Fans and fellow writers were shocked to learn that Susan Meachen, a Romance writer, had suddenly died by suicide in 2020. But Meachen just resurfaced on Facebook and admitted that she’s still alive.
Meachen’s strange story started back in September 2020, when her daughter posted on a Facebook fan group for her mother’s writing — called The Ward — that Meachen had died by suicide. The 2020 Facebook post implied that Meachen had taken her own life after being bullied, which opened up a gulf among the writers who had befriended her.
“When it came out that one of our own had taken her life, that was destructive enough, we were grieving for that alone,” Samantha A. Cole, a writer who’d met Meachen online, told the BBC. When the bullying allegations came out, she added, “All the finger-pointing started and it drove a huge wedge in the community that lasted for months.”
Many indie writers like Meachen — who self-publish their novels and are sometimes looked down upon by traditional publishing apparatuses — often keep in close contact with similar writers online. And in the wake of her “death,” many of Meachen’s online connections sought to honour her memory. The BBC reports that they organized fundraisers and book auctions, and even put together an anti-bullying anthology that sought to keep “bullying where it belongs – in fiction.” Then, in January 2023 — in a twist that seems more like fiction than fact — Meachen reappeared on Facebook.
“Returning to The Ward doesn’t mean much but I am in a good place now and I am hoping to write again,” Meachen wrote “I simply want my life back. My family was in a bad place and did what they thought was best for me,” she explained. But to many, that’s simply not a valid excuse. It is more fraud than fun, they insist.