Sex on the Moon--a new novella by Michael Ampersant (1)

Cool, folks, cool. After two years of literary silence, we finally have a new novella out. It carries the audience-friendly title Sex on the Moon (the original title was Lunar Engineering, but we changed that after consulting with the omnipresent and all-knowing Elon Musk). 
The whole thing is fan fiction, since it's a rewrite of Jules Verne's sci-fi novel From the Earth to the Moon. Michael wrote the piece in 2016 for a sci-fi anthology, but the publisher in question folded prematurely; the piece has lingered on his shelf for homeless literature ever since.
It took Michael so long to get it out because of his real-estate complications (selling the house on the Cote d'Azur, buying one in Portugal, then fixing it up), compounded by health issues (Covid, Long Covid, Post Covid). Anyhow, here's the story--so far as e-book, the printed version will soon follow.

So, Jules Verne fan fiction. Michael still remembers fondly the day that he sat on a nice beach in Brittany back in 1989 where he read the Verne book (in French). He finished the tome in one afternoon because the French is easy, and there were several things really wrong with the plot--a fact which kept him going.
For his novella, Michael invented a knowledgeable engineer to explain what’s wrong exactly  with the plot to our narrator, Michel Ardan, one of the three passengers of Verne’s lunar expedition. The fragment is a bit scabrous, hopefully you can handle that:

I feel obliged to warn the indulgent reader that my knowledge of the darker side of lunar engineering dates back only a few days—-three days to be precise—-when I met a certain Joseph Glanning in the bar of the Franklin Hotel in Tampa Town, Florida, where I had taken a room in anticipation of my impending departure for Stones Hill. A most irresistible man, he invited me to a drink and inquired as to the reasons for my stay. Learning of my intention to join Impey Barbicane, the illustrious president of the Baltimore Gun Club, for the much-heralded voyage to the moon, he introduced himself as an engineer from the newly-organized Stanford College in Alta California. Mister Stanford himself—-curious of all the lunar commotion on the distant eastern coast—-had dispatched him across the continent to take pulse of the events and report back at his earliest convenience. Glanning would be most grateful if I could enlighten him further, for he had hitherto been preoccupied by other projects, unable to avail himself of the particulars. He then asked questions. Yet, while I answered to the best of my ability, his countenance, so engaging at the onset of our barroom chat, darkened precariously. “Really,” he finally uttered. 

He motioned the steward for another round of drinks and entered upon a lengthy disquisition involving terms such as square roots, escape velocity, g-force, and orders of magnitude—-implying that my lunar voyage, much to his regret, should be doomed from the start. He then changed tack, however, and invited me to his chamber, where he managed to cast a very different light on orders-of-magnitude and escape-velocity, relentlessly engaging me with his g-force until I missed the departure of the steam train for Stones Hill. Not only that I missed the train, but the chance to dispatch a telegram that would have availed Barbicane of the latest Stanfordian thinking. 

For seventy two hours we made love, Joey and I, and when I briefly regained my senses it was too late to summon Eustace, the lovely hotel page, and dictate the telegram that could have saved Barbicane’s life—-by then the lovely page was otherwise engaged. Eustace had joined us between the sheets, his lips glued to the crown of my manhood, his butt answering the urgent call of Glanning’s phallic thrusts, his hands holding fast to my hips. Thus encumbered, he was perfectly unable to take telegram dictates, believe it or not.

I am not putting pen to paper to purge myself of the ignominy that will follow me to the grave, responsible as I will be for Barbicane’s demise. I am writing this so that you, indulgent reader, shall take heed and refrain from encouraging excitable souls (such as Barbicane) to build lunar passenger ships—-unless they had had a chance to exchange views with the charming Professor Glanning, the third-handsomest man of my life, who is sitting next to me as we speak, caressing my shoulder while advising me on the coarser points of English spelling and grammar. (“Only third?” he asks; “bear with me,” I answer). 

Are you still there? Are you hooked? 

Here's the link to the e-book:

Are you still there, but not yet hooked? Relax. There will be two more posts with fragments from the novella.