Jeff Holcomb

Fiddle-8 Jeff Holcomb

"You can be anything you want to be when you grow up. Except a terrorist. That's definitely off the table. Or any kind of murderer, really...or a rapist either, for that matter. These are all deal-breakers. And I'd really prefer that you not steal my handgun and commit the next mass shooting at your school." No one ever thinks it's going to be their son, their student, or their best friend. Parents don't have this conversation with their kids because they assume they raised them to know right from wrong. If a father has to explain to his teenage son the difference between good and evil, no amount of explanation is going to fix what's broken. Collin Kelleher certainly never had this conversation with his father, either before or after his mother died six years prior. As Collin pieces together the questionable circumstances surrounding her death, he uncovers his mother's journal and with it, the apparent ability to alter his environment. Where his first jottings with her fountain pen elicit minor aberrations in the weather, he soon crafts full stories triggering surreal events that pursue him at school, home, and the cemetery where he spends the rest of his time. Collin's magical powers evolve until he's told these are elaborate delusions fed by hallucinations, but he refuses to believe it's all in his head. As he grows increasingly paranoid of the motives of everyone around him, his obsession to discover his mother's killer is ultimately eclipsed by what he's taken for granted-the family he has remaining-and what he's failed to notice-that he is not who everyone should be afraid of.