As Dana Wilkerson was getting ready to make her book presentation on April 4 at the Montgomery City Public Library community room, she heard the loud sound of the train going through the tracks across from the building.

That immediately brought back memories for the Montgomery City native.

“I lived here two different times as an adult,” Wilkerson said. “One time, I lived on Walker Street. My backyard backed up to the train. There was a crossing right by my house. When the train went by, I couldn’t hear my TV.”

Wilkerson returned to her hometown to talk about five of her books – all of them were published in a span of a year – during the 45-minute presentation that included several of her old teachers. Four of her books are part of the Totally 80s Mystery series and the other is a romantic comedy book called More Than Pen Pals, which was published in March. Wilkerson did a book signing after the presentation.

“It’s been fun to come back and see people I’ve known my whole life,” said Wilkerson, who now lives in Edmond, Okla.

The titles of her Totally 80s Mystery series books are A Totally Killer Wedding, Most Likely To Kill, Of Heist and Men and A Totally 80s Christmas. Wilkerson said the setting of the four books is in a small Central Missouri town in 1985.

“I don’t remember why, but at some point, I thought it would be kind of fun because I grew up in the 80s,” Wilkerson said. “I had fond memories. I put in references to songs, movies and technology. Plus, it was fun to write a mystery set before the Internet and before cell phones.”

The setting of Wilkerson’s book, More Than Pen Pals, was in Chicago in 1988 and is connected to the mystery books.

“For the romcom, I went on a writer’s retreat with a friend of mine, who is also an author,” Wilkerson said. “We just got an Airbnb in Hot Springs, Arkansas for a week and we went down there and wrote. I wrote about 30,000 words in that book.”

After graduating with degrees in elementary education and seminary theology, Wilkerson worked for a Christian publisher. She later started co-writing several non-fiction books in the late 2000s such as The Vow with Kim and Krickitt Carpenter and Balancing It All: My Story of Juggling Priorities and Purpose with actress Candace Cameron Bure.

Wilkerson started writing fiction books in 2017, when she published Mustang Jessie and Mustang Macy. Five years later, Wilkerson returned to writing fiction with her Totally 80s Mystery series. The four books in the series are part of a cozy mystery genre.

“They’re not scary,” Wilkerson said. “There’s a little bit of suspense, but they’re not gory and there’s not like a descriptive murder. There is a murder usually, but it’s not anything that’s going to keep you from sleeping at night. They’re clean. There is usually no bad language and there are no explicit themes or any of that kind of thing. Everybody is a suspect at the beginning. It’s usually set in a small town where everybody knows everybody. They’re really fun to write.”

Wilkerson graduated from Montgomery County High School in 1994. She said while she was in school, she never thought about being a writer.

“I was not a fan of it,” Wilkerson said. “I did well in writing, but I never really enjoyed it. I would wait until the last second to write a paper. I wasn’t into it.”

Now, writing is one of Wilkerson’s favorite passions.

“I get to write what I want now,” Wilkerson said. “I don’t have to write what somebody tells me to write. I don’t like being told what to do.”