Paul Arata
The Storyteller
Paul Arata
Paul Arata is a Princeton University graduate, New York-trained actor, playwright, and ghostwriter whose life has given him more material than most novelists could dream up. He played football and ran track at Princeton, pounded the pavement as an actor in New York City, and eventually found himself living in the heart of Brooklyn in the early 1990s, surrounded by characters and chaos that would later fuel his debut novel, Serious Roommate Problems.
His writing draws directly from real life. The gritty streets of Bed-Stuy and Fort Greene, the racial tensions tearing through Brooklyn after the Crown Heights riots, the struggle of making rent in a city that does not care if you survive. Paul lived all of it. He is a writer who tells stories from the inside, not the sidelines, and his background in theater gives his dialogue and characters an authenticity that pulls readers in from the first page.
Serious Roommate Problems is the first in a series of novels following Pete Dominico through tumultuous relationships, family drama, and the unresolved challenges of urban America. It is a story told from a raw male perspective on love that is rarely heard in the romantic comedy genre. Paul currently lives in the Philadelphia area, where he is at work on the next installment.
Some relationships
break all the rules.
Brooklyn, 1992. The crack vials crunch under your feet on Fulton Avenue. Spike Lee is shooting something two blocks south. Biggie Smalls is posted up eight blocks north, asking strangers what they are looking for. The city is still shaking from the Crown Heights riots, and nobody knows if the next fire will be the last one.
Into this mess walks a guy who just got mugged in a subway, smashed across the back of the head with a bottle, and chased out of Bed-Stuy by a kid with a knife. His landlord is dying of AIDS. His roommates are at each other's throats over storm windows, and the whole thing is heading straight for Brooklyn Courthouse. He is broke, desperate, and $150 short on rent.
And he is trying to save his marriage.
Not with therapy. Not with apologies. With a story. The story of how he met her, how he fell for her, and how the hell it all went sideways. This is the raw, uncut male perspective on love that nobody writes and every woman says she wants to hear until she actually hears it.
Serious Roommate Problems is fiction built on real life. Every scar in this book left a mark on someone.
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What Critics Are Saying
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"A masterful exploration of modern relationships. Paul Arata captures the chaos and beauty of urban life with stunning precision."
— Literary Review Weekly
"Hilarious, heartfelt, and achingly real. This book will make you laugh, cry, and immediately text your roommate."
— The Fiction Herald
"Arata has a gift for dialogue that crackles with authenticity. Every character feels like someone you've met — or lived with."
— Contemporary Books Journal
