Clayton Hartley Matthews was born October 24, 1918 in Waurika, Oklahoma. He began his writing career contributing short stories to crime magazines in the late 1950s, and by the early 1960s started publishing paperback novels with an erotic slant, beginning with A Rage of Desire. In 1972 he married Patricia Matthews (née Brisco), and the couple moved to the San Diego, California area, where they frequently collaborated on various mystery, historical and romance novels. Matthews himself produced the popular western‐themed Moraghan Saga series in the late 70s. In a career that lasted almost four decades, betrayal was a core theme in his writing, particularly familial disloyalty or romantic deception. Matthews and his wife settled in Prescott, Arizona in their later years, where he died on March 25, 2004.