Links Mentioned in This Episode:

✨ Grab your copy of The Dictograph Case:
https://www.amazon.com/Dictograph-Case-Diane-Wahn-Shotton/dp/B0FSBQ1KBX

✨ Check out Diane’s earlier novel, Marty’s Vow:
https://www.amazon.com/Mottys-Vow-Diane-Wahn-Shotton/dp/B0DMDXXX27

✨ Subscribe to Diane’s newsletter on Substack:
https://dianewahnshotton.substack.com/

The Resilient Writers Radio Show: Interview with Diane Wahn Shotton – Full Episode Transcript

Intro:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome to The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm your host, Rhonda Douglas. And this is the podcast for writers who want to create and sustain a writing life they love. 

Because let's face it, the writing life has its ups and downs, and we want to not just write, but also to be able to enjoy the process so that we'll spend more time with our butt-in-chair getting those words on the page. 

This podcast is for writers who love books and everything that goes into the making of them. For writers who want to learn and grow in their craft and improve their writing skills. Writers who want to finish their books and get them out into the world so their ideal readers can enjoy them. Writers who want to spend more time in that flow state. 

Writers who want to connect with other writers to celebrate and be in community, in this crazy roller coaster ride, we call the writing life. We are resilient writers. We're writing for the rest of our lives and we're having a good time doing it. So welcome, Writer. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump right into today's show.

Rhonda:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome back to another episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. So today I'm here with Diane Shotton. And Diane is the author of Marty’s Vow and The Dictograph Case. We're going be talking about The Dictograph Case today. She writes historical fiction that makes unknown people unforgettable. She spent four decades on the true stories behind her novels. She's a native of Covington, Kentucky. And she lives in Arizona, where she writes full time. So hey, Diane, welcome.

Diane:

Hey, Rhonda, thanks for having me.

Rhonda:

Nice to see you again. Nice to see you. So obviously, I read this because I did some editorial work on it. But tell me about the background to this story, how this story came about, how you decided. And I see you've got your middle name on here. So tell me the back of how the story ended up being written.

Diane:

Okay, well, I was, this is back in 1999, I was researching my family history in a local library and a friend, a very, very distant cousin was with me and we were looking up this name and I saw this story uh in the newspaper where we were looking for the name and it was about this seven men were accused of being uh committing treason during World War I just for talking amongst themselves in a shoe shop.

Oh, they ended up going to jail, a big long trial going to jail. And I just still couldn't believe how that went down. But in the further research, World War I was a lot of people who were anti-German, particularly since we were fighting the Germans.

And it was a very insular community who decided under the leadership of a few prominent men that they would shut down all anti-American activity in this town, which, how they did it was through, the Dictograph was one way where they were in the shoe shop listening without the people knowing it, and then they took those transcripts to the court, and then the men were tried, and three men ended up going to jail.

They were 65 and older. They were old men not young men and prominent members of the community. So very odd way to um manage this. And so I took the story and I vowed 25 years ago, I gotta write this book. I gotta write this book. It was just too unreal to be believed.

Rhonda:

Yeah. What I loved about the book is how, and I said this to you at the time, how you wrote it like, um like it sounds like it's of the time. It has that like Raymond Chandler, detective noir kind of feel to it. There's a slow burn romance, know, I just, anyway, I really loved it. So em what were the biggest challenges to writing a story like this?

Diane:

Well, the first challenge was deciding which point of view um and to figure out if I wanted to do it from the uh men who had happened to uh perspective. But I decided that that would be, uh I couldn't write like a 65 year old man and I didn't feel like I could live in his shoes. So what I did is I used his grandson as uh the man who owned the shoe shop, his grandson to tell the story.

And then there was some other side stories going on with this uh Olivia is the woman whose father was killed by an automobile during this whole process. And the father was the attorney for the old men. So there's lots of things weaving in and out. And so I had to decide the point of view, and then I decided to do a point of view. And that I'd never done before. It's only my second book.

And um it was interesting to not repeat yourself in one chapter to the next, because it goes back and forth between Michael and Olivia. And then to be able to, what I really struggled with was not giving the clues over and over and over and over again.

In fact, I got feedback from several people, a couple beta readers, as well as I think some of your stuff was, I keep hearing the same thing repeated. So I had to figure out how do I cut that down so it's just um said once, because the reader gets it. I wanted to make sure the reader got it and I didn't do too much.

Rhonda:

Yeah, I think that can be a hard thing is sort of trusting the reader to pick up the clues you're laying down. So this is so it's based on a true story. How much did you feel that you could like feel free to fictionalize the whole thing? And how much did you feel like you had to be true to what actually happened?

Diane:

That's a great question. That's the hardest thing to do as somebody who is a genealogist and lives in the world of facts and places. uh It's a lot of fiction, but the uh essence of it is I tried to get across the feeling of the town was all on the side of shutting down anything German, that the uh town 20 years later was still a feeling the ramifications from it, although that was totally fictionalized.

When I went back and did all a bunch of research several different ways, the town recovered and nobody ever talked about it again. And that was the other part about it that was odd, was that it just happened, it disappeared, and these people just went on with their lives without any other societal or uh economical repercussions. So it was strange.

So I decided to make that up that there was repercussions and that Michael was a journalist for the local newspaper was going to go and uncover the what really happened and why it happened.

Rhonda:

And he pays a price.

Diane:

Probably 25 % real.

Rhonda:

Yeah. Okay.

Diane:

I'm sorry.

Rhonda:

This is the core of the book. That is what really happened. And then you wove a fictional story around it and Michael pays a price for that um for delving into something that the people involved don't want him to um be delving into. How did you?

06:47
How did you decide, when did you decide to put in the romance between Michael and Olivia?

Diane:

Pretty early on, I knew that um they couldn't just be, um there needed to be some tension between the two characters. Besides just telling each other the facts. Here's what happened to me, here's what happened to me. um And then to be honest, I didn't start out with the romance. 

It just kind of happened when they meet, they do a little tiny little meet cute in a hallway and there's this... uh sparks fly and all that, know, stuff. And I've never written romance.

So it just kind of happened. And then it started to feel like it must be a fate for them to work together and therefore start having a little romance, whatever that would mean. 

Both of them were 35 and neither one had been married. And somebody said to me, I find that fascinating and actually illogical that somebody in the thirties was, who's 35 is not already married. So well, you know, there's people who don't marry all the time.

Rhonda:

It happens. Yeah, totally happens.

Diane:

Yeah.

Rhonda:

So, what is it about focusing on a true story? In your earlier book, um Marty’s Vow, does that also focus on a true story?

Diane:

Yes, it is. That one is more fact than fiction in terms of what happened in terms of events. And it's, uh I draw mostly from uh the genealogy that I've done in my family. And the particular story behind Marty’s Vow was about a family that's left behind when father goes off to fight in the Civil War and what happens to them. The facts of what happens to the family, the mother, the children, et cetera, all was kind of like..

The reason I wrote Marty’s Vow was in the end, this is a spoiler, um is that the father ends up reenlisting. He does his three years, he comes home, he's got four kids depending on him and he reenlists. Why? Why would you do that? Your wife has died. 

And so I wrote the book to answer that question, to be honest. And I didn't know the answer until I almost got to the very end and figured out that he wanted to provide for his family.

He thought money was the right thing because you got big bonuses when you're enlisted and he didn't have a wife anymore. So he didn't have that um tie. um All he had was these kids that were also, they were doing fine without me. Why come back and mess things up and get, give them some money and leave them something.

Rhonda:

Right.

Diane:

And um the tragedy. The tragedy is that when he joined up, then he ends up getting injured um because he joins a regiment. The first regiment he was in was the first German, all German, in the state of Ohio. So he's a German immigrant, the language, the customs, the orders, the way that they marched, the way that they drilled, et cetera. And then he goes and he rejoins a unit um the 181st, which is really, really late in the war.

I believe, though I can't prove it, that because his language barrier and the way that he was a soldier in the first regiment might've had an impact on him not surviving the second.

Rhonda:

I see, okay. um Diane, as you're writing this story about something that happened in Ellington in 1937, do you see any parallels between what's happening in the United States today? Like, were you conscious of that as you were writing it?

Diane:

I was very much conscious of it. The idea of free speech and that people wave the patriotism flag around left and right. it isn't, yeah, I had lots of trouble with trying not to get on my um pedestal. I let the do that for me because, um Patriotism is, it's a gift and it's being used in the book, it's used to turn people against each other, 100 % American, because if you weren't that, then you weren't a patriot. And I see that happening a lot again, in what we're seeing in the government, in the media, et cetera.

Rhonda:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that's the gift of historical fiction is we can kind of take a situation, look at it, build a world around it. And it kind of, you know, for the reader, they can be swept away in the story, which, you know, I think The Dictograph Case does a great job of. And it's, but it also, there are echoes and the reader picks up those echoes. Yeah. So I love that about historical fiction.

This is at its heart a mystery, right? It really is them trying to figure out who was behind all of this and they're threatened, you know, progressively as they go through it. um And I loved the, um you know, all the scenes in the bar and how they're threatened and so on. I thought that that was really... um you know, it kind of, kept you super engaged in the story. um Did you ever have trouble with structuring the mystery at the heart of this? Or was that just clear to you from the get-go?

Diane:

No, it wasn't clear. The difficulty was making the antagonist have real stakes without having a voice. So you only have the, and you pointed this out to me, it was really good feedback. Um, was that the antagonist it's like the stakes weren't clear to the reader about why he was doing all this.

And, um, your advice was, uh, up the ante, change his position or add something to his position so that when people do find out, uh, what's gone sideways, even if it's years ago, he's got something big to lose.

So I changed him from a mere attorney who's working in the city, um, you know, getting new buses into the city to somebody who was actually on the Chamber of Commerce and therefore had a very respected position within the city as well, and that affected a lot of businesses. So when he went down, he would be seen by his peers as being uh someone who wasn't honest or true.

Rhonda:

Wow, so, um. How did you talk to me about doing the research for this book? just describe some of the research that you did and um how you incorporated that within the novel.

Diane:

Okay. ah I was fortunate enough to come across two several major pieces of work. One was done by a local historian in the town where this takes place, also my hometown, who wrote an entire um a huge, I know what the word is, chronicle about the events and what happened, and even went back into court files, et cetera.

So I had a lot of the background I didn't have to dig for because it already brought in this article, and it was um Gillian. And then another one was um called Scurrilous Citizen. I almost called the book that, but nobody knows what scurrilous is.

But that was another major article that not only blended what was happening in the town and what happened, but it also took the entire context of the war and other towns and cities, cetera. So two big pieces were kind of the framework for this and gave me the, my gosh, I can't believe this happened.

And then I did a lot of research about what it was to be a newspaper journal, what was it to be a teacher in those days. I used some of the, in my mind, use the same city streets, but change the names so I could place things like the bar I knew without us, cetera, et cetera.

And in real life, the shoe shop um was literally two blocks from where I grew up. So I've been past that shoe shop 100,000 times. It's not a shoe shop anymore, but I've seen the, I found, I just did a lot, a lot of digging in the internet, thank heavens, has been fantastic.

So, the research was funded by big articles, then a lot more digging into the details. I see that's my rabbit hole. If I do research, I can go off, you you will see me three hours later and I've just found the name of the guy who came in and was a customer.

Rhonda:

Right. I, you know, I have to say, so I'm writing a historical, historically based something now and gosh, that's so easy to spend three, four hours doing research and feel like, you know, you've been productive, but actually you haven't written anything. So how long did it take you to write this book?

Diane:

Oh, I've been writing it for years, but the final version with Michael and Olivia, I think it took me about, I think it was 16 months. Yeah. So I think it was, I think I started in, um, when Marty’s Vow was in review, I started in July of 24, 20, yeah, 24. And then it came out in September of 25. Yeah. Yeah.

Rhonda:

And, uh, you self-published, I love the cover. Who did your cover? Is that you?

Diane:

No. It's a little bit of a couple of things. So I found an image online and then I enhanced it. And then I have an artist friend, she's a senior in high school who helped me put together some of the background, et cetera. And we worked on how things should be placed.

Rhonda:

Yeah, it's great. It really evokes exactly what's going on. And yeah, I love it.

Diane:

Good, good.

Rhonda:

Yeah.

Diane:

Cover, cover is tough. I mean, they get a lot of criticism for covers. You get a lot of kudos for covers. Um, and, uh, that, that one, that one was tough because it being so dark, um, getting, I think I had, or like three or four proofs before I had it right, because it kept coming out either too dull or too bright in spots.

Rhonda:

So, um, you've put, uh further reading at the back, as well as a book club discussion guide. So I love that idea. how did you come up with the questions for the book club? What were you thinking about when you put that together? Are you hoping the book club's taking on, obviously?

Diane:

Yes. Well, I had read that providing a book club is a good...I love book clubs, I don't belong to one, because I have too much else going on. anyway, um I came up with the question simply by looking at the overall themes and doing like a section on what are the themes here, what do you see?

I think one of the questions relates to what you said earlier, do you see any parallels to what's happening today? How did the characters feel? um What did you think about uh the way ah the city was against itself? You know, how did the townspeople kind of go?

But a quick story about book club. Marty’s Vow has a book club uh notes in the back of it as well. And I have a good friend who lives in Cincinnati who read the book just crazy raved about it. And she belongs to a book club.

Last November, I showed up in person at the book club. And so I got to be the um the author in resident to talk about the book. then these. Yeah, it was it was a lot of fun. They even made a cake with a cover of the book on it there. It was great fun.

But it was so nice to talk about, you know, as an author, you write the book, you get it out there, and then you don't get to talk about it a lot unless you run into a reader who asks you questions, et cetera. So was really lovely to have um being peppered with questions. And then I talked about the sequel, which I'm working on right now, and I let the cat out of bag in one of the...One of the women turned to me said, no, you can't do that.

Rhonda:

You can't do that. So tell me a little bit about the sequel. This is the sequel to Marty’s Vow.

Diane:

Correct. Yeah.

Rhonda:

In fact, it's back just in the time of the Civil War or just after?

Diane:

It's post Civil War. It's after the Civil War. And so it takes up with the same family. But this time it tells it from Lizzie's perspective, which is the younger daughter in the family. She is, starts out in an asylum, which is where she went when her father left for the war. And so now she's getting out of the asylum after 10 years, and that's a long time. She was 10 when she went in, she was there for 10 years, and now she's getting out and what is the world like? What does she, how does she kind of fit in to the world? But she's got her sisters as an anchor.

And then there's, again, based on true family history, I won't say mayhem ensues, but she goes through a lot of trials and tribulations during this and making it period specific was very important. So, um, trying to find the, it's almost like a backwards process you do, you know, you've got the, basic story and then what else is happening in the world around them that can impact our lives.

So all you know, as a historian, they, they, they were born, they married, they had kids, they died, but then shit happened that in the town or the city or the country and weaving that into the conversation with the characters gives them, uh it gives a context. It also says they had to deal with this stuff.

Rhonda:

Yeah, it deepens our understanding of who they were and how they responded to the issues of their time. Absolutely.

Diane:

Right, exactly. I’m excited about this one. Lizzie is a really cool character and I'm almost done with the first draft.

Rhonda:

Oh, wow. Exciting. Yeah. So good. Well, it was a real pleasure working with you on this book. As I say, like, I really enjoyed reading it. And I feel like the changes you've made has made it stronger. So everyone can go and grab their copy of The Dictograph Case. And it's on Amazon, right? You can get it on Amazon.

Diane:

Yes, it is.

Diane Shotton, S-H-O-T-T-O-N. And thanks so much for talking to me about it today, Diane. It's great to see you.

Diane:

Thanks so much, Rhonda. I really appreciate it.

Outro:

Thanks so much for hanging out with me today and for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. While you're here, I would really appreciate it if you'd consider leaving a rating and review of the show. You can do that in whatever app you're using to listen to the show right now, and it just takes a few minutes. 

Your ratings and reviews tell the podcast algorithm gods that yes, this is a great show, definitely recommend it to other writers. And that will help us reach new listeners who might need a boost in their writing lives today as well. So please take a moment and leave a review. I'd really appreciate it. And I promise to read every single one. Thank you so much.