In the Facebook group The Ward, the ongoing drama surrounding Susan Meachen’s fake death is perhaps more enticing than any novel.
Susan Meachen is an indie romance writer who, for the last two years, was known to be dead. In October 2022, a post to The Ward Facebook group – a private fanclub dedicated to Meachen – announced the aspiring author had taken her own life after she was bullied by fellow authors to the point of suicide.
Just one month before Meachen’s alleged death, the romance novelist posted on Facebook to her nearly 1,300 friends, lamenting about her career woes and the literary industry. Meachen revealed in the post that she’d previously attempted suicide and would be publishing her final book on 30 October.
The post announcing Meachen’s death, which claimed to have been written by her daughter, said that Meachen’s family wanted to honour their mother’s memory by publishing the book she had started, which they did.
Her final romance novel, titled “Love to Last a Lifetime,” is now available for $2.99 on Kindle.
Following news of Meachen’s untimely death, fellow book lovers and members of The Ward Facebook group shared their condolences. Two fundraisers also appeared to be shared to Meachen’s Facebook page to support suicide prevention, as recent as February 2022, although neither seems to have raised any money.
Editors offered to copy edit Meachen’s posthumous novel, free of charge. A group of authors even dedicated an anthology to her, writing in the dedication: “For Susan Meachen, an author of what she called Perfectly Flawed Romances. The world is a little less bright without her.”
But on 2 January, Susan Meachen was resurrected. Taking to The Ward Facebook group under her personal Facebook account once again, Meachen announced that she was never dead at all.
“I debated on how to do this a million times and still not sure if it’s right or not,” Meachen’s post read. “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.”
Notably, it did not. Instead, authors and online friends of Meachen were stunned, and angered, by her post.
Samantha A Cole is a former police officer and paramedic turned author of nearly 40 books. Prior to Meachen’s supposed “death,” the two writers were somewhat colleagues – occasionally chatting no more than two or three times a month – and fellow members of The Ward Facebook group.
Speaking to The Independent, Cole described the moment she came to learn the friend that she once grieved was never dead at all. A mutual friend and member of The Ward group had sent a screenshot of Meachen’s post to Cole, asking whether she remembered the late romance author.
“I said, of course I remember Susan. And ironically, she had been on my mind a couple of days earlier,” Cole tells us. “It was just one of those things, you know, when somebody from your past just pops into your head for some reason. Before I had a chance to say that, she showed me what had been posted in the group and she goes, ‘I don’t know what to make of this.’”
So, Cole re-joined the group she had been kicked out of after losing access to her old Facebook account, and immediately went to Meachen’s cryptic post. She confronted Meachen in the comments section, asking whether her death had been a hoax.
“Contact me through Messenger and I’ll try to explain,” Meachen replied.
In their private messages, which Cole later shared screenshots of in a now-viral Facebook post, not many questions were answered. In the text exchange, Meachen explained that she “simply wanted her life back” after faking her own death.
Cole asked whether it really was Meachen’s daughter that was posting on her behalf, to which Meachen gave the dodgy answer: “I do have a daughter and son. I’m not worried about the book world letting me back in. I was never really in.”
For Cole, Meachen’s death stung especially hard because she had been accused of being one of the so-called bullies who led Meachen to commit suicide.
“There are some people in the book world that love to stir up drama,” Cole says. “One person in particular was pointing the finger at me saying that I was the person that drove Susan to suicide.”
In her viral post – which was shared to Facebook less than 24 hours after Meachen’s resurrection in The Ward – Cole revealed yet another twist. Meachen had created a burner profile under the name “TN Steele” just one month after her alleged suicide.
While TN Steele’s Facebook account belongs to a “want to be author, wife, office manager, and all-around goofier” from Georgia, Meachen’s Amazon bio states that she’s a “wife, mom, meme, and friend” who lives in the “Southeastern corner of Tennessee” with her husband of 24 years, their two cats, and four snakes.
TN Steele soon gained control over The Ward Facebook group, taking over from group member Connie Ortiz – Meachen’s “virtual assistant” who had become group admin in the wake of her death. In November 2022, Ortiz posted in The Ward that her family’s recent health issues made it difficult to keep up with the group, and asked if anyone wanted to take over her admin duties.
Under the post, TN Steele commented: “I’ll take it Connie Ortiz. I will overhaul it and hope that it pleases you and Susan.”
Of course, one emphatic Twitter user claimed Ortiz was actually Meachen’s sister who “helped with the farce,” but Cole assures us that Ortiz is not Meachen’s sister and that she’s “pretty convinced” Ortiz was “blindsided” by the whole hoax.
Samantha Cole isn’t the only online author reeling from the news of Susan Meachen’s alleged death hoax. Some people have claimed the once-dead author set up a “charity auction” for her funeral fund, but Meachen says no fundraiser was made.
Now, one week after Meachen’s fake death announcement, her supposed suicide has taken the literary world by storm. Susan Meachen, who was once an indie romance writer, has seemingly become like the subject of a juicy novel. The once-dead author kept a low profile after her planned death hoax became news, until one Substack newsletter titled “Upstream Reviews” claimed they had an exclusive interview with Meachen herself.
A Twitter user went viral on 7 January when they posted screenshots of Meachen’s supposed statement surrounding her fake suicide. It begins: “The best fiction is rooted in fact, the events may not be authentic but the emotions are. Since 2020 that’s been my life and death. Did I leave the moral coil? No but the pain was real. You can’t just take ‘a break’ from that, not unless the bullies take a break too which was basically all I wanted. I died not physically but spiritually.”
Meachen’s so-called response to the death hoax drama waxes poetic about toxicity in the literary world, creating new realities, and finally being able to breath once the world thought she had stopped breathing.
That is, until “Upstream Reviews” edited their Substack post with a disclaimer.
“UPDATE: Since the original publication of what we believed to be Mrs Meachen’s response and her answers to our subsequent questions, a number of people close to her on social media have expressed doubt as to whether or not the individual we spoke with in fact was Susan Meachen. Additionally, Mrs Meachen has apparently denied that it was her we spoke to on other platforms. As we are currently unable to verify this, we have made the decision to hereby retract those parts of the article. What was originally reported has remained. We apologise to Mrs. Meachen and regret the error.”
While Susan Meachen appears to be alive and well, the details surrounding her fake death are still a mystery.
If you are have thoughts of self-harm, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Kaynak: briturkish.com
