By Matt Roy, Independent Newsmedia

Ann Goldfarb lives in Sun City West with her husband of 35 years, Jim Clapp. Among her numerous pursuits, she is an avid reader who, like many, delves into popular fiction.

“I’ve read all five of the ‘Fire and Ice’ series and I just finished the last one,” Ms. Goldfarb said. “I like to read in bed and after that had the worst possible dreams. The worst things happen to people in that series.”

Fans of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Fire and Ice” series of novels and its HBO adaptation will sympathize with her as they do with many of Martin’s beloved but ill-fated characters.

“I finished that one and picked up a cozy mystery,” Ms. Goldfarb said. “Oh, my gosh! It was such a delight to read, with just one decaying corpse in the attic!”

She is not only a reader of cozy mystery novels — referred to by fans as “cozies,” Ms. Goldfarb is herself a prolific author of paperback page-turners. A new series of whodunits is set for release this summer under the couple’s shared pseudonym, J.C. Eaton.

For Ann and Jim, Sun City West and their homespun mystery novels are just another step along a long and winding path.

The two met the first time at a dirt track motorcycle race in upstate New York. Once introduced, they realized they had more in common than attraction.

“We met randomly and hadn’t realized we were living on the same road in Ithaca, New York,” Ms. Goldfarb explained.

They started going out and were married in 1982.

She worked in education for more than 30 years, starting out as an English and Spanish teacher before moving into administration, where she was a middle school and high school principal in Ithaca, Penn Yan and Geneva, also in upstate New York. She worked in staff training and technical writing over the years as well.

For Mr. Clapp, who first joined the military, writing also seemed an inevitable destination.

“Jim is five years older than I am and he didn’t go to college right away but joined the Navy instead,” Ms. Goldfarb explained.

After the Navy, he got a business degree and started teaching construction and computer aided drafting at the Board of Cooperative Educational services in Flint, New York. His work, like his wife’s, required a lot of writing. Meanwhile, for a summer part-time job he worked for a local winery, a side-gig that would lead him in a different direction.

“They made him the offer he couldn’t refuse and he became their tasting room manager, which he did until he retired,” she said.

Mr. Clapp worked at the winery for a decade until he retired and then the couple moved out west — to Sun City West.

“The family said, ‘the heat’s not really that bad,’ and we first moved to Surprise. We’ve been in Phase 3 in Sun City West for five years now,” Ms. Goldfarb said.

She added this was the right move.

“We love it, we really do. There’s absolutely everything here at our fingertips. Hiking, restaurants, Lake Pleasant, everything is right here and we don’t have to drive very far to be entertained and enjoy the west,” she said. “Sun City West itself; well, you can’t beat the amenities. We spend time at the dog park, in clubs and activities. Basically, for us, were never bored.”

Life and pursuits do keep the couple busy. Mr. Clapp has Parkinson’s disease and is involved in several exercise groups. They are both so active they need to carve out time for their shared passion, writing.

“We really need to leave time for the writing,” she said. “The books don’t write themselves, that’s for sure.”

In her first foray into the form, starting only a few years ago, she delivered nine popular teen mystery novels.

“It was a long process for me. I did a lot of writing in my former experience as an administrator. I also wrote for trade magazines around 2000 and did that for about 10 years,” Ms. Goldfarb said. “That dried up during the recession and I decided to write time-travel mysteries for teens.”

She self-published her first two novels, but decided to seek out a publisher for her next six novels, all of them time-travel mysteries. Her “Light Rider” series is aimed at teens and shares some of the features of her favored cozy novels, with elements of historical fiction mixed in.

“My novels are very suspense-filled,” Ms. Goldfarb said. “The first one was ‘Face Out of Time.’ All of the mistakes that can be made with a novel I made with that one.”

It was in the that series she first used her own neighborhood, in part, as a fictional setting — a concept that features heavily in her new series, which is set in Sun City West.

“Here we are in Sun City West and people knew me from the dog park,” she explained. “They encouraged me to write about the dog park. They kept insisting and Jim encouraged me.”

It was then the couple first embarked on their collaboration as novelists and J.C. Eaton was born. The pseudonym acknowledges their shared effort and prevents fans of her earlier work from conflating the two series.

“I really didn’t want my novels to be confused with what we write together, since I was writing for teens. We really wanted to keep it separate,” Ms. Goldfarb said.

When they started work on their novel, the two had to work out the kinks and divvy up the effort.

“When we first came in with our own parts we had worked on, his was all in third-person,” she said. “I was shocked.”

Her novels so far had all been written in a more active first-person point of view, a favorite for mystery novelists, who take advantage of the narrative form’s immediacy to heighten suspense. They settled into a working relationship that takes advantage of each writer’s skills and experience.

“I prefer first-person and Jim acquiesced,” she explained. “He said, ‘All I want is control of the plot and the sequencing.’ We developed an idea, talked about it a lot and came up with some basics, a rough outline. We both work from the seats of our pants, sometimes we outline start to finish, but we have a general idea and a lot of things get changed along the way. Jim comes up with what has to happen plotwise. I come up with setting details, because Jim is not one to get into description.”

He uses speech recognition software — speak to text — to dictate his drafts and the couple exchange sections, workshopping as they go and filling in blanks along the way. Collaboration can be a bumpy road for many artists, but the two are making it work.

“I wouldn’t say there is conflict, but sometimes we get set and want one thing, the other another, but we will put it on the back burner and reach an agreement later. It’s a lot of fun because our minds are constantly working and getting ideas. Jim has become an intuitive listener,” Ms. Goldfarb said.

She added his attention to the nuances of everyday conversation lends a fresh authenticity and color to their work.

“He overhears conversations at a local restaurant and gets details of speech we can bring into the dialogue,” she said.

She credits Mr. Clapp’s wine-tasting experience with some of his unique skill set. Elements of setting add to the tone in the cozy mystery genre, which often features elements of good travel and food writing.

“Cozy readers love mysteries but don’t like the violence, sex, gore and forensic,” Ms. Goldfarb explained. “The books usually feature an amateur sleuth, think Hallmark Channel on Sunday night. Ambience is really important, too. Lovely seaside towns, when the reader picks it up they see themselves in the that place.”

Apart from attention to setting and dialogue, their novels rely on the standard building blocks of suspense.

“You’ve got to have good elements, like red herrings, ticking clocks, withholding information, cliff hangers, one step forward, two step back,” she added.

The protagonist of their upcoming series, due for release by Kensington in June, is Sophie Kimball, known to friends as Phee. A woman in her 40s, Ms. Phee works as an accountant at a police department in Minnesota. Her Sun City West mother calls on her to visit the community when a spate of seemingly random deaths decimates a local book club.

Dog parks, rec centers, coffee shops — the real-world Sun City West locales will give local readers a special insight into the experiences and motivations of these made-up mystery solvers.

“Seniors who live in retirement communities will really get it,” Ms. Goldfarb said. “The lifestyle out here and the things that go on are peculiar to this age group and this community.”

The first book, “Booked 4 Murder,” centers around the book club and dog park. Two more books will follow as part of their initial three-book deal with the publisher.

The next book, “Ditched for Murder,” will come out in November and takes place in Sun City West, Sun City Grand and restaurants in Surprise. The third, “Staged for Murder,” will come out in spring 2018 and centers around Stardust Theater. All three feature the same protagonist and some of the same cast of characters, Ms. Goldfarb said.

“We already have three more written for the series, including ‘Molded for Murder’ and ‘Holidazed for Murder.’ Those are not under contract but are ready to go, stockpiled for lack of a better word,” she said.

Success of the first three books will determine the fate of rest.

“Those have to sell,” Ms. Goldfarb said. “What will happen with the publisher is they give you a contract on the first three and wait to see how they sell to move forward.”

The publisher has also engaged the couple on a second series, which takes further advantage of Jim’s sommelier past.

“His experience in wine came in very handy and the publisher asked us to do a series of wine trail mysteries, which we are working on now,” she said. “That won’t see the light of day for a couple of years.”

The first novel in that series, “A Riesling to Die,” is still in its infancy, she added.

Ms. Goldfarb summed up the joy the two are sharing after so many years together with their new writing collaboration.

“For us, this has been wonderful. One of the things we learn is: so many things get taken away from you when you age, but other things come your way and you embrace them with enthusiasm and passion,” she said. “Writing together has given us something special that we never expected.”