Having a successful career in the public eye, such as being an author, can be a rewarding experience.
However, having this fame often comes with unwanted negative side effects.
This can include online harassment, bullying, doxxing (making personally identifiable information about an individual, such as their address, available to the public via the internet) and even stalking.
One such public figure, Susan Meachen, a romance novelist, claimed to have experienced this and went to extreme lengths and allegedly faked her own death.
According to Facebook posts, the writer supposedly died by suicide in October 2020. It was said that the author had decided to kill herself after being tormented to the brink by fellow authors.
However, she has recently returned to her Facebook fan group, The Ward, to the shock of her fans and strangers. She claimed that her family did what they could to protect her.
Meachen posted: ‘’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 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.’’
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 💫![CDATA[]]>🌪![CDATA[]]>💫 (@Draggerofliars) January 4, 2023
Meachen has written novels such as My Crush and Chance Encounter. Her last romance book was Love to Last a Lifetime.
‘’I was born into wealth and prestige. There was nothing that I couldn’t have. Or so I thought. One night is all it took to change my world. We saw each other for the first time that Autumn night. I was a young man at twenty-five years, and Greta had just turned nineteen.
‘’She was friends with my best friend's girlfriend. From that moment on, my whole purpose in life was to get her to go out with me. What happens when you only have a couple of seasons to prove your love to someone? Is it even worth the heartache in the end,’’ reads an excerpt from Love to Last a Lifetime.
Now in the Facebook group and other social media platforms, fans are grappling with whether it is the author herself or possibly an imposter with sinister motives.
According to The Independent, a month before her suspected death, Meachen lamented about her professional troubles and the literary world on Facebook.
In the post, she supposedly mentioned that she had previously attempted suicide and that her final work would be released on October 30, 2020.
Meachen has been accused of taking lightly the very real and devastating impact of suicide on family, friends and strangers with whom she had para-social relationships (one-sided relationships, where one person extends emotional energy, interest and time to influencers or celebrities whilst the other party is completely unaware of the other's existence).
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