In a Future Where Abortion is Criminalized, One Woman Faces the Ultimate Test as White House Press Secretary
My thanks to Authors’ Lounge for the opportunity to tell you about my latest novel Enemies Domestic.
Enemies Domestic is a political thriller set in the not-too-distant future when abortion is a crime and a dictator becomes president.
The story begins on Lark Chadwick’s first day as White House press secretary. She’s pregnant and the first question she’s asked comes from a reporter with an agenda: “Are you, or are you not, planning to abort your unborn child?”
Immediately, Lark is thrust into the middle of the highly fraught abortion issue at a time when political discourse is polarized and toxic. Sound familiar?
Writers write what they know. I know journalism.
I was a White House correspondent for the last three years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.
White House Photo
For 25 years, I was an editor at CNN. For seven of those years, I was one of Wolf Blitzer’s editors on “The Situation Room.”
CNN Photo
And yet it astounds me that so many people have so little understanding of what journalists actually do.
A lot of people really believe we sit around thinking about how we can get our favorite candidate elected. They don’t understand that, unlike what a certain EX-president might tell you, it is a firing offense to make things up. At least it is at reputable news organizations that have rigorous oversight of the editorial process.
Enemies Domestic is the sixth novel in my Lark Chadwick series. All the books have a journalism backdrop. In my fifth novel, Fake, Lark is a White House correspondent and the victim of “fake news.”
I began writing Enemies Domestic in 2022 when the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. I wanted to put Lark in a situation where she’d have to navigate her abort-or-not-abort decision in a fishbowl at a time when women had lost the right to control their own reproductivity.
As I wrote, I realized that abortion is highly personal and nuanced. I wanted my readers—no matter their opinion about abortion—to come away feeling that their position had been fairly represented in the lives of the book’s characters.
And just who is my target audience?
First and foremost, I feel Enemies Domestic is for anyone who loves a story with high stakes and surprising twists.
It’s also for people who like to get so invested in a character that long after the story ends, they’re still thinking about the protagonist. That happened to one of my friends after she read one of my earlier novels. She texted me at two a.m. to tell me, “I need another Lark novel!”
By now you’ve probably figured out that Lark is a young woman written by a man who is neither young, nor a woman.
Why would I do such a thing?
There are two reasons: one is superficial, the other is deep. Twenty years ago, when I first started writing fiction, someone suggested that I should write in a way that stretches who I am. I’ve never been a woman (at least in this life), so I gave it a try.
I discovered that emotions aren’t gender specific. We all have the same emotions. But the women in my life are more willing than men to share their emotions and are more articulate about them.
It helped that during my 25 years at CNN, I was surrounded by young women in their
twenties who would answer my questions about what it’s like to be a woman. Many of them then became my beta readers, helping me to make Lark more authentic.
Writing Through Grief: Creating Characters of Strength from Life’s Deepest Sorrows
The deeper reason I write as a woman goes to what I call “the spooky power of the subconscious.” Writing is like dipping a straw into your subconscious. Moving your fingers is like taking a deep sip into your creativity which then flows onto the page.
In Fast Track, my first novel, the first chapter is ripped from reality—the suicide of my sister in 1980.
In Bullet in the Chamber, my fourth novel, a main subplot deals with the collateral damage I experienced when my youngest son, Stephen, died of an accidental heroin overdose in 2011.
It wasn’t until I went through a couple years of grief counseling that I discovered that the deeper reason I write as a woman is to create a character I wish my sister had allowed herself to become. Unlike my sister, Lark doesn’t let herself be defined by a guy.
Confirmation I was doing something right came in a review of my third novel, Troubled Water. Reviewer Vicki Liston wrote: “DeDakis is not only able to write convincingly as a woman, but he writes in such a way that makes the reader completely forget he’s a man. I’m usually mildly irritated when a man presumes to understand the way a woman thinks but in DeDakis’ case, he actually gets it and he conveys that brilliantly in his writing style.”
What’s next for me?
I’m in Procrastination Mode on Book 7 in the Lark Chadwick series. (The books don’t have to be read in order, by the way.) Instead, I’m putting the finishing touches on a memoir that identifies the pivotal experiences in my life that brought me from hedonism to a place of personal integrity. (Working title: What Alfred Hitchcock Told Me (…and More….): A Life of Plot Twists.
I hope you like Enemies Domestic. Here’s where you can get it (and my other novels) on Amazon.
John DeDakis is a former editor on CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer” DeDakis is the author of six novels in the Lark Chadwick mystery-suspense-thriller series. A former White House correspondent, DeDakis is also a writing coach, manuscript editor, and podcaster. Originally from La Crosse, Wisconsin, DeDakis now lives in Baltimore, Maryland with Cindy, his wife of 46 years. Website: www.johndedakis.com
