An Aspiring Author Returned To Social Media After Faking Her Own Suicide To Promote Her Books
Watch out, disgraced Grey’s Anatomy writer who faked cancer. Someone’s coming for your gig! Her name is Susan Meachen, she’s an aspiring romance novelist, and over two years ago, her “daughter” took to Facebook to share that she had died by suicide. Very sad. Until yesterday, when Insider reports Susan suddenly re-appeared on social media to reveal that, oops, she was actually alive this whole time! All signs point to Susan faking her own death to sell more books. Unsurprisingly, friends, colleagues, and people on the Internet are outraged. Hmmm, so maybe there is such a thing as bad publicity.
Let’s start at the beginning. According to Susan’s Amazon bio, 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. In September 2020, the aspiring author posted a long rant to her 1,300 followers on Facebook. She shared her frustrations with her career, and blamed her past suicide attempt for taking her “out of the game for awhile.” She said, “somedays I wish the f#cking bullet had hits its mark,” and announced that she would be releasing her final book the following month.
Several weeks later, someone claiming to be Susan’s daughter posted on her page, writing that her mother had passed away. The post explained that Susan’s page would remain active to help promote her books, including her final romance novel, “Love to Last a Lifetime,” which cost $2.99 on Amazon. After that, the so-called daughter posted two suicide prevention fundraisers. Neither raised any money. In February 2021, the daughter posted again, this time claiming that all of Susan’s books would be “unpublished” unless sales increased.
Fast forward to yesterday. In a separate Susan-created Facebook group, “The Ward,” the author announced her return from the dead! She claimed that her family “did what they thought was best for me” by pretending she killed herself. Ah, yes. The ultimate gift from daughter to mother: fake suicide. Here’s her post:
I debated on how to do this a million times and still not sure if it’s right or not. There’s going to be tons of questions and a lot of people leaving the group I’d guess. But my family sis what they thought was best for me and I can’t fault them for that. 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.
Twitter user @Draggerofliars screenshot Susan’s Facebook post. People with loved ones who have actually died by suicide tore her a new one in the comments:
Author Susan Meachen died from suicide 2 years ago. Except it turns out she didn’t. What an absolute piece of shit #authors #MentalHealthMatters pic.twitter.com/nNU0LCEU3i
— Be a lot cooler if you did 💫🌪💫 (@Draggerofliars) January 4, 2023
Author Samantha A. Cole took to Facebook to share her outrage and disgust. Samantha recounted the events of two years ago, writing that “Susan’s daughter” claimed her mother had been “bullied in the book world to the point of suicide.” Samantha writes that she and the community “grieved for the loss of the woman we considered a friend.” Then Samantha added 48 SCREENSHOTS of posts from the group, her profile, and a recent chat between Samantha and the resurrected Susan. In the DMs, Samantha asks Susan whether she even has a daughter, and Susan claims she does. She says she came clean about the hoax because she wants her life back. Samantha adds that she believes Susan created another Facebook account, TN Steele, so she could continue posting during her “death.” Here’s the post, which has gone viral:
Whew. That is a lot of drama. Samantha A. Cole should write her own book about it. Unless… WAIT. What if Susan Meachen, her daughter, and TN Steele are all actually Samantha? And this death hoax is Samantha’s long con to get famous, a la that chick who was victimized by Anna Sorokin and wrote a book about it? OK, maybe I’ve gone too far down the rabbit hole. My brain yearns for a simpler scandal. Can we go back to the chess grandmaster who allegedly cheated using anal beads?
Pics: Amazon