Pat Schmatz

Pat Schmatz grew up in rural Wisconsin, leaving small-town life to attend Michigan State University and the University of California at Berkeley. She earned degrees in psychology and physical education but didn’t last long in either field. She has supported her writing habit over the years with a variety of jobs, including forklift operator, janitor, fitness consultant, stable hand, library assistant, legal secretary, and shipping clerk.

She currently lives in the Wisconsin woods of her childhood in a high-performance sustainable house that she helped to design and build. She travels often to Minneapolis to see her writing pals, keep up with her on-line work for the Legal Aid Society of Minneapolis, eat good urban food and ride on public transportation.

Pat is the author of a middle-grade novel, Mrs. Estronsky and the UFO (Windstorm Creative, 2001), and a young adult novel, Circle the Truth, (Carolrhoda Books, 2007). She has another young adult novel scheduled for release in the fall of 2008.

Mousetraps
illustrated by Bill Hauser
Carolrhoda, 2008
young adult, ISBN 978-0822586579

Back in grade school, Maxie and Rick were best friends. Rick would design crazy inventions, and Maxie, the artistic one, would draw them. Then something terrible happened to Rick, and he vanished from her school and her life. Years later, he shows up at Maxie's high school. In some ways he's the same person she once knew. But in other ways—frightening ones—he's very, very different...

Circle the Truth
Carolrhoda, 2007
ISBN 978-0822572688

Strange things are happening in Rith's house at night.

First a spiral staircase replaces the regular stairs. The new stairs lead to a living room that isn't his, a cat that isn't his either, and a strange old man whose words are cryptic riddles.

Or are they? Rith's never been into religion. But he realizes those words have a spiritual source — and an uncanny ring of truth. Is he just dreaming? Is the old man God? As Rith tries to circle closer to the truth, the line between reality and unreality blurs…

Awards
Outstanding Book by a Wisconsin Author, 2008

Mrs. Estronsky and the UFO
Little Blue Works,
children's division of Windstorm Creative, 2001
ages 10 to 14, ISBN 1-883573-85-8

Jackie Riley thinks that six months' worth of piano lessons is a terrible idea for a birthday present. But those lessons lead her to an extraordinary experience one October night when she and her piano teacher, Mrs. Estronsky, see something that will change them both forever.

"Trust your own experience, Jackie," says Mrs. Estronsky. "It's the only truth that you'll ever know."

When Jackie tries this idea out in her difficult relationships with family and friends, she finds that nothing changes—and everything changes—all at the same time.