JOLIE IS SOMEWHERE, a novel set in New York's Nolita

Jolie has a list. There are 4 names on it. How can she take revenge on the cop who put her in jail for something she didn't do, the roommate who could have saved her and didn't, the inmate who smashed her face against a jailhouse wall, or the high-priced attorney who did nothing for her?

Maybe she doesn't have to.

That's the blurb to my new nove, Jolie Is Somewhere,l which is based on true events.

I sat in on the trial of three young men accused of assault on a police officer. It was a 45-second fight outside a bar, and they were sentenced to 15 years which is the minimum

mandatory sentence for gang assault. Except they weren't a gang. They were just some kids who went to Catholic school together who met up outside a bar at 3 a.m. to wish each other Happy New Year. But New York law says if three people are involved in a crime, that constitutes a gang. One of the three didn't even touch anyone - he was just standing there when the altercation started.

I was at the trial was because I was writing a novel with Louis Scarcella, a retired NYPD homicide detective. You may read more about Det. Scarcella in an earlier blog post (several of the convictions for his murder cases were reversed and so far that has cost the City of New York $31,000,000 in damages).

I combined what I knew from sitting in on the gang-assault trial with what I learned from Louis Scarcella as well as research on the jail culture at Rikers Island to write this novel asking myself, how does anyone get over their traumas in life.

Somehow you have to figure out a way to heal.

Here the author bio on the book: Multiple award-winning author & filmmaker Alana Cash is an adventurer. She trekked alone through war-torn Serbia and slept in a KGB interrogation room in Prague. She's been to a gypsy fair in England, a bullfight in Laredo, and parasailing in Acapulco. She wore a bulletproof vest on a ride-along in a New York City patrol car and kissed a man inside the Norman Bates Psycho house at Universal Studios.