbit hole, we did an election special and we were doing a, a kind of political true crimes.

So we were taking naughty Lords, so to speak in the crimes that they'd committed. And it got a little soap boxy with me and Lisa cause she's, she's sort of one side and I'm kind of in the middle of somewhere. And I said. We should have a theme song for this show and she was like, [00:32:00] Oh, what do you reckon then?

And I said let's do it to let's get physical by Olivia Newton John, but it's let's get political. Oh yes. And I sang it and I'm, I do not have a good voice and it went viral on TikTok so somebody sampled it. 

It did? Oh, I had to look it up. Yeah. I saw you on TikTok. I gotta find that. That's 

Elizabeth: funny. 

It's funny.

It's funny. What's, I listened to the one of, one of your episodes where you were talking about your inspiration for your book, The Brother. 

Elizabeth: Mm hmm. 

And I found that fascinating because you talk about familial DNA, DNA, and like, you know, when they use Ancestry. com or whatever to pinpoint the DNA of a murderer.

And it's not the murderer, it's like the family. The family. So, 

Nicky: and so her book is called 

The Brother. The Brother. 

Nicky: There's Fallon, who's the protagonist, she's a psychologist and something very bad has happened to her and her little brother decides to do this ancestry test on her to kind of help her, you know, to say, well, this is where you came from and this is [00:33:00] who you are and you're strong and, you know, and all this kind of thing.

He has the best intentions, but when it comes back, she discovers she's not actually related to her little brother at all. And she knows that her mom was pregnant with him. So she knows it's her. That's the imposter in the family. And as her DNA has gone into this database, this forensic scientist at the same time has put in the DNA of the killer into the database and has discovered it's a sibling match to Fallon and approaches her and says, you know, I know you've got a brother.

I think he's a serial killer. And she's like, well, actually that's not my real brother. And she discovers she has four brothers. She has four biological brothers. So one of them is a killer. Yeah. 

That's very interesting. Do you ever find it difficult, especially if it's something horrible, like a lot of the stuff at Lake Lanier is horrible and like really controversial.

Do you ever find do you ever find it difficult to kind of find the line between how to be sensitive about it, but still keep it interesting? And you know, you don't want to exploit these like horrible things [00:34:00] that have happened, but you know, how do you like find that balance when you're, you're inspired by something that's truly, truly horrible, but You know, you want to keep it fresh and interesting without taking away from the seriousness of it.

You know what I mean? 

Nicky: Yeah. Yeah. That's an interesting question. I think it's, I think you kind of hit the answer when you were asking the question. It's inspiration rather than talking about a case verbatim. If you talk about a case verbatim, you really have to go nonfiction, all the details in. And with, with, with all the will in the world, a nonfiction case doesn't hit the right.

Plot hole, you know, plot kind of. Legs, I call it my legs on a chair, you know, they don't have the legs on the chair that you need to hold a story up. 

Elizabeth: So 

Nicky: that's why you'll find that a lot of these things like Fargo, for example, has based on a true story. Yeah. 

Erica: Yeah. 

Nicky: Because that they'll take aspects of the true story, but to make a good story as in something that somebody is going to want to watch or want to read, they have to, you know, they have [00:35:00] to hit the right beats.

Within a story to make it the way it is. They'll have to have the, the right characters. And life unfortunately doesn't go that way. Yeah. You know, all our lives are not following the beats of a, you know, the save the cat beat sheet or anything like that, unfortunately. 'cause if they were, I'd be, you know, I'd be in the dark and night the soul probably by now.

Well, I was just curious because like what I've done is I've started a business that we do ghost tours on Lake Lanier. 

Elizabeth: Hmm. 

So we incorporate historical facts, but it's also. has to have some value of entertainment. And so we don't want to like exploit these horrible things that have happened, but yet they have actually happened.

Elizabeth: And it 

leads people to speculate. And it opens up a huge mystery. And so I feel like I'm trying to find the line between saying things like this is historical and factual. And like, also, there's a lot we don't know. And this place is crazy. So, I mean, I'm not a writer, but, you know, 

Nicky: Well, yeah, you have to kind of be entertaining, but like you said, you do have to have the facts correct when you're talking [00:36:00] about kind of crimes that have happened to other people.

I recently went on a Jack the Ripper tour in London, and I've always been, I've done that tour. I have you. In London? Yeah, the one where they do the screens and they show you, Oh, it was really busy, wasn't 

Erica: it? Yeah, it was at night we did the walking and they had some of that and then we end up at the The Ten Bells, is that what it is?

Ah, yes, 

Nicky: yeah. Yeah, the Ten Bells pub. Well, the thing is though, the book The Five, it's actually by Halle Rubenhold, the five victims of Jack the Ripper. Right. She talks about the lives of these, these women and has discovered that only three out of five of them, only two of them were prostitutes. Not that there's anything actually wrong with being a prostitute, but the three of them were just very down on their luck and just out at the wrong time of night.

And it kind of pissed me off that we were doing these tours. And like, for example, we were in Mitre Square where Catherine Eddowes was lay dying and they were basically calling her a prostitute, [00:37:00] which she would have took as an insult. You know, and they just didn't have their facts right, you know, this new information wasn't there and they hadn't updated anything.

So that was a little bit frustrating to me, but yeah, it was, it was just in London, you can't swing a cat without hitting a pub of some description. So you can get drunk very quickly if you choose 

to. That's awesome. Okay. So Nicky is going to tell us her, her scariest story. 

Nicky: Okay. I'll give you the choice, shall I?

Shall I give you a choice of experiences? Yes. Oh, yes. No, you just tell us 

which one you want. 

Nicky: No, no, I'll give you the choice. It's more fun if you vote. I want a choice. I'll pick 

Erica: Beth, it's fine. 

Nicky: Okay, so you've got the choice of a time slip, a past life experience, or ghostly experience. 

Erica: I have a couple of them.

I'm gonna go with whatever you think is [00:38:00] the scariest ghost, but I do love past life stuff. 

I can't wait to hear it. 

Nicky: So picture this, right? So I'm about 17 at the time and I'm living at home with my mum and dad and I'm going to college on the bus. I can't drive at this particular time. And I came home, broad deadline, broad daylight, there's a lot of wine, broad daylight.

I come home from college and I'm walking past, there's like an old folks home on the corner of the street and I'm walking past there. I stopped to play with the neighborhood cat and you know when you feel like someone's watching you and I kind of look around and I see in the top window of the old folks home there's a man and he looks a little greenish but he's got a bright red jumper on and he's pressed like right to the window pane looking at me and I'm thinking dirty old man you know so I stare back as you do you know to kind of tell him 

Elizabeth: yeah 

Nicky: and [00:39:00] he kind of fades into the background and I'm like, That's a bit weird.

But I carry on, carry on home. And when I get home, my dad says, can you take your mum's lunch up to the post office? My mum used to run the local post office. So I says, okay. So I grab her lunch. And as I walk past the old folks home to get to the post office, I look up to see if the old man is still there.

But instead of, Anyone being there, there's like a vase of flowers and a ledge and I'm thinking, I didn't see that before because he was literally right up, it was like he was really like trying to stare at me. Thinking, that's bizarre. So I walk up to the post office and I give my mum the lunch and I tell her all about it.

And I say, oh, this horrible man was just staring at me. And she was like, well, nobody could have been staring at you. And I was like, well, he did. And she says, well, no, because the guy that used to live there died last week. And nobody is living in that flat in the old folks home. I know this because the owner came in just the other day and told me.

And I went, What? And she went, yeah, his name was Tony. [00:40:00] He used to wear a bright red jumper all the time. Oh, 

Erica: that's good. I knew that's where this was going. 

Of course. That's good. Because you, you've corroborated it because you told somebody about it before you knew anything that was going on. Yeah. I didn't think it was a 

Nicky: ghost.

I just thought it was a perv. I just thought it was some pervert just staring at 

Erica: a teenage girl. Exactly. That's, that's common. 

Nicky: You know, so, yeah. 

Oh, that's a good one. That's a 

Nicky: good one. I like 

that. And I know you've got more. So we're going to have you back on so you can tell all of your spooky ghost stories.

Or we'll, we'll go 

Erica: on yours too and that can be fun. 

Yeah, we can discuss all of our, all of our creepy stuff that's happened. All right. So we're, last week we did a giveaway with the owner of Wine and Whimzees, a local wine shop owner, Bridget. And we're giving away something from her shop, as well as a spirits uncorked our podcast.

I went with a bag instead of a t shirt because I thought everyone can use [00:41:00] like a tote bag. So okay, here we go. Ready? 

Erica: I don't have any 

of our merch. 

Erica: So 

yeah. Okay, ready? The winner is real Mason. I'm going to contact them and hooray. Congratulations, real Mason. Yes, our very first giveaway. So awesome. Nicky, can you tell us where can listeners follow your work, find your books, follow you on social media, tell us every because we're just gonna, we're just gonna read your 

Erica: stuff.

We're just gonna race over to Instagram and TikTok and just follow absolutely everything you do. We're hardcore diehard. fans now of NV of NV Peacock. So come on, let's go. 

Nicky: Well, to be honest, I'm not exactly a massive social media person. So you can find me on Facebook if you feel the need. I do have a page for NV Peacock thrillers, but I am there as Nicky Peacock as well, generally.

Feel free to friend me. And but I am a part of the Red Rabbit Hole podcast. And that is awesome. pretty much everywhere. Thanks to [00:42:00] my co host Lisa Shepard. And so that's on Instagram and TikTok and all the, the good, the good stuff. 

All right. We want to thank our guest, Nicky Peacock. Thank you so much for being here.

It was amazing to talk to you. We can't wait to read more of your work and hear more about what you do. And of course, everybody follow her on social media and don't forget to subscribe to the Red rabbit hole podcast. All right. Thank you. Thank you, everybody for listening. Tune in next time to Spirits Uncorked.

Nicky: Thanks, guys. Bye.