Clayton Hartley Matthews was born in 1918. In late 1950s, he started writing short stories, and continued to collaborate during the decades with the Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. In the early 1960s he published his first erotic novels, mostly in paperback format. In 1972, he married Patty Brisco, a gothic author, and they moved near San Diego, California. His wife, as Patricia Matthews, became a popular romance writer, called "America's First Lady of Historical Romance", and he also decided writing romance novels, including the western romance Moraghan Saga. He often collaborated with his wife, first with three romance novels in the early 1980's and later in the 1990's with the Casey Farrell Mysteries, a suspense series with five books, protagonized by a female member of the Governor of Arizona's task force on crime. Clayton pased away in 2004, two years before his wife.