As has been proven time and again, there is truly no drama like book Twitter drama, and this week another doozy of a story has added to the incredible pantheon of author-centric scandals on the platform.

This time, the protagonist is romance author Susan Meachen, who made headlines this week by announcing she wasn't actually dead, as she had previously announced two years prior.

In October 2020, romance author Susan Meachen's "daughter" announced to a Facebook group of writers called The Ward that Meachen had died by suicide. In subsequent posts, Meachen's "daughter" implied that Meachen took her life as a result of bullying by her online peers.

You'll notice that the word "daughter" is in quotes in the above paragraph. This is because the posts were actually made by Meachen herself posing as her daughter. On Monday, Meachen posted again to The Ward by announcing she hadn't actually killed herself and was ready to write again.


As one may imagine, the news that Meachen had faked her own death rubbed many in her community poorly.

In the years since Meachen's fake suicide, community members offered to help pay for funeral costs, create an anti-bullying anthology and help her "daughter" edit Meachen's last book. Realizing they had been taken for a ride, some community members expressed disgust at the ruse Meachen pulled off.


Less directly aggrieved parties reveled in yet another wild "book Twitter" (in all but name) drama that kicked off 2023.

It seems unlikely that Meachen will ever win back enough goodwill to regain the respect of her peers, and it's unclear what, if any, future she'll have in publishing. At the very least, she can know she's already crafted one of the wildest stories of the year so far.


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int

My condolences, that she is alive.

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