Like many Rio Ranchoans, AC Katt moved here from back East because of her health.

In this case, lupus and its resultant medical complications had made her life miserable in New Jersey.

“New Jersey has two types of weather,” she said. “Hazy, hot and humid” and “cold, damp and dank.”

Rio Rancho Observer '€” Gary Herron photo Rio Rancho author AC Katt looks at her latest manuscript, near the painting of Pink Floyd founding member Syd Barrett, which inspired her to write her latest book.

“(It) pretty much kept me chair bound,” she recalled, happy to be walking freely — and able to write.

She and her husband Allen, 65, decided to look into the Land of Enchantment — more specifically, Santa Fe — because her father had raved about it after being stationed in the area during World War II. He had planned to move with his wife there after the war, but the El Capitan train ride on the return trip crashed — and his wife never wanted to board a train again.

Allen and AC, 58, fell in love with New Mexico and eventually, after scouting the Albuquerque metro area and finding a home in Rio Rancho’s Enchanted Hills subdivision, moved here a year ago.

“I stopped hurting,” she said. “My lupus took a vacation.”

AC, a longtime executive assistant, began writing and her first book, “The Sarran Plague,” which is in the running for an Epic Award — like a Pulitzer for electronic books” (in the Science Fiction Erotic Romance category) — and a finalist for the New Mexico Book Awards.

It’s a science fiction book that entails her knowledge and love for cats, which, if you didn’t already guess, led to her writing name, and her passion for science fiction and a “what if?” attitude.

“What if some cats really were thinking, or were psychic?” she wondered.

She’s already written a second book, “Shattered Glass,” about a rock band with roots in New Jersey that winds up in New Mexico. She found inspiration to write that book in a painting of Pink Floyd founding member Syd Barrett and used what she knew about “Joisey” bands, like Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band — she lived close to his Asbury Park hangout — and Jon Bon Jovi, most notably the lyrics to “You Want to Make a Memory.”

On deck is “A Matter of Trust,” which awaits a publisher’s purchase. That “book,” like “Shattered Glass,” will be an “eBook.” (Visit amazon.com to find her books.)

She said her writing career began after a challenge from her husband, whom she credits for having the time to write: A recently laid-off engineer, he’s the “bank of Allen.”

“I took a speed-reading course as a kid,” she said, which led to reading a lot of books, which soon accumulated through the years at their home. “I think we gave away 2,000 books (before moving).”

Frustrated when she couldn’t find an interesting book to read at a bookstore, “He said, ‘Why don’t you write one yourself?’ I took him up on it.”

Untrained as an author, Katt said she’s taking a writing course at the University of New Mexico in the spring.

“I’m a seat-of-the-pants writer,” she said. At UNM, she said, “I’ll learn how to do this the right way.”

Who knows what will follow “A Matter of Trust,” she says.

“I really don’t think beyond the one I’m writing,” and only wishes she would have begun this phase of her life a long time ago.

“You have to want to do it,” she said. Having the nearby bank of Allen is a plus.

“I do want to make this a career, not just an expensive hobby” she said, pleased that her “Sarran Plague” publisher reported that the book sold 1,000 copies from April through June.

“I figure 1,000 people read my (first) book and that’s pretty damn good,” Katt concluded.