Tenn. romance novelist accused of suicide hoax after return to Facebook

By Danica Sauter

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    NASHVILLE, Tennessee (WSMV) — A romance novelist is in hot water after she returned to Facebook two years after her Facebook account claimed she committed suicide in September 2020 due to bullying.

According to NBC affiliate Local 3 News, Susan Meachen returned last week to her account posting, “Let the fun begin.”

Local 3 News said other authors believed Meachen created a fake alias to watch others mourn her death and posed as her daughter when posting about her death.

Meachen, according to CNN, has written more than a dozen contemporary romance books. On Facebook, Meachen had an active fan page called “The Ward.”

“We all came together to support a friend who we thought had lost her life to bullying,” author Candace Adams told Local 3 News. “We raised funds for her. We tried to take care of her family, only to find out it was all a sham.”

Adams told Local 3 News that auctions were held to help Meachen’s funeral expenses back in 2020.

CNN said the fan page offered deals on her books and audiobooks which readers purchased to honor Meachen. CNN reported that a group of fellow writers even worked together to create an anthology of all of Meachen’s stories.

Adams took the case to the Benton County Sheriff’s Department but was redirected to the District Attorney. She told officials that the matter was for Meachen accepting funds “under false pretenses.”

After Meachen’s return post to Facebook, Local 3 News said the book community found out that she had a TikTok page she began posting to almost a year after her apparent death. Local 3 News said her first post was on Oct. 21, 2021, and the last post she made on TikTok was on March 1, 2022.

Adams confirmed to CNN that the person in the TikTok videos appears to be Meachen since she had shown her face prior during live readings and on social media.

“I’m trying to figure out what she possibly could’ve been thinking to do this in the first place,” author Samantha Cole told Local 3 News. “Then to come back with a ‘Surprise!’ and ‘Hi!’ and think everything is going to be OK.”

According to CNN, Cole said she was targeted after Meachen’s purported death as one of her alleged bullies even though Cole said she and two writers had been friends for years and had no reason for bad blood.

Cole told Local 3 News that she and Meachen had private conversations and would interact online, however, four to five months before her alleged death, Meachen stopped responding.

After her apparent death was announced, Cole admitted to Local 3 News that she felt guilty for not reaching out sooner and said she wondered if she could have done more to help.

Cole told Local 3 News that she has blocked all of Meachen’s accounts.

“Please don’t come looking for forgiveness because you will not get it,” Cole told Local 3 News.

Adams saw an interview Meachen did and believes she was looking to profit from the incident.

“Her next book that’s going to come out, it’s going to be about this experience, about watching her own death for two years and then coming back,” Adams told Local 3 News.

According to CNN, she posted the following:

Local 3 News reached out to Meachen and her daughter but have not gotten any comments. Troy, Susan’s husband, told Local 3 News he had no comment and wanted no affiliation to the book community.

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