Diane Wahn Shotton, a native of Covington, Kentucky, a suburb of Cincinnati, resides in Cave Creek, Arizona. After extensively researching her family history, she began writing historical fiction, drawing on her ancestors’ experiences. With a strong German heritage, her stories often explore themes of survival and resilience shaped by the political and cultural climate of the times. Her debut novel, Motty’s Vow, self-published in November 2024, was warmly received with good reviews. Diane won third place in a creative writing contest while attending Paradise Community College. Now retired, she enjoys spending time with her seven grandchildren and writing stories inspired by the untold chapters of her family’s past.
Phoenix Writers Club Author Profile
Diane Shotton
Vice President
Select Publications
Motty's Vow: A Novel of Family, Duty, and Resilience
A promise made in fear. A father marching off to war. A family left with nothing but each other.
When Motty’s father leaves to fight for the Union, he takes their only source of income with him. Her mother is ill and overwhelmed. And the threat that haunts Motty if anything happens to her mother becomes terrifyingly real: the children can be taken and separated. The cupboards are empty.
Motty is fourteen. She should be a child. Instead, she becomes the one holding the family together.
She vows to protect her siblings—especially Mary, whose vulnerability makes her a target for the asylum. But protection has a cost, and every choice Motty makes to keep the family together carries a new and heavier burden.
The Dictograph Case: Patriotic Device
ometimes the truth is difficult to believe. And finding it has consequences.
In 1937, a German immigrant is beaten in the dark. Everyone suspects who did it. No one will say.
Journalist Michael Schumann and schoolteacher Olivia Kendall start asking questions—Michael haunted by his grandfather’s ruin in 1918, Olivia by her father’s suspicious death. What they uncover is worse than rumor: their small town’s powerful men built their reputations on surveillance, coercion, and a weaponized version of patriotism. And that machinery is still running.