Welcome to my stop on the Great Escapes Virtual Book Tour for Campfires & Corpses: A Maine Campground Cozy Mystery by Nikki Weber. Stop by each blog on the tour for interviews, guest posts, spotlights, reviews and more!
Campfires & Corpses: A Maine Campground Cozy Mystery
by Nikki Weber
Campfires & Corpses: A Maine Campground Cozy Mystery
Cozy Mystery/ Cozy Animal Mystery
1st in Series
Setting – Maine
Publisher : Independently published (February 24, 2025)
Paperback : 282 pages
When the campground becomes the scene of the crime, will Noelle’s peaceful summer go up in flames?
Down on her luck event planner Noelle Cooper is returning to rural Maine to do the one thing she swore she would never do: run her family’s campground. But it’s only for the summer, and the timing couldn’t be better–she’s lost her job and has nowhere to live. She hopes that a change of scenery will be the thing she needs to regroup and reinvent herself.
But Noelle’s plans go up in smoke on her first morning back when she stumbles upon the body of her high school rival. She barely has time to process this before she comes face-to-face with her ex-boyfriend, meets the handsome county sheriff, and is questioned by an intimidating state trooper who gives her the creeps.
While she’s busy dealing with a group of pushy campers who insist that the murder means she must cancel the annual bonfire, Noelle becomes the prime suspect in the murder investigation. She’s convinced that someone is feeding false information to the police and is determined to clear her name.
With the help of her podcast-obsessed cousin, her anxious rescue beagle, and a few eccentric campers, Noelle compiles a list of other suspects and pokes around to uncover the real killer.
Can Noelle prove her innocence before getting tossed in jail? Or is she playing with fire? Read Campfires & Corpses now to find out.
*** This clean, contemporary cozy mystery is set in a small town with quirky characters and lovable dogs. Cozy mystery fans will enjoy dissecting the suspects’ alibis and following the clues along with Noelle and her gang. ***
Here’s what you’ll LOVE about this series!
These are just a few of the reasons you’ll love Campfires & Corpses:
- The story is set in Maine
- During a summer heatwave
- There’s a rescue beagle (and other great dog-themed references)
- It all takes place in a campground that’s in a tiny town
- There’s a fast-paced, page-turning ending
Author Guest Post: Painting a Different Picture of Maine
When I decided to start writing and publishing fiction, I knew exactly where I wanted to set my first story: a campground in a one-intersection town in rural Maine. It was perfect for the cozy mystery genre.
I grew up in Maine in a town of approximately 25,000 people. It didn’t seem all that small to me when I was younger. My town had a busy downtown area, and each month my family would drive just four hours to Connecticut, passing by Boston along the way.
But in truth, it’s small-town living. And Mainers love nature and outdoor living so much that many like to spend time in even smaller, more remote places. That’s why my family spent summers at the campground in the tiny community where I decided to base my cozy mysteries.
There are a lot of cozy mysteries based in Maine. The most popular cozy television series in the USA, Murder She Wrote, starring Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher, was set in a fictional town in Maine.
There are some very popular cozy mystery book series based in Maine as well. And I often hear people talking on podcasts about how they just love reading books set in my home state. Needless to say, I knew that a book set in Maine would appeal with a segment of readers, and that made me all the more confident in my choice of setting when I started writing.
Fast-forward to when I finished my first draft. (Okay, my third draft. A brand-new writer needs a few passes, after all.) I lined up some readers and awaited their feedback. I expected comments and criticisms from across the spectrum, and I was ready to take it all in stride.
But I wasn’t prepared for a reader to tell me that they, “didn’t get a strong sense of Maine, specifically.”
Queue that emoji with the monocle who is making the confused/skeptical face.
“Is it by the ocean? Is there a rocky coast?” she asked. Well, no, I thought, there’s a lake and mountains mentioned in the first chapter.
“What does a small town in Maine look like?” she asked.
I considered where she was from; the Midwest region of the United States. Okay, I thought, she doesn’t know Maine. And that’s important for me to recognize, because I want people from all over the world to read my book, not just folks from my corner of my country.
Side note: I’ve actually met people from Massachusetts—a state whose border is just a half hour drive from the Maine state border—who don’t know much about Maine. My first week of college— which was in western Massachusetts, only a two-and-a-half-hour drive from my hometown—a girl asked me if we had indoor plumbing at my house. (The answer is yes.)
Over the years, a lot of non-Mainers have asked me, “What do you do up there all day?” I think they pictured my family as homesteaders, and that we spend all of our time chopping wood and hunting wildlife for dinner. I can sort of understand that; Maine does boast 17 million acres of forest.
But we also have shopping malls and restaurants, theaters and arenas, and Netflix and Amazon.
Still, I went into writing my Maine Campground Cozy Mystery series with the assumption that people thought of Maine as “living in the sticks.” Which is why I was so surprised by the reader feedback that it didn’t feel like Maine. I really thought I described a rural area, the kind without cell phone reception and traffic lights. The type of place where you might encounter a bear or a moose on your way to work.
After revising that draft, I met with a group of three other authors, and we read each other’s work and provided feedback. To my shock, they had similar questions. They simply couldn’t picture this small town in Maine.
So, I did what you do: I went to Amazon and typed in “cozy mystery books set in Maine.”
And wouldn’t you know, almost every single one of those books was set in a quaint town on the coast of Maine. Those books have covers that feature lighthouses and lobsters in pots. They have titles like “Clammed Up” or they take place in “Snug Harbor” or the “Gray Whale Inn.”
And since it’s 2025, I also asked Chat GPT to make me a list of “stereotypical things, imagery, and scenery people commonly associate with Maine.” Four of the top five categories on the list were all related to living on the coast.
That’s when I realized that although my experience of Maine stereotypes—in which people assume I live in a log cabin deep in the woods—is in direct contrast with a lot of Maine stereotypes in books and movies—in which everything is sailboats and lighthouses, lobster rolls and clam bakes, grand Victorian-style houses and fishing boats in the harbor.
(I should address the elephant in the blog post here and say that obviously there are folks who read Stephen King books, and those readers are more familiar with small-town Maine. But those aren’t the same readers picking up my books. My books could not be further from those of our most famous state celebrity. Also, most Mainers do eat their fair share of lobster rolls, so that stereotype is correct.)
I approached my final draft of Campfires & Corpses with this revelation in mind. I would have to really paint the picture of rural Maine for my readers, or at the very least, find a way to explain that the setting was not on the coast. As a reader, I don’t enjoy long descriptions of people or places in books, so it was a fine line to walk. I was concerned that I’d alienate readers if I spent too much time on the campground layout, what the campsites and camping trailers looked like, and how far in the distance the mountains sat. I solved one of those problems by creating a campground map that can be found at the front of the book.
Now, every time I read a book by another author, I pay close attention to how much detail they provide when describing the setting, and I wonder if my own stereotypes are automatically filling in the gaps. I think it’s inevitable, but at least now I’m aware of it as both a reader and a writer. It has been an interesting lesson to learn.
About Nikki Weber
Nikki Weber was born and raised in Maine, and spent her childhood summers camping with her family and their beagle. She loves to read, listen to podcasts, travel, and play tennis. Campfires & Corpses: A Maine Campground Cozy Mystery is her first book, and there are many more in the pipeline.
Author Links
Website: https://nikkiweberbooks.com/
Sign Up for Nikki’s Newsletter: Join the Cozy Book Club! | Nikki Weber
GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/nikkiweber
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/nikkiweberbooks
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/nikkiweberbooks
Purchase Links
Universal Book Link – Amazon – B&N – Bookshop.org – Kobo
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Campfires and Corpses TOUR PARTICIPANTS
May 28 – Jody’s Bookish Haven – SPOTLIGHT
May 29 – Christy’s Cozy Corners – AUTHOR GUEST POST, INDIVIDUAL GIVEAWAY
May 29 – Frugal Freelancer – SPOTLIGHT
May 30 – Read Your Writes Book Reviews – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
May 30 – View from the Birdhouse – REVIEW
May 31 – Reading Is My SuperPower – REVIEW
May 31 – Baroness Book Trove – SPOTLIGHT
June 1 – Rebecca M. Douglass, Author – REVIEW, CHARACTER GUEST POST
June 1 – Infinite House of Books – SPOTLIGHT
June 2 – Books, Ramblings, and Tea – SPOTLIGHT
June 2 – Sarah Can’t Stop Reading Books – REVIEW
June 3 – Ascroft, eh? – CHARACTER INTERVIEW
June 3 – Socrates Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
June 4 – Reading, Writing & Stitch-Metic – AUTHOR GUEST POST, INDIVIDUAL GIVEAWAY
June 4 – FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT
June 5 – Boys’ Mom Reads! – REVIEW
June 5 – MJB Reviewers – SPOTLIGHT
June 6 – Sneaky the Library Cat’s Blog – CHARACTER INTERVIEW
June 6 – Sapphyria’s Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
June 7 – Maureen’s Musings – SPOTLIGHT
June 7 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – SPOTLIGHT
June 8 – Elizabeth McKenna – Author – SPOTLIGHT
June 9 – Cozy Up With Kathy – REVIEW, AUTHOR INTERVIEW
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Hi Christy! Thank you so much for sharing my book on your blog 🙏🏻 I enjoy sharing about my writing journey and inspiration, thanks for letting me share 🤩
You’re welcome! Thanks for stopping by!
When I think of Maine I think of snow and the show Murder She Wrote.
Sherry, there is DEFINITELY snow! This year, through late April. And those of us who love the campground and lake usually visit it at least once for a day in the winter (hot cocoa, a bonfire, an amazing view of the mountains).
I think of lighthouses and lobster rolls.
You’re not alone, Karen! 🙂 And truth be told, both of those are plentiful in Maine! One of my favorite places in all of Maine is the lighthouse at Cape Elizabeth/For Williams Park. It’s called Maine Headlight. When I took my husband to Maine for the first time, I brought him there: https://portlandheadlight.com/about-us/
This sounds like a fun summer time read for cozy mystery lovers!
One of the first things I think of when I think of Maine is Stephen King.