H.M. Ward

Holly Ward, who publishes as H.M. Ward, refused traditional contracts worth more than a million dollars in advances and kept her titles on her own imprint, H.M. Ward Press. The independent publishing trade paid close attention in 2014 when she explained her reasoning: a proposed half-million dollar, two-book offer arrived with a marketing plan she recognised as the one she had pitched the publisher herself two years before. She had begun in young adult paranormal fiction with Demon Kissed in 2011, and the two Valefar novellas, out in December 2011 and April 2012, retell that world from Collin's side. The Secrets sequence, which includes SECRETS Vol. 4, appeared in 2012 as short New York love stories. Christmas Kisses came the same year and opens Winter Kisses, following Holly Connelly away from New York to Texas over a college break. The Arrangement, her explicit serial romance about the wealthy Ferro family, launched in January 2013 and ran past twenty-five instalments, The Arrangement 5 among them. Her work has reached the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and New York Times lists.