Book News

  Tribute to Carmel Thomaston

There are some special people who cross each of our life paths, who bring inspiration, drive and compassion.  Carmel Thomaston was one of those people.  Carmel Thomaston was a freelance writer and former newspaper editor. She touched and inspired many on line writers as owner of Painted Rock Writers Colony.  Carmel Thomaston, 50, died December 2, 2002 after a long illness.

An award-winning author, she wrote five books for Harlequin with the last one being released in November, Christmas on Snowbird Mountain.  Carmel wrote romantic fiction under the pen name Fay Robinson, which was a tribute to her British-born mother.  Love at first sight ran in these women.  Her English mother and American father married by transatlantic telephone six months after their first and only date.  Carmel had the same fate while doing a story on a firefighter for her local newspaper.  That night she told her best friend, "Today I met the man I'm going to marry."  Carmel and Jackie Thomaston were married 26 years and produced a son Casey.  Carmel lived in Alabama within one hundred miles of the place where her paternal ancestors settled in the early 1800's. 

Southern Scribe was created at Painted Rock in 1998 when the Southern Writers List was founded.  A year later, Joyce Dixon resigned as editor of The Rock, Painted Rock's weekly zine, to start Southern Scribe as a separate site.  Carmel Thomaston was strongly behind the scenes here as a sounding board and friend.  She will be missed.