Patricia Schoch

Patricia Schoch was born in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida but raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. In 1990 she and her husband decided to be adventurous and transplant their family to a place with warmer air and better job opportunities. Not wanting to endure Florida summers, Pat agreed to go halfway down south, and they compromised by choosing North Carolina as their new home. They have lived and/or worked in the cities of Durham, Rocky Mount, Cary, and Chapel Hill before retiring and settling in Wake Forest, NC. Pat graduated from St. Luke's Hospital School of Nursing in Bethlehem and has worked in various areas of her chosen profession. While she practiced nursing and became a wife and mother of four terrific children, Pat's dream of becoming a published author simmered just beneath the surface until it finally gave birth to her first children's picture book, "The Giggle Box" (Peak City Publishing) in October 2014, followed by an award-winning book in 2019, "The Town of Alpaca" (Outskirts Press). Currently, Pat has a different genre to offer. She has written a memoir for a survivor of Domestic Violence, "The Prettiest House on the Block: A Revealing True Story of Domestic Partner Abuse", which was released on September 1, 2020 by Blue Heron Book Works in Allentown, Pa. This is a must read, moving but chilling story for anyone who has ever been in, or is now in, an abusive relationship, and also those who know someone who is being abused, as a source of help. Prior to publishing her books, Pat's readily expressed opinions could be found in several local newspapers, and her poem "Oh, 'Em Braces", was included in the book "Our Forgotten Graces", (The International Library of Poetry, 1999) She has had several articles published on "Yahoo! Voices", most of them dealing with health issues, and she has been a contributor to the University of North Carolina's Campus Health Service website, "Healthy Heels." She now maintains a blog on Wordpess.com that she calls "Lifelines", as it deals with her life experiences and the world around her. She has written health articles for a Canadian newspaper, Agora Cosmopolitan, and now writes a health column for her local newspaper, the Wake Weekly. Prior to the pandemic of 2020, she had been working with an author/educator in Hong Kong writing kindergarten curriculum for a school that teaches children English. They are hoping that they can resume their project at some point in time. In the past 14 years she has (with the help of her older two offspring!) added five grandchildren to her beautiful family as well as a very large, very furry Native American Indian Dog named Dakota, that she and her husband love. She also likes gardening and sewing.