A romance author accused her husband of poisoning her.
Was it her wildest fiction yet?
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Kenyon filed the complaint in January, about nine months after her husband sued for divorce.
But Kenyons most shocking allegations concern her health.
It sits at the end of a long driveway in a subdivision hemmed in by thickets of oak.
When I arrived one recent afternoon, a friend of Kenyons answered the door.
She was a frazzled middle-aged woman with a poof of frizzy hair.
An elegant cat with golden fur was meowing at her feet.
Its a Bengal, she whispered, scooping it up and smoothing its coat.
From the outside, the house looked like all the others in the neighborhood.
Inside, it was crammed with oddities.
Statuettes of fairies, wizards, and gargoyles crowded an antique display case.
As Kenyon emerged from the basement, she winced at the daylight struggling in through the blinds.
Oh my God, she rasped, flinging up a slender hand to shade her eyes.
The light is killing me.
She was pale and drawn, in her 50s, with a regal posture and a classically beautiful face.
A curtain of dark bangs hung over one eyebrow.
She walked with a limp.
I keep breaking my toes, she said with a bitter laugh.
Jacobs had introduced herself as the other Sheri.
When she mentioned him, a muscle beneath her left eye twitched.
I really thought he was gonna kill me, she said.
I really thought he was gonna kill me and bury my body.
Through love, they could regain their souls and rejoin the world of mortals.
Or at least thats how she saw it for years.
Sadly, I loved him, she said, until I realized he poisoned me.
But neither her son nor Jacobs raised an eyebrow.
It definitely happened, he told me, his tone calm and steady.
Theres so much evidence.
She began at the beginning, with her miserable childhood.
She grew up poor in Fort Benning, Georgia.
She said her parents fought constantly, overturning furniture and smashing dishes.
Those things will lay you open like a razor blade, Kenyon told me.
She pushed up the sleeves of her cardigan to show me pale marks hatching the insides of her arms.
Belt buckles, she said.
I always admired her for being able to walk away from it.
Writing was an escape and an outlet for Kenyons anger.
She got a happily-ever-after.
At the time, she said, he seemed so much better than the people shed grown up around.
He was quiet and shy, from a middle-class family.
They split up after a few months.
But then, when she was 22, her older brother died in a car accident.
She was still grieving when she and Ken got back together.
For many years after, one friend told me, Sherri always described him as her savior.
He was her grounding force.
In the early years of their marriage, they struggled financially.
She worked odd jobs at bookstores and temp agencies while he went to law school.
(He went on to practice law for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Nashville.)
At one point, the couples house went into foreclosure.
They lived in a cheap hotel, then in a car, then a roach-infested apartment.
She wrote feverishly through all of it.
They raised three children, all boys.
She received more than 150 rejection slips in one year, she said.
Publishers told her there was no market for what she was writing.
The books were an immediate hit with romance readers.
In one passage, the heroines cat allergy becomes an issue when she goes down on a half-feline were-hunter.
She sneezes but perseveres.
Her most devoted readers referred to themselves as Menyons, or Minions.
As one Menyon put it, You dont feel so alone.
In 2007, she appeared at a convention wearing a three-foot, faux black swan as a hat.
Nora Roberts, the genres standard-bearer, took offense,suggestingthat Kenyons outfit was unprofessional.
He was proud of her, Kenyons aunt told me.
At the time, Kenyon seemed proud of him, too.
Heroes arent just on paper, she declared at the convention.
Real men are out there, and they will stand by you and hold your hand through hell itself.
She sees it all differently now, of course.
He was always on my back, she told me, the muscle twitching beneath her eye.
He was always criticizing me.
That speech turned out to be the pinnacle of Kenyons success, the grace before the fall.
What happened next depends on who you believe.
Shed tell us these crazy stories.
They were always just so outlandish, he recalled.
I honestly couldnt tell you if she really believes them.
She has a vivid imagination.
At the drop of the hat, she can make something up.
Kenyon has begun to lose control of the series.
Over the following years, Kenyons sales declined.
Kenyon and Clare had a contentious history.
Clare ultimately decided to call them Shadowhunters, but Kenyon wasnt appeased.
Beginning in 2013, a film and then atelevision seriesbased on Clares books were released.
She just couldnt handle it.
She told me once, I would sell my soul to the devil to get what I want.
And what she wanted was to be the biggest.
Cabal recalled his mothers obsession with Clare casting a pall on the household.
To this day, I have a lot of anxiety about hearing loud stomping, he said.
Id be in my room and Id hearStomp!
(Cassie Clare did nothing wrong, Clares lawyer, William L. Charron, wrote in an email.)
The publishing world was baffled by it.
Fantasy readers called her salty.
The remaining claims, concerning Clares cover designs and branding, were settled for an undisclosed amount.
The house was paid for, she said.
Now its hocked up to the hilt again.
According to Kenyons ex, the battle hurt her in other ways, too.
In his divorce papers, he contends that her crusade against Clare caused her mental state to begin deteriorating.
The year after Kenyon filed the lawsuit, fans noticed that she seemed unwell.
She sat in her booth, the color drained from her face.
She would just stare into space, one fan told me.
It was like she was in a daze.
Her aunt said Kenyon complained of dizziness and headaches.
She had a terrible pallor to her, Owen said.
I was very afraid that she was going to die.
When I reached out to St. Martins, the publisher declined to comment.
Her current publisher and agent wouldnt speak either, and neither would her previous agents or editors.
Let me just stop you right there, she said.
The farther I am from this story, the happier Ill be.
She hung up the phone.
Kenyon insists theres a singleexplanation for her softening book sales and all her other misfortunes.
Everything bad that happened happened because I was married, she told me.
Kenyon wrote most of the lawsuit herself.
And Sherris an author, so she was very verbal.
Kenyon claims he tried to derail her career from the start.
Ken was not the only person Kenyon held responsible.
Plump soon began helping Ken manage Kenyons business affairs.
According to Kenyon, this was a disaster.
Like the charges leveled against her ex, many of Kenyons accusations against Plump are astoundingly petty.
Rudeness is a major preoccupation.
THIS IS A LIE!!!
Kenyon declared in her notes.
My preferences are to make it as easy as I can on the Con people.
Show and tell, she sang out like a second-grade teacher.
She pulled out a photograph of a piece of junk mail addressed to Plump at Kenyons home.
Thats how comfortable she was here, she said.
Kenyon believed that Plump and Ken were having an affair.
She noted that Plumps duties included serving her food.
she said, her eyebrows rising suggestively.
(Plump declined to be interviewed, but sent a response through her lawyer: Ms. During the holiday season that year, Kenyons aunt, Linda, stayed at the house.
Linda and Ken were close, but he seemed to be avoiding her.
It was shocking to him, said the employee, who has remained friends with Ken.
He felt it was demonic.
(Kenyon denies ever casting spells on anyone.)
Not long after, Ken walked out.
A few weeks later, he filed for divorce.
(Through his lawyer, Ken declined to speak with me.)
All Kenyon wanted, she told me, was to start over somewhere new.
Im trapped in this house, with all these bad memories, she said.
How had she come to the conclusion that her many different health problems tied back to them?
She held out the brushes to me.
One was bare, the other densely threaded with dark brown hair.
This is what they normally look like, she said, jostling the one covered with hair.
With a dramatic gesture, she thrust out the other one: Thats what I came home to.
It wasnt immediately clear what point she was trying to make.
There was a lull in the conversation.
Then Jacobs, the friend, piped up with a rhetorical question.
If you raid the house, she asked me, why would you stop and clean somebodys hairbrush?
Yeah, Kenyon said.
I think they did.
But wouldnt it have occurred to them that she could have just tested the hair on her head?
I dont think they thought about that, Kenyon said.
She realized shed already been feeling better in the days shed spent away from them.
When the results came back, they appeared to confirm what she already believed about her ex.
If theres a God in heaven, she said, he deserves to be in jail.
I spent three days with Kenyon at her home.
It wasnt just Ken and Plump who were out to get her.
Her cast of villains kept expanding, even as their roles became increasingly obscure.
If Kenyon was living in a fantasy world, she wasnt living there alone.
On my first night at the house, Jacobs walked around pinning up black sheets over the windows.
He took all the rifles, Jacobs explained.
He took the guns, the two handguns, all the ammunition.
If hes standing out in the dark …, she trailed off.
The guy snapped, she said.
Basically he just snapped.
Husband has a genuine fear of being killed by wife, the filing says.)
I looked into my brothers hand, and I saw death, she said.
I quit doing palms after that.
She insisted that I readBorn of Legend, a novel of hers from 2016.
Its weird, Kenyon continued.
Its like, do I manifest it?
Or is it cognition?
Kenyon had her blood, hair, and nails tested for 21 different heavy metals.
These tests are the basis of her claim that she was poisoned.
In this case, he said, the only thing I see is environmental exposure.
Kenyon never had any direct contact with Lykissa.
But he felt that Lykissas company had failed her.
But Kenyon told me she never saw a toxicologist.
She is by far the most unhealthy person Ive ever met, he said.
Hernotbeing sick was rare.
But her publicist refused to let her discuss them with me, saying theyre part of an ongoing investigation.
It declined to comment further.)
The evidence almost never bears this out.
And yet persuading people that something else is to blame for their ailments often proves impossible.
Now we have toxins.
Im under more stress now than I was then, she fired back.
This is what Paco did, Kenyon announced.
At one point, the lawsuit quotes Cavanaugh telling Kenyon, Paco can get into anything here.
He sees all and knows all.
(Cavanaughs lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.)
Its like everywhere you go, theres more, she told me.
And then she said, We had a heartbeat in the house.
We told her to call the police and go get the gun, Jacobs said.
A few minutes later, the heartbeat stopped.
As soon as she got the gun, Kenyon said.
Its like they were watching her.
When she and Jacobs got home, Kenyon said, it started again.
Kenyons reply was matter-of-fact.
We were married in Richmond, Virginia, home of Edgar Allan Poe, she said.
His favorite thing is The Tell-tale Heart.
In the middle of a contentious discussion about herDr.
Ozinterviewand her history of posting about the case on social media, Kenyon stormed out of the room.
(She denies this.)
The judge ordered Kenyon to return to court and apologize to the lawyer.
The statement you just made is deplorable, replied the judge.
It does not show any rational basis whatsoever.
He held her in contempt of court and sentenced her to ten days in jail.
Kenyon paid bond and was released that day.
Reguli, for her part, told me she still stands by Kenyon and their lawsuit.
This has just been very stressful on Sherri, she said.
Since then, Kenyon has hired a new lawyer, her third since the divorce began.
Several people who know Kenyon well, including her son Cabal, told me they hope she seeks therapy.
Others said they wished shed just focus on her work.
She wasnt surprised when Kenyon didnt take her advice.
Thats not her personality, said the fan.
Her whole childhood was a fight.
A few weeks after the courtroom incident, I spoke with Kenyon on the phone.
She told me shed stopped working on her novels.
The characters arent there, she said.
Theyre just not talking.
She said the same thing happened to her after her brothers death more than 30 years ago.
My belief in the way the world should be was shattered, she said.
Still, she hasnt given up writing altogether.
But I dont want to dwell on their cruelty, she added.
I dont want to dwell on that monster.
I would much, much rather be writing my books where monsters get what they deserve.
Shortly after this piece was published, Kenyons publicist reached out with a number of clarifications.
An earlier version indicated that Kenyon and Jacobs rarely left Kenyons home.
It has been clarified to reflect that only Kenyon rarely left her home.
On July 26, 2019, Kenyon dropped her lawsuit against Ken, Plump, and Cavanaugh.
However, I maintain a strong and steadfast belief in the merits of this case, she wrote.
