This week, it seems like Susan Meachen is back on social media after a Facebook post in October 2020 said she had died. More than two years after her death was announced on her Facebook page, romance author Susan Meachen seems to have returned to the site to say she is still alive. According to Insider and Rolling Stone, Meachen’s online friends and followers thought she had been dead since late 2020 after someone claiming to be her daughter posted the news on her Facebook page.
Since then, the post has been taken down. The person said that Meachen died because other people in her book community picked on her and made her feel bad. Just a few weeks before, Meachen had posted a long message about trying to kill herself because of problems with her job. Since then, Meachen’s Facebook page has been used to share posts about suicide prevention and to promote her work. Fans of the page thought the posts were written by her daughter the whole time.
This week, a person claiming to be the author using Meachen’s account posted to The Ward, a private writer’s Facebook group, announcing she was alive.
“I debated on how to do this a million times and still not sure if it’s right or not,” a screenshot of the post, which was shared by Twitter user @Draggerofliars, showed. “There’s going to be tons of questions and a lot of people leaving the group, I’d guess.” “But my family did what they thought was best for me, and I can’t fault them for it, “I almost died again at my own hand, and they had to go through all that hell again. Returning to The Ward doesn’t mean much, but I am in a good place now, and I am hoping to write again. Let the fun begin.”
The post was immediately met with backlash from members of the group.
How dare you Susan Meachen! How dare you fake your own death and put us all into mourning. People were accused of bullying you and causing you to commit suicide! Authors and readers turned on each other. It took you 2 years to pop up and announce “I’m back” and in the meantime, this book industry you claim mentally abused you didn’t prevent you from jumping back head first under an alias, still writing and being part of all of us you claimed harassed and or bullied you? I’m sick to my stomach. I considered you part of my tribe.
Maybe I should’ve kept my mouth shut. But I’m livid! This is a problem, a serious issue for the industry I LOVE! You, lady, are the abuser. You mentally and emotionally put us all through the wringer. Shame on you!
“I can forgive many things, but I don’t think I could ever forgive you faking your death,” author Karen Hall wrote in response to the Facebook post, per Rolling Stone.
Author Samantha A. Cole, who said she knew Meachen before the events of 2020, shared a video response to her Facebook page.
“I was friends with this author, I was not close friends with this author, but we chatted once or twice a month for quite a while,” Cole said. “I was devastated when I heard she had allegedly committed suicide. There were a lot of posts on her wall, allegedly from her family, blaming the book world for bullying her mother to the point that she took her own life. Those posts are now gone.”
“There was an outpouring of outrage, support for those who were hurting, support for her family, people did free editing on her last book, so her family could release it for her, in memory of her,” she continued. “There were people who were ripped apart because people started pointing fingers at everyone, blaming people, and I was one of the people being blamed for allegedly bullying her when I had done nothing of the sort.” “I need to unplug for the next couple of days and wrap my head around all this and get back to work,” she later said.
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