Award-Winning Author

David Macinnis Gill

A family chased by an erupting volcano. Kids fighting zombies with squirt guns. Mercenaries battling on a poisoned Mars. Gothic witches stalking children in Boston. Demons in Mason jars.

Y'know, the ususal.

Check out my novels The Sticky Note Plot
ALA Best Book for Young Adults Kirkus Best BookS Bank Street College Best Books of the Year NYPL Stuff for the Teen AgE  

Novels

Standalone Novels

Three Sisters cover

Three Sisters

Greenwillow / HarperCollins · 2026 · YA Survival

Three months after losing their mother in a flash flood, Harper, Ryker, and Jentry follow their grieving father to the Three Sisters Wilderness in Oregon to scatter Mom’s ashes on a favorite trail. Then the volcano erupts. A propulsive survival story about grief, sibling rivalry, and the bonds that hold under pressure. For fans of Gary Paulsen and Mindy McGinnis.

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Zombie Train

HarperCollins · 2022 · Middle Grade

Wyatt has been riding out the zombie apocalypse on a cobbled-together train for what feels like forever, running the same loop across the western U.S. with no end in sight. When a mysterious girl arrives with stories of a place called Nirvana and a possible cure for the zombie parasite, Wyatt has to choose: keep running the loop, or risk everything on a long shot.

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Uncanny

HarperCollins · 2017 · YA Gothic Horror

On her sixteenth birthday, Willow Jane discovers she can stop time. Then her sister disappears, and an ancient witch called the Shadowless escapes from her crypt and to begin hunting Willow Jane’s family.

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Soul Enchilada

HarperCollins / Greenwillow · 2009 · YA Fiction

Bug Smoot is broke, just fired, and about to lose her apartment. Her only lifeline is her dead grandfather’s 1958 Cadillac Biarritz. Then a demon named Mr. Beals shows up in the passenger seat and demands the car back. Turns out, her grandfather financed it with his soul. Bug has 48 hours to save herself, the car, and the soul she didn’t know was on the line.

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Gill’s Mars Series

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Black Hole Sun

HarperCollins / Greenwillow · 2010

Mars. The far future. Teen regulator Jake Durango leads a crew of fighters hired to protect a mining colony from the Drau, ferocious pig-like creatures that eat humans and answer to a queen. Fast, funny, and brutal in equal measure.ALA Best Book for Young Adults.

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Invisible Sun

HarperCollins · 2012

Durango and Vienne are back on a postapocalyptic Mars trashed by Earth emigrants. Vienne gets captured by an enemy corporation and turned into a killing machine. Durango is the son of a corrupt politician trying to escape his father’s shadow. Two renegade mercenaries one one impossibly dangerous planet.

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Shadow on the Sun

HarperCollins · 2013 ·

Durango learns his father heads the enemy forces that captured him. Now he has to escape, reunite with Vienne, and decide what to do about the man who raised him. The final book in the terraformed Mars series brings in new characters and old enemies, while the AI that shares Durango's brain gets a horrifying reboot.

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Rising Sun

Greenwillow / HarperCollins · 2013 · Black Hole Sun Novella · eBook

A stand-alone prequel novella to the acclaimed Black Hole Sun trilogy. Jacob Stringfellow — aka Durango — once had a promising career in the elite armed forces. That was before his father betrayed him and his unit, and before an AI named Mimi was flash-cloned to his brain. Now Durango and Mimi are figuring out how to get along and stay alive on a violent, unforgettable dystopian Mars.

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Praise for David Macinnis Gill

David Macinnis Gill rockets readers to new frontiers in this imaginative, action-packed tale.

Suzanne Collins

Author of The Hunger Games — on Black Hole Sun

Black Hole Sun grabbed me by the throat and didn’t let go until the last page. In the best tradition of Heinlein and Firefly, Black Hole Sun is for readers who like their books fast-paced, intense, and relentless. Buy it, read it, pass it on!

Laurie Halse Anderson

Author of Speak — on Black Hole Sun

In this fun spin on the age-old danger of deals with the devil, readers will cheer and worry as sassy Eunice ‘Bug’ Smoot fights both the literal and metaphorical demons that plague her. Wonderful and unexpectedly touching, this is a book meant for re-reading. Good stuff!

Melissa Marr

New York Times bestselling author of Wicked Lovely — on Soul Enchilada

For years David Gill has been a powerful voice for Young Adult literature; now he is a powerful voice of Young Adult literature… You’re gonna love Bug.

Chris Crutcher

Author of Deadline — on Soul Enchilada

Gill scores big in this action-packed, power-punch of a debut… All readers can do is buckle their seatbelts, close their eyes, and take the plunge.

Kirkus Reviews

Starred Review — on Soul Enchilada

The sisters’ relationship is well-developed and realistic — their continuous bickering highlights a lived-in history, emphasizing the unbreakable bonds forged by their combined strength. The tension escalates believably as the perils stack upon one another. A gripping survival story unfolding under the shadow of profound loss.

Kirkus Reviews

On Three Sisters

The Sticky Note Plot

The Sticky Note Plot cover

The Sticky Note Plot

A Step-By-Step Guide to Plotting Novels That Sell

Plotting a novel doesn’t have to be a wall of sticky notes and guesswork. This book turns the process into something you can actually see, move, and revise before you write a single chapter.

Whether you’re drafting your first manuscript or you’ve already published, The Sticky Note Plot gives you a system: concrete, visual, and designed to surface structural problems early, when fixing them is easy.

  • Visualize your plot with physical sticky notes before you draft
  • Map character arcs, relationships, and turning points at a glance
  • Identify the inciting event, The Turn, and climax without guesswork
  • Weave subplots into the main structure without losing the thread
  • Use the visual roadmap to speed up revision

David Macinnis Gill

David Macinnis Gill

David is the award-winning author of Three Sisters, Zombie Train, Soul Enchilada, Black Hole Sun, Invisible Sun, Shadow on the Sun, Rising Sun, and Uncanny from HarperCollins/Greenwillow. David’s books have been named ALA Best Book for Young Adults, a Kirkus Best Book, a Bank Street College Best Books of the Year, and an NYPL Stuff for the Teen Age as well as nominated for a variety of state and regional lists and awards.

His short stories, essays, and poetry have appeared in journals, magazines, and anthologies. He holds a doctorate in education from the University of Tennessee and was the President of ALAN (The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents) and an Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He has taught in the MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a co-founder of the MFA in Writing for Young Readers at the University of San Francisco.

He lives in the mountains of western North Carolina in a home with two kitchens, despite the fact that he only knows how to cook pancakes, bacon, and macarons.

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