A fantasy / science-fiction serial from Bellwether, NC
Hops & Havoc
They took our bar.
We’re taking back our town.Randy’s Tavern · Home of affordable bottles, unreliable flooring, and the local resistance
Gentrification has come to Bellwether.
It isn’t from Earth.
Doug and Jerry wanted their old tavern left alone. What they got was an alien invasion hiding in craft beer. It arrived with deep pockets, valid permits, and impeccable manners.
Standing between Bellwether and new management are a hands-on civic-tech fixer who spent his whole life preparing for the wrong kind of danger, a repairman who knows the guts of every machine in the county, and a bartender who’s been keeping tabs on this town for twenty years without writing a word of it down.
And in a sealed fermentation tank across town, something is listening.
Chapter one, in its own words
“That last one’s just you being mad in a font.”
Jerry, reviewing Doug’s counterfeit parking signs“You read Red Dawn as a comedy. I read it as a manual.”
Doug, unbothered“The notice arrived on a Thursday, in an envelope with a county return address and the unhurried menace of official paper.”
How the trouble starts
Now reading
Last Call at Randy’s
A neighborhood feud over a fashionable brewery reveals a signal that should not exist, and puts Randy’s Tavern directly in the path of something much larger. Serialized in four episodes.
“The floor had negotiated individual truces with gravity.”Start Episode 1 →
The local resistance
Three experts.
In unrelated fields.
They can debug a municipal system, repair a walk-in cooler, and insult an invading intelligence. The order varies.
- Doug Walker
Hands-on civic-tech fixer. Systems obsessive. Owner of several contingency plans nobody asked him to make.
- Jerry Collins
Repairman. Conspiracy theorist. Experiencing the worst possible form of vindication.
- B.A.R.R.Y.
Currently a voice in a sealed brewery tank, answering questions nobody asked out loud. You’ll meet him. He’d like it documented, in advance, that none of this was his plan.
The series
The story so far
Last Call at Randy’s
The tavern feud that discovers Bellwether’s beer problem is bigger than Bellwether.
A wobbly table, a dead neon sign, and a flyer that costs money to feel like it doesn’t.
Start reading → Story 1 · Episode 02 · Read nowYeast AbatementDoug declares war with a laminator. Jerry’s gauges hear something answer.
Keep reading → Story 1 · Episode 03 · Read nowOut of CodeThe envelope gets opened, an accountant enlists, and every glass at Heritage rings at once.
Keep reading → Story 1 · Episode 04 · Read nowPublic CommentBellwether holds a hearing, Doug brings yarn, and Tank Seven answers a question nobody asked out loud.
Finish the story →Flight of the D.A.G.G.E.R.S.
Delivery routes, cycling club politics, and one impossible alley open the next front.
A cycling club invents a law, the delivery windows start breaking, and a stranger named Peaches conquers an impossible alley.
Start Story 2 → Story 2 · Episode 02 · Read nowCritical MassDoug brings correct data to a public forum and says the one word Phil banned. A warm bicycle leaves something behind.
Keep reading → Story 3 · In developmentThe Beer That Knew Too MuchSome brews remember more than their drinkers do.
View field notes →Population: complicated
Welcome to Bellwether.
A cheerful mountain town with good neighbors, aggressive zoning, and a craft-beer district that may be terraforming the planet.
One useful traffic light. Three competing definitions of “downtown.” Eleven years into choosing a new town slogan. Worth defending.
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Get the next story
when it pours.
Hops & Havoc is brand new. The first story is poured in full, and the next one is fermenting. Follow along by RSS, and if something made you laugh, groan, or close the tab, tell us. Honest notes only. Randy’s has survived worse.