Thank you for your kind words, Taurired!I'd love to see that story!
MasterKGray: She (it hasn't come out in the story yet but her real name is Terri and she will be named Sandra shortly) Terri started thinking it was a dream; it has to be. Gor is fiction and her last experience before she woke up in the meadow at the beginning of the story was going to sleep in her own bed. No on-earth capture sequence like has happened in several of the books to remove that ambiguity.
Is she dreaming? I have gone back and forth on this a hundred times while writing the story and am still undecided. I don't plan to resolve that except perhaps at the very end of the story and there's a lot of story still planned (but none of it completed so it may be a while for more of the story). Terri/Sandra has been in this dream four to five days now; she still believes (hopes) it's a dream but dreams don't normally last that long.
I've had dreams that have seemed to last much longer than the actual elapsed time that I saw once I woke up, but yes, this one is extreme. Writer's privilege. She's pretty much even now at the end of part 2 giving up that it's a dream due to the length and the thought that she might wake up will probably just be her wishful thinking from here on out. I suspect she will think it on occasion but like any of us in our dreams we're there and get to interact with our dreams as if they were real. I too rarely remember more than little scraps of my dreams but I lived (dreamed) through them in their full length. This is more telling the story as it happens during the dream (if it is one) and not a recollection after waking up which like for you and I would probably just be scraps.
The title is a reference to how poorly Terri fits the classic woman-transplanted-to-Gor as have occurred in the books. She's aware of the book series and she's not, as she puts it, going to go all Stockholm Syndrome. One of my complaints about the series is that pretty much every female lead character by the end of her story arc is enslaved and happy to be a slave. This is something Terri will never be. Constantly fighting it, unbroken. She's never going to be a slave in her heart. Her options are limited within the Gorean societal system but I don't see her ever stopping fighting it. Dr. Norman's books normally make a point that the captures are either psychologically profiled or shown by their pre-capture actions to be a good fit as a slave on Gor. Terri may be enslaved, but she will never be one of those slave girls. The overall premise is: What if you took a female who was not slave girl material at all and took her to Gor? She isn't weak or helpless, she beats the living crap out of men when needed. Atypical. Hence the title. I may not be communicating that as well as I wanted to.
FWIW the story is set during the Cosnian occupation of Ar as detailed in the later books and before Cabot's capture by the Priest-Kings that takes him to one of the moons and to the Kurii worldships. Cabot's escape from Ar is referenced as a plot point in one of the later story segments.
I'm glad to find someone who has also read the books. I am trying hard to write the story correctly within Dr. Norman's envelope. If you see somewhere I mess up, I would very, very, very much like to hear it. Pretty Please! All comments are completely welcome and craved, even critical ones.
Z