Hi. I’m Solomon Carter, author of the DI Hogarth detective mystery series, the Roberts and Bradley PI series, Black and Gold, and The Last Line. I was born in Southend-on-sea, Essex and most of my stories are set there. I spent my student days in South London before returning to life in Essex just in time for the millennium. From then on, I kept on writing alongside a sequence of full-time day jobs some of which lasted years, including working at a job centre, later teaching classes of challenging young adults before. Around this I assisted in the running of an antiquarian books business – and much more besides. In 2009, I started volunteering at a wonderful food bank. I ended up working there for six years full-time. That was a blast. All of my various work experiences have proved extremely useful, each feeding into my stories, helping me to see life from all angles, including the notorious ‘underbelly.’

Writing has been a passion since childhood and in 2015, I was finally able to turn my passion for writing stories into a full-time career. At the age of twelve, after finishing a lengthy science fiction piece about some Star Wars characters (probably inspired by the Droids cartoon shown on CBBC at the time) I knew I wanted writing to be my career. By the age of 14, I was writing some pretty intense stuff – horror, thriller, and full-on action stories. Some of it was pretty dark, but even then, those early pieces always featured my local area – with one story set at John Burrows Park, Hadleigh, (“Vickers on the Slide”) while others were set in Leigh and Southend, (“The Cushion of Blades”, “Through Thorns and Bracken I See Evil.”) These stories have now sadly disappeared (or not so sadly, you might say!) but I still remember them as formative in my writing life. At the age of 16, I wrote and submitted a screenplay for the Lloyds Bank Film Challenge. It was a gritty drama set in Southend’s amusement arcades. It didn’t win, but the storyline and style were all pointing toward my fixation with writing ‘big’ stories set in my hometown – which I always believed was equal to any gritty location found in the usual city settings on TV. I see Southend as gritty with a large helping of coastal beauty on the side – that’s the area I grew up in and came to know very well as I worked there all through my twenties and thirties.

A year after starting work as a full-time writer, I moved to North Cornwall with my young family. We had holidayed there several times after the kids were born and knew it would be an excellent place to raise a family. North Cornwall is amazingly rugged and very beautiful, but I still visit Southend whenever I can because I love seeing my old stomping grounds and visiting my family. Another reason for my visits is the fact I need to keep up to date with what is an ever-changing town because contemporary Southend still occupies most of my stories.

As part of my writing work, I tend to give away a lot of eBooks and run discounted special offers. If you would like to receive any of these – or any of the other exclusives on offer – then you are hereby invited to join my Readers’ Group here at SolomonCarter.net. I won’t spam you – that’s not my style. I’ll just send you the occasional email bulletin with news on the latest books and any forthcoming offers to be had. Readers’ Group members always gain first access to all my latest offers and new release deals. There is no cost for membership and joining is extremely easy. All you need to do is go to the ‘front page’ of this website – SolomonCarter.net – and sign up by submitting your email address via the red Pop-Up box.

Coming soon in 2024:

Lots of Hogarth, starting with the first new trilogy of the year ‘Honour and Obey.’ (Launched in late February).

And then?

Even more Hogarth!

It’s going to be an exciting year, so thanks for being with me along the way.

I love hearing from readers and I do try to respond to every message I get. If I don’t reply to you for any reason, it could well be down to oversight or technical glitches. Glitches do happen. If this happens to you please reach out to me via another channel and you will get a reply. Email and Facebook are the main options for contacting me. (For Facebook details please see below.)

Until then, happy reading!

All the best. Catch up soon.

Solomon 🙂

PS

If you have enjoyed any of my books, I’d be seriously grateful if you could post a review wherever you picked it up. Amazon for instance. Those reviews really do help – so thanks very much. And don’t forget to join me on Facebook, my main social media channel: You can find me at Facebook.com/solomoncarterwrites – and when you get there, don’t forget to say hello!