A romance author returned to social media after faking her own death in an apparent book-promotion ploy: 'I simply want my life back'
- In 2020, a post on Susan Meachen's Facebook page said the aspiring author had "passed away."
- But on Tuesday a stunning revelation emerged: Meachen was alive and ready to write again.
In September 2020, an aspiring author named Susan Meachen ranted on Facebook to roughly 1,300 followers about frustrations surrounding her career and the literary industry at large, sharing that she'd previously attempted suicide and would be publishing her final book on October 30.
Weeks later, someone claiming to be Meachen's daughter said on Facebook that her mother had "passed away." The post explained that the page would continue to serve as a promotional vehicle for her mother's work in memoriam, including her final romance novel, "Love to Last a Lifetime," available for $2.99 on Amazon.
Two fundraisers were subsequently shared on the Facebook page to support suicide prevention, though neither appears to have raised any money.
A further post in February 2021 from someone claiming to be Meachen's daughter said her mother's books would be "unpublished" unless sales increased.
But Tuesday, in a separate Facebook group created by Meachen dubbed The Ward, the author made a stunning announcement, Meachen is alive and well, she said, and argued that her family "did what they thought was best for me" by faking her death. Screenshots of the purported posts from Meachen appear to have been initially posted to Facebook by a user named Samantha Cole, and subsequently circulated on Twitter when they were re-posted by a user named DraggerOfLiars.
"I debated on how to do this a million times and still not sure if it's right or not," Meachen wrote in the Facebook post. "I almost died again at my own hand and they had to go through all that hell again." She told members of the group that she was "in a good place now and I am hoping to write again," concluding with a bizarre salutation: "Let the fun begin."
Both former colleagues and internet observers have reacted to the chain of events in apoplectic posts.
"I was horrified, stunned, livid, and felt like I'd been kicked in the gut and the chest at the same time," wrote a woman named Samantha Cole, a fellow author and former acquaintance of Meachen's.
In her post, Cole said Meachen created another Facebook pseudonym, TN Steele, so she could continue posting amid the suicide hoax. In a DM exchange with Meachen on Tuesday, Cole questioned whether the author even had a daughter. Meachen insisted she did and said she came clean because "I simply want my life back."
While the TN Steele account belongs to a "want to be author, wife, office manager, and all-around goofier" in Georgia, Meachen's Amazon bio says she's a "wife, mom, meme, and friend" who lives in southeastern Tennessee with her husband of 24 years, their two cats, and four snakes.
While outrage continues to run rampant on Twitter, for some the lie is less shocking than it is plainly painful.
"Today is the fourth anniversary of my brother's suicide," wrote the Twitter user RelativelyMe in response to DraggerOfLiars' thread. "I'd give everything I have for him to magically appear again...This is repugnant."
Meachen didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Correction: A previous version of this article said that Meachen had faked her death by suicide, though in posts announcing Meachen's death, it was only said that the author had "passed away."
A previous version of this post also miscredited the revelation of Meachen's return to social media. The first person to reveal Meachen had returned to social media was Samantha Cole.