SEIDICK, Kathryn A(melia) 1943-

(Kasey Michaels, Michelle Kasey)

PERSONAL: Surname is pronounced Sigh-dick; born November 12, 1943, in Allentown, PA; daughter of Edward R.N. and Catherine (Durkin) Charles; married Michael D. Seidick (an oil company executive), June 8, 1963; children: Anne, Michael, Edward, Megan. Education: Attended high school in Whitehall, PA.

ADDRESSES: Agent—Cantrell-Colas, Inc., 229 East 79th St., New York, NY 10021. E-mail—kasey@ kaseymichaels.com.

CAREER: Part-time bank teller, 1962-68; writer. Has appeared on television, including the Today show.

AWARDS, HONORS: RITA Award for regency novel, Romance Writers of America; Romantic Times best regency comedy award (two-time winner), and career achievement award; Waldenbooks Award.

WRITINGS:

… Or You Can Let Him Go (nonfiction), Delacorte (New York, NY), 1983.

romance novels; under pseudonym kasey michaels

The Belligerent Miss Boynton, Avon (New York, NY), 1982.

The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane, Avon (New York, NY), 1982.

The Rambunctious Lady Royston, Avon (New York, NY), 1982.

The Lurid Lady Lockport, Avon (New York, NY), 1983.

The Savage Miss Saxon, Avon (New York, NY), 1983.

The Mischievous Miss Murphy, Avon (New York, NY), 1983.

The Playful Lady Penelope, Avon (New York, NY), 1988.

The Haunted Miss Hampshire, Avon (New York, NY), 1988.

The Wagered Miss Winslow, Avon (New York, NY), 1989.

Out of the Blue, Dell (New York, NY), 1992.

The Legacy of the Rose, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1992.

The Bride of the Unicorn, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1993.

Indiscreet, Warner Books (New York, NY), 1998.

Bachelor on the Prowl, Thorndike Press (Waterville, ME), 2002.

Prenuptial Agreement, Silhouette (New York, NY), 1993.

A Masquerade in the Moonlight, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1993.

The Secrets of the Heart, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1995.

The Illusions of Love, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1995.

The Passion of an Angel, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1995.

The Homecoming, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1996.

The Untamed, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1997.

The Promise, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1998.

Come Near Me, Warner Books (New York, NY), 2000.

Waiting for You, Warner Books (New York, NY), 2000.

Can't Take My Eyes off of You, Zebra Books (New York, NY), 2000.

Too Good to Be True, Zebra (New York, NY), 2001.

Temptress, Silhouette (New York, NY), 2001.

Someone to Love, Warner Books (New York, NY), 2001.

Love to Love You Baby, Kensington (New York, NY), 2001.

Raffling Ryan, G. K. Hall (Waterville, ME), 2001.

Bachelor on the Prowl, Silhouette (New York, NY), 2002.

Maggie Needs an Alibi, Kensington (New York, NY), 2002.

Then Comes Marriage, Warner Books (New York, NY), 2002.

Be My Baby Tonight, Zebra (New York, NY), 2002.

The Anonymous Miss Addams, Harlequin (New York, NY), 2002.

The Chaotic Miss Crispino, Harlequin (New York, NY), 2002.

The Dubious Miss Dalirymple, Harlequin (New York, NY), 2002.

The Questioning Miss Quinton, Harlequin (New York, NY), 2002.

The Toplofty Lord Thorpe, Harlequin (New York, NY), 2002.

The Ruthless Lord Rule, Harlequin (New York, NY), 2002.

The Enterprising Lord Edward, Harlequin (New York, NY), 2002.

The Beleaguered Lord Bourne, Harlequin (New York, NY), 2002.

(With Carolyn Davidson) Heir to the Throne, Harlequin (New York, NY), 2002.

The Wedding Chase, Harlequin (New York, NY), 2003.

This Must Be Love, Zebra Books (New York, NY), 2003.

The Kissing Game, Warner Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Maggie by the Book, Kensington (New York, NY), 2003. Author of other romance titles, including Compliments of the Groom, (with Linda Howard and Elizabeth Lowell) Popcorn and Kisses, To Marry at Christmas, His Chariot Awaits, Lion on the Prowl, Romeo in the Rain, Sydney's Folly, Uncle Daddy, Marriage in a Suitcase, Timely Matrimony, The Dad Next Door, Husbands Don't Grow on Trees, Five's a Crowd, and The Delivery Room, published by Silhouette (New York, NY). Contributor to anthology Everlasting Love.

"coltons" series; under pseudonym kasey michaels

Beloved Wolf, Silhouette (New York, NY), 2002.

The Hopechest Bride, Silhouette (New York, NY), 2002.

The Raven's Assignment, Silhouette (New York, NY), 2002.

romance novels; under pseudonym michelle kasey

Author of Moonlight Masquerade, The Difficult Dis-guise, and The Somerville Farce, all for NAL/Signet (New York, NY).

SIDELIGHTS: Kathryn A. Seidick is a prolific and popular romance writer under her pseudonym Kasey Michaels. She specializes in historical and contemporary tales of love. In the former category are the novels Waiting for You, Someone to Love, Then Comes Marriage, and Indiscreet, as well as the novels in the "Coltons" series. In typical Kasey Michaels fashion, Indiscreet opens with the Widow Winstead and her lover, the Duke of Selbourne, "cavorting naked on a balcony—a very narrow balcony," as Ellen Micheletti described it in an All about Romance review. When someone throws open the balcony doors, the lovers hurtle to their deaths, providing no end of scandal and gossip for the town. Years later, the widow's marriageable daughter, Sophie, enters the life of the late duke's son, Bram, a pinched and proper gent still upset by the undignified death of his father. "Sophie's charm can't help but have an effect on Bram," noted Micheletti, "and as he unbends, Sophie begins to question her rejection of love." Characteristic of a Kasey Michaels romance, Indiscreet injects humor into the traditional romantic format. Library Journal critic Kristin Ramsdell cited the "bevy of delightful supporting characters" and "ingenious twist" to the book's plot.

In a more contemporary vein, the author produced her first mystery-romance, Maggie Needs an Alibi, in 2002. The title character, a romance writer herself, is "dumped by her publisher," according to a Publishers Weekly contributor, "so she [reinvents] herself as a mystery writer." After setting her beloved Regency characters into a murder mystery, Maggie is surprised to find that the dashing, egomaniacal Viscount Alexandre Blake and his aide-de-camp, Sterling, have stepped out of the pages and into her world, "determined to torment her with their 19th-century take on 21st-century urban life," as a Kirkus Reviews writer noted. When Maggie's publisher dies under suspicious circumstances, the author and her historical creations work together to clear her name. Kasey Michaels, said the Publishers Weekly reviewer, "handles it all with great aplomb, gaily satirizing the current state of publishing."

As for Love to Love You Baby, "simply adorable doesn't begin to describe this charming contemporary romance," said a writer for Publishers Weekly. The book introduces professional-baseball-playing twins Jack and Tim Trehan. At twenty-eight, Jack has retired with injuries and finds his life empty—until he meets sprightly interior decorator Keely McBride, hired to spruce up his drab mansion. It is Keely who helps Jack raise his abandoned baby niece; the two must pretend to be married to throw a meddling social worker off their trail.

The other Trehan twin, Tim, is spotlighted in Be My Baby Tonight. A catcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, Tim fears that injury will sideline him as they did his brother. Determined not to follow in Jack's footsteps, Tim impulsively proposes to his high-school crush, Suzanna Trent. "Just three short months later, however, reality has set in … and the romance is kaput," noted a Romantic Times reviewer. "Yet what should have been a clean break with a quickie divorce soon gets messier." Indeed, "Tim realizes that he loves her but is afraid she won't believe him," noted Booklist's Patty Engelmann in what she characterized as a "delightful summer romance." To Jennifer Vaughn of Sensual Romance Reviews, the author "has hit another home run" with Be My Baby Tonight.

Seidick's one departure from romantic novels came as the result of a crisis in her family: the illness of her son. As she once told CA: "… Or You Can Let Him Go is the story of a family in crisis—that crisis being the illness of one of its members, a child who has suddenly lost the use of his kidneys. The parents are not devoutly religious, quietly heroic, or even especially intelligent. The children, including the affected child, are just average kids, special only to those who love them. The story is not sugar-coated—all the horror of crisis, the day-to-day life within a seemingly never-ending nightmare, the dreaded nights spent on a lumpy hospital cot at a child's bedside, the endless days within the walls of a big city hospital, the fears, the tears, and the hatred—it is all written as it happened. To help parents newly thrust into crisis, to console and perhaps aid parents already living in crisis, to explain people like us to our friends and relatives, and to let the medical world know a bit of what goes on within the families of their little patients—these are the aims of this book. All of that and more is what I looked for and could not find when I needed it—when our average family was told we had three options concerning our son's treatment: dialysis, transplant, or nothing ('or you can let him go').

"As for using my writing as a vehicle for my own views—I imagine everyone does that to some extent whether they are aware of it or not….My fiction todate has been lightweight; I enjoy it, I am writing to entertain, not to educate or convince. Those books will come someday—I am sure of it—but not now, not yet. I am still too hung up on looking for the laughter."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Booklist, February 1, 1984, review of …Or You Can Let Him Go, p. 776; March 1, 2001, Patty

Engelmann, review of Someone to Love, p. 1232; June 1, 2002, Patty Engelmann, review of Be My Baby Tonight, p. 1694.

Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 1983, review of … Or You Can Let Him Go, p. 1300; April 15, 2002, review of Maggie Needs an Alibi, p. 530.

Library Journal, January, 1984, review of …Or You Can Let Him Go, p. 194; August, 1998, review of Indiscreet, p. 72.

Publishers Weekly, December 23, 1983, review of … Or You Can Let Him Go, p. 47; June 15, 1992, review of The Legacy of the Rose, p. 97; December 13, 1993, review of A Masquerade in the Moonlight, p. 66; January 2, 1995, review of The Secrets of the Heart, p. 69; August 21, 1995, review of The Passions of an Angel, p. 58; February 26, 1996, review of The Homecoming, p. 99; October 7, 1997, review of The Untamed, p. 69; December 11, 2000, review of Too Good to Be True, p. 68; March 19, 2001, review of Someone to Love, p. 82; September 24, 2001, review of Love to Love You Baby, p. 75; May 13, 2002, review of Be My Baby Tonight, p. 57; June 10, 2002, review of Maggie Needs an Alibi, p. 44.

Top of the News, fall, 1985, review of …Or You Can Let Him Go, p. 94.

online

All about Romance,http://www.likesbooks.com/ (August 21, 2002), Ellen Micheletti, review of Indiscreet.

BookBrowser,http://www.bookbrowser.com/ (June 6, 2002), Harriet Klausner, review of Maggie Needs an Alibi.

Heartstrings,http://romancefiction.tripod.com/ (January 12, 2002), C. L. Jeffries, review of Indiscreet.

Kasey Michaels Web site,http://www.kaseymichaels.com/ (August 21, 2002).

Romantic Times,http://www.romantictimes.com/ (August 21, 2002), Joan Hammond, reviews of Waiting for You and Someone to Love; Teresa Roebuck, review of Raffling Ryan; Jill M. Smith, reviews of Love to Love You Baby and Can't Take My Eyes Off of You; Kathe Robin, review of Come Near Me; Karen Matheny, review of Bachelor on the Prowl; review of Be My Baby Tonight.

Sensual Romance Review,http://sr.thebestreviews.com/ (July 2, 2002), Jennifer Vaughn, review of Be My Baby Tonight.*