I have completed my first draft of Beer Run II. As it currently stands, it is 32,000 words. I will wait a few weeks before revising it for draft two.

Let me provide you with a brief outline of the plot: Bill and Cassandra come back from Earth, tailed by the world’s most incompetent government spy, to find someone has set Bill’s lawn furniture on fire. It turns out to be Jethro Duff, a prominent member of the Lunatic movement. A brief internet search reveals Jethro was inspired by an online conspiracy theory known as the Great Reckoning, a conspiracy whereby Bill’s father invented the self-aware android in order to drive millions of people out of work, leading them to alcoholism, making them vulnerable to being dragged down into Bill’s brewery where they are eaten.

After an angry mob appears at the brewery, pelting the building with garbage, Bill hires an attorney named Blinda Botzel to start a lawsuit against the Great Reckoning LLC, owned by a man named Cody Duncan. To investigate Duncan’s operation, Botzel employs Jimmy, Bill’s intern at the bar, as a private investigator. Jimmy finds that the Great Reckoning, along with the entire Lunatic movement, is really an elaborate scam to sell merchandise by Duncan, who is a classic con man.

Duncan quickly spots Jimmy as a spy, but rather than telling him to buzz off, he instead offers to mentor him in the art of the con. Duncan creates the character of James P. Greenburg, scion of the family that owned a robotics factory in town that was bought out by Stiltson Industries, who now walks the streets, homeless thanks to the deindustrialization of the moon. While the character exists to sell T-shirts, Jimmy loses himself in the role, even participating in a riot that ends up breaking into city hall.

Meanwhile, Bill finds that Cassandra has a broken part that can only be replaced with the same model part made by Greenburg Robotics, which went out of business decades ago and the remaining parts are in the possession of Jethro, currently in jail for torching Bill’s picnic tables. Bill offers to drop the charges in exchange for the pump, but the prosecutor wants Jethro to squeal on the Great Reckoning. Furthermore, much to Bill’s surprise, the DA’s office has started taking an interest in Jimmy, apparently believing that he, not Duncan, is the ringleader.

Okay, so how does that sound for a pitch? Would any of you change anything? Looking forward to any criticisms before I start my revisions. Will eventually look for beta readers, too. Let me know if I have any early volunteers for that.