Romance Author’s Husband Says Faking Her Suicide Was ‘100 Percent’ His Idea
Susan Meachen's husband told the New York Times that faking her death was the only way to cut her off from her "addiction" to the online writing community.
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At the very beginning of 2023, indie romance author Susan Meachen—thought to have been dead for two years—announced on Facebook that she was alive and was ready to “let the fun begin.” A shockwave quickly rippled through the very-online community of self-published romance authors, who had mourned and grappled over Meachen’s suicide in 2020.
As those waves settled, a confused community (and the general public) waited for answers. Finally, on Tuesday, after 15 days of suspense, the New York Times published an interview with Meachen’s husband, providing some long-awaited context. This real interview followed what is now believed to be a false, though widely shared, interview with someone impersonating Meachen on the Upstream Reviews Substack. The deception in this whole ordeal is a dense thicket to navigate.
“I told them that she is dead to the indie world, the internet, because we had to stop her, period,” Troy Meachen told the Times, adding that the feedback Meachen had received for her writing in these spaces was “really brutal.” He explained that his wife’s “addiction” (her words) to the online romance community and her inability to extricate herself from it led to a suicide attempt in September 2020. Meachen’s psychiatrist confirmed to the Times that she is diagnosed bipolar, and Troy believed that this online environment triggered the effects of that diagnosis. “She could not stop it on her own. And, even to this day, I’ll take 100 percent of the blame.”
“Romancelandia,” as the indie romance community is sometimes referred to, certainly sucks people in—not only for the irresistible plot lines in the sprawling pages of people’s manuscripts, but also for the real drama that plays out between authors. Following Susan’s resurrection announcement, Samantha A. Cole, a romance writer who considered Meachen a peer, spoke to Jezebel about her confusion over the incident and gave background about their shared community. (Cole goes by a pen name to keep her writing persona separate from her real-life one.)