Lion's first roars

Today's SF Chronicle has a couple of pieces I read from start to finish, and only then I realized they involved the same person. First, this review of a new book, "Swollen," (great title!) by one Melissa Lion. I read the whole review and got particularly caught when the reviewer quoted one passage:

Consider this scene between her and her father, after she has gone home early because Farouk doesn't want to spend time with her. Her father is home early, too, and Samantha knows it is for a tryst outside of his relationship with Ruth, his pregnant live-in girlfriend:

" 'You look tired, Sam. Rest and tell Ruth that a client called. We're having a meeting.'

" 'I'll tell her a woman called. She won't be surprised; she won't even be hurt,' I said, sure that Ruth had been hurt in the past. ... He straightened his shoulders and pulled his sleeves to his wrists. I'd watched him do this in the mirror before going to work in the morning. It was his last moment to make sure he looked perfect -- as handsome as he knew he was. ...

" 'Are they all like you?' I asked him as he turned away from me.

"And he didn't even stop. Not even a pause to consider what he should tell his daughter. The girl sitting in a dark, cold room, home at a time she shouldn't be. He didn't even turn.

" 'All of them,' he said.''

Wow! What a great line. Only then did I look again at the info on the book, at the beginning of the review, and realized it's actually a YA novel.

Then I turned to the Magazine, where a humorous piece on a mysterious allergy turned out to be written by... Melissa Lion.

Turning to the internet, we find this profile; an excerpt from her book;and a mention in an article about the bookstore she works in expanding to southern California, in which it says Borders and B&N won't even carry her book.

You know, in the past, when I was faced with a scattershot introduction of an author like this, it turned me off. The author seemed too ubiquitous, too well-managed, like a new soap. But I sense no pretension here. I'm going to pick this book up.