• Between Two Lives

    My sister died before I was born. So what could she possibly want from me now?
    If it weren’t for the voice in her head, Celia Martinez would feel like every other teenager in the desert pit-stop where she lives. Her best friend thinks she is crazy to listen to the voice, but it has never steered her wrong. Until now.

    On the same night that Celia learns she has beaten a long-time rival to win a prestigious music scholarship (a.k.a. a one-way ticket out of Coyote Junction, California), she discovers that the spirit that haunts her thoughts is Iris, her twin sister who died at birth. And now Iris’s whispers of caution have given way to insistent demands for Celia to refuse her scholarship. After years of looking after her shut-in mother and disabled brother, however, Celia is not ready to give up her dream. For the first time, she ignores Iris, thinking that this is her life to live and that Iris cannot physically stop her from living it. But Iris will neither be ignored nor underestimated.

    YA - 55,000 words

  • One Wish

    Be careful what you wish for--everyone knows that. Especially when magic runs in your family.
    On her sixteenth birthday, Elena Marie makes an innocent birthday wish. All she wants is to know that she is normal and not really adopted like her perfect twin sisters have tried to tell her. With an unfortunate choice of words, however, she unwittingly transplants her crazy Italian grandma’s wish-granting ability onto herself.

    But the wishes that Elena grants don’t always lead to happy endings. In fact, they leave a trail littered with divorce, jealousy, and sticky milkshake residue (which, by the way, is really hard to get out of car upholstery.)

    YA - 60,000 words

  • Watching

    If you watch long enough, you'll find things you didn't even know you were looking for.
    We all have our secrets. For a while, mine was the shoplifting. Then I got caught, and kids muttered “klepto” behind my back whenever I was alone. Which was most of the time. Watching was one of my secrets, too. Only my ex-best friend Liz Turner knew about my spying habit. But she never blew my cover, probably because she didn’t want her new posse thinking that she knew anything about me or my sad excuse for a life. I had other secrets, of course, and I was much better at hiding those. I even managed to hide them from myself, at least for a while.

    But not many people had secrets from me. I watched them, and I saw everything. I saw what they ate for dinner, what their favorite shows were on TV, and what they did when they thought no one was watching outside their windows.

    So when I walked into English 11 on the first day of summer school, I thought I knew everything about the people in that room. I didn’t count on one being a thief, another a blackmailer, and yet another a complete fraud. I also had no idea that by the end of summer school, I would fall in love with one of them. And all of this happened because of a stupid five-pound laptop computer.

    Just watch.

    YA - 68,000 words

  • Daughter Of Venus

    The future of Earth depends on a two-million-year-old gift from another world. If only we can find it.
    Jaden was already on his speeder when I reached the charging station. I paused there, watching him adjust his helmet. His mouth, frowning in concentration, looked just like his father’s.

    “What?” he asked. He was already backing his speeder out of the shed.

    “Give me some proof why I should trust you,” I said.

    He shrugged. “I can’t. You just have to take a leap of faith.”

    I felt the journal’s weight in my pocket. He had gotten it back for me. That had to be proof enough. And if he started leading me to his father’s house or the Literalist headquarters, I had my own speeder, and I could just take off in another direction.

    Resigned to the fact that I simply had no better options, I swung a leg over the seat of my speeder.

    As I raced behind Jaden across the snow-covered earth, I risked a glance back at my house. Yet one more thing I would never see again.

    YA - 71,000 words

  • Bio

    Gina Noel Young has been writing since age seven, when her dad bought her a spiral-bound notebook to use as a journal. She has been an active member of SCBWI since 2000, attending numerous workshops, conferences, and retreats.

    For her young adult novels, Gina gets source material from teaching as well as parenting three teenagers.

    Gina lives with her family on the California coast.

  • Contact

    gina@young.cc