Cyn Balog is the author of 9 young adult novels: FAIRY TALE, SLEEPLESS, STARSTRUCK, TOUCHED, DEAD RIVER, UNNATURAL DEEDS, ALONE, and THAT NIGHT. She lives outside Allentown, Pennsylvania with her husband and daughters. Visit her online at www.cynbalog.com.
Long (Boring) Bio:
Cyn was born in Edison, New Jersey. She went to Woodbrook Elementary, Woodrow Wilson, and J.P. Stevens High school. If you did, too, don’t think you might remember her. She was way shy back then, opening her mouth to say a total of two or three words every year. She spent most of her time at the desk in her bedroom, creating stories. We won’t go into all those stories here, but one had a crime-solving feline. Brilliance! She is still trying to get her agent to look at that one.
During her summers, Cyn spent most of her time working at the Jersey Shore. She would also write a lot, and wrote her first young adult novel when she was 15. She worked at the Park Bakery in Seaside Park, as a waitress who could whip up a mean funnel cake and egg cream, as a cashier the A&P (where she was fired for somehow losing $250 and STILL doesn’t know what happened to that money! But… humiliating!)… until she finally got her dream job of badge checker on the 7th Avenue beach. The job was great and allowed for lots of writing and reading time!
Sadly, though, the uniforms messed up her tan lines (oh, who is she kidding, ghosts tan better than she does). She went to Douglass College, Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Douglass College is an all-women school, or so they say, but that’s really a crock because all your classes are with the other Rutgers men. Not that she minded Rutgers Men very much. In fact, she married one.
After college, she immediately set out to look for another job that wouldn’t mess with her tan lines. She had a degree in Communication, which is ironic considering her early inability to speak. She nailed a altogether pathetic job making minimum wage at a newspaper (we were in a recession! Job search = hell!). Since then, she’s worked for a shrinkwrapping company, an insurance company, a bank, a promotional products company, and a magazine. She’s lived in Jersey, the desert of California, Maine, and most recently, Pennsylvania. During most of this time, the urge to write kept rearing its head, and Cyn kept saying, “Down, down!”
Finally, she could stand it no longer and wrote a new book, which nabbed her an agent! But the book didn’t sell. Afterwards, she wrote a couple more books, and finally got the call that FAIRY TALE had sold on November 1, 2007 (at 3:21 pm, not like it was a big deal in her life or anything) to Delacorte in a pre-empt! Since then, she’s sold more books, SLEEPLESS (2010), STARSTRUCK (2011), TOUCHED (2012), DEAD RIVER (2013), DROWNED (as Nichola Reilly, 2014) , UNNATURAL DEEDS (2016), ALONE (2017), and THAT NIGHT (2019). As much as she tried to resist it, writing has always been the thing that has made Cyn happiest, and so now she is thrilled to be able to share her books with an audience (that isn’t related to her by blood).
Useless Facts About Cyn Balog:
- She is obsessed with all things Disney and can often be found running around Walt Disney World.
- She once shook Richard Nixon’s hand; at the time she referred to him as “some old guy”.
- From a teenager, she has been fascinated by all things JFK. She has a picture of him and Bobby hanging in her garage, that she bought with her savings when she was young.
- She has two double-jointed thumbs. Um, one on each hand.
- Her favorite ice cream flavor: Chocolate Marshmallow.
- She eats way too many Twix Bars.
- She actually thinks she looks cool when she does Just Dance.
- She has a thing for zombies. And The Walking Dead.
- Her favorite book ever is Charlotte’s Web. She also likes Stephen King stuff. Especially Stephen King stuff that involves zombies.
- She once had a crayfish named Harry as a pet.
- She was voted, “Talks least, says most” in high school.
- She can list all 50 United States alphabetically in 20 seconds or less.
- Her best friend in elementary school was also a Balog; no relation to the Balog she married.
- She likes making pies from scratch, but other than that she can barely boil water.
- She spent the money from her first advance on a swingset (totally for herself).
- She happens to love all M. Night Shyamalan movies.
- She is infatuated with every Agatha Christie book featuring Hercule Poirot and has watched every episode of Poirot with David Suchet at least 100 times. She also wishes she had "little grey cells" of her own.
