John DeDakis began writing fiction in 1995 while working as an editor at CNN, seeking a creative outlet. His work draws on personal experiences, including a fatal car-train accident he witnessed as a child, his sister’s suicide, his son’s fatal heroin overdose, and more.
A former White House correspondent and editor on CNN’s “The Situation
Room with Wolf Blitzer,” John is now a writing coach, manuscript editor, podcaster, and self-described rank
amateur jazz drummer.
Grief and loss are subtexts in all six award-winning mystery/suspense/thriller novels written by John DeDakis. All six of his novels feature 20-something journalist Lark Chadwick. Throughout the series, she struggles with grief (eg - the carbon monoxide poisoning of the aunt who raised her, the murder of her boyfriend, etc.). Journalistic integrity and mentoring relationships are subtexts. In two of the novels, she is a White House correspondent. In the sixth novel, a political thriller, she is White House press secretary.
Enemies Domestic. On her first day as White House Press Secretary, Lark Chadwick is confronted on live television by a reporter with an agenda: “Are you, or are you not, planning to abort your unborn child?” His question puts Lark in the crosshairs of extremists on both sides of the highly fraught abortion issue. Ambivalent about becoming a single mother in the post-Roe era, and grieving the death of her boyfriend, Lark is now forced to make her abort-or-not-to-abort decision in a highly toxic, politicized, and polarized fishbowl. At stake: her sanity—and her life.
In the political thriller Enemies Domestic, his most important and controversial book to date, former CNN editor John DeDakis dramatically and thoughtfully tackles the hot topics of abortion, QAnon, White Christian Nationalism, and mental illness at a time when America itself is teetering between democracy and authoritarianism.
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